Knocked-Up Cinderella

by Julie Hammerle

  She shook her head, frowning. “It’s okay. You’re here, right?”

  “I wanted to be here on time. Please know I wanted to be here on time.” Though she’d already given it to me, I nearly fell to my knees to grovel for her forgiveness. It was the least I could do.

  “It’s okay, Ian. We’re good.” A younger couple on the other side of the room drowned out her words, thanks to their shouting match over how late the dude had stayed out last night. The woman argued that she had to stay home alone and pregnant with all the indigestion, while the guy could waltz in at four a.m. reeking of booze and cheap perfume.

  “Yikes.” My body cringed with secondhand embarrassment. That was not a conversation to have in front of other people.

  “Girl has a point.” Erin nudged my ribs. “But at least you and I will never have that fight.”

  My eyes traveled to her. She still gazed across the room at the fighting couple. “Right,” I said.

  “You could stay out all night, and I’d never know about it.”

  I needed her to know that I wasn’t this dude across the room. I was the responsible adult human who’d knocked her up, who, damn it, tried to arrive on time for her appointment today. “I haven’t been out much since I found out about the baby,” I said. “I’ve become a homebody.”

  “I never asked you to do that.” Her eyes darkened as she turned to me.

  “I know… It’s just…maybe I’m maturing?” That had to be it. It wasn’t like I could keep up my bachelor-in-paradise pace forever. Though I hadn’t noticed it at the time, all the drinking and partying had taken a toll. Now that I’d started staying home more, I’d been sleeping better, eating better, feeling better.

  She raised an eyebrow. “Way to go on the whole being-a-grown-up thing! You’re only forty, after all.”

  We’d returned to joking, which was quickly becoming my favorite part of being around her. “Or maybe I’m having, like, sympathy nesting. Is that a thing?”

  “Could be,” she said.

  “I tried going out a few nights ago, but I was just like, ugh, give me Netflix and a blanket.”

  Erin giggled, and the sound filled the entire room. It resonated against my bones. I silently vowed to do everything in my power to keep that laughter in my life—I’d toe the line, leave thirty minutes early for appointments, be on-call for her twenty-four-seven, whatever she needed. “If that’s maturity, then I’ve been old for fifteen years.”

  “It’s not a bad life,” I said in utter honesty. Who the fuck was I?

  “Not bad at all. So,” she said, “what do your friends think of the whole baby thing?”

  “Oh. I haven’t told them yet.” Scott had too much going on in his own life right now to worry about mine, and, well, I couldn’t tell Tommy and not Scott. We three shared everything.

  Erin’s eyes widened.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to tell them; I just don’t know what to say.” The hurt look on her face forced me to keep going. “I will tell them. I will. I kind of just wanted to get through today first.” I’d almost told my dad the last time I saw him, but I caved. What was I supposed to do? Tell him that maybe he was going to be a grandfather, if I could avoid fucking this up?

  “Have you not told them because you’re worried you could bolt at any minute?” she asked.

  I couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. I bet on the latter. “No…”

  “Yeah.” She raised her eyebrows at me.

  “Yeah.” That was definitely part of it.

  “It’s okay,” she told me. “I get it, and I appreciate you being straight with me. We’re both going into this with our eyes wide open—honest and realistic. Like I said before, I expect nothing from you, but having you here is nice.” She flipped through Ladies’ Home Journal.

  Her words ripped a hole in my heart. I was still No-Expectations Ian to her. Maybe that’s who I’d always be. “You should expect things from me,” I said. “I…want you to be able to expect things from me.”

  She hit me with a wan smile. She didn’t believe me, and I couldn’t blame her.

  The nurse opened the door, called us in, and set Erin up on the table in the exam room—fully clothed. No vagina probes this time. Today I’d get to see the regular old TV-type ultrasound, with the belly wand.

  I took my seat near the door, in the safe spot that was clear of lube and model uteruses. “So,” I said, folding my hands in my lap.

  “So.” Erin cleared her throat. “Um…now, I could’ve found this out ages ago thanks to all the tests and whatnot that I’ve had to endure thanks to my AMA—”

  “Advanced Maternal Age.” I’d done my homework.

  “But,” she said, hesitating, “well, where do you stand on finding out the sex of this baby?”

  My heart sped up. “Oh.” Since I could no doubt run the table on a Jeopardy! category about human gestation, I knew that the twenty-week ultrasound was usually when people found out what they were going to have, if they wanted to know ahead of time. I’ve always been on Team Find Out. But—“I don’t know,” I said. “What do you think?” Deferring to the mother. Always a smart play.

  “I’d kind of like to have something to call the kid.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “You have names on your list?”

  “I want to hear yours first. If you have them.”

  I smelled a trap. “You want to hear mine first?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Lay them on me.”

  I’d thought about names a lot, actually, while waiting for a flight at the airport, when noticing my barista’s nametag at the coffee shop, while falling asleep alone at night. I’d had a lot of time to think lately. “Well, as far as girls’ names go, I’ve been having a hard time deciding what to do.”

  “As I assumed you would.” Erin’s eyes twinkled. “Do we have to go old school, like popular names from the Stone Age, to find the name of a woman you haven’t been with?”

  “Hey!” I clutched my heart, faux-wounded as my cheeks flushed in embarrassment. That hadn’t even occurred to me, because there was really only one girls’ name that made sense. Once it popped into my head, I called off the search. “No. The thing is, I spent a lot of time with my dad’s mom growing up and I’d love to name the baby after her. But her name was Lois. Can we name a baby Lois, though? I mean…Lois Lane…”

  “There are worse things to be called than Lois Lane.” Erin’s eyes traveled to the ceiling. “Lois,” she repeated. “Lois…I like it. And I haven’t had any jackass students with that name, either. Always a concern.”

  “Perfect.” I prepared to drop the bigger bombshell on her. “But I know the boy’s name for sure.”

  “You do?” She turned her head toward me.

  I nodded. Please say yes. She had to say yes.

  “Me, too.” Her eyes narrowed.

  “Uh-oh.” Well, I’d lose this battle for sure. She was the mom, the one hauling this kid around for nine months. If she wanted to name him Rutherford, we’d name him Rutherford. Maybe we’d use my pick as the middle name.

  “On three?” she said.

  “Okay.” I braced myself for the worst. “On three. One…two…three…”

  We both blurted out, “James,” and immediately started laughing.

  “It’s my dad’s name.” My body flooded with relief. Our kid would not be named Rutherford.

  “Mine, too.”

  “Wow. I guess we’re decided.” I stood, about to run over and hug her or something, maybe just give her a fist bump, but Dr. Dana opened the door before I could get to Erin, She strolled in wielding an iPad. “How’s it going, E?” Dana glanced up from her tablet and startled. “Oh, Ian. Good to see you again.” She raised an eyebrow at Erin.

  “Ian’s taking his baby daddy job very seriously.” Erin patted her stomach.

  “I am,” I said. “I’ve even become a sympathy couch potato.”

  Erin grinned at me. Over the past two weeks, we’d become something resembling a
team. A team that still needed a lot of work, granted, but still. A team.

  Dana checked the chart on her tablet. “So far, so good. Tests are all normal. You’re feeling fine?”

  Erin nodded.

  “Well, let’s get a look at this baby.” She lowered the table so Erin was lying down.

  Erin motioned for me to come over. I stood at her side, hands clutched behind my back, as Dana slicked the wand over Erin’s abdomen.

  “This kid looks good,” Dana said.

  I couldn’t tell a foot from the kid’s nose. Really, from what I could tell, the baby looked like Mr. Burns. I readjusted my expectations for this child accordingly.

  Dana, eyes on the screen, asked, “Do you want to know the sex?”

  I caught Erin’s eye. We hadn’t landed on a decision. I shrugged. “It’s up to you.” Though I definitely did want to know, I’d defer to her. There was something kind of fun and Christmas-morning-esque about not knowing, sure, but I never avoided instant gratification.

  Erin smiled nervously. “Let’s do it.”

  My heart racing, I turned to Dana. “Let’s do it.” This was a big moment, especially now that Erin and I had settled on names. We’d find out today if we were having a “Lois” or a “James.” Ever since I’d found out about Erin’s pregnancy, I’d been thinking of this kid as an amorphous blob. Finding out its sex would be the first concrete bit of information we’d get.

  “Well.” Dana pointed to something on screen. I nodded, pretending I totally knew what was going on and that the splotch did not look like a slice of deep dish pizza. “It’s a boy!”

  A boy. “James,” I blurted. I grabbed Erin’s hand and squeezed. She didn’t pull away. She actually squeezed back. An unwelcome tear escaped my eye and I wiped it away quickly, before Erin or Dr. Dana could see. A boy. I was having a son. We were. Erin and I were going to have a son. All these emotions swirled through me—excitement, dread, joy, terror. “Cool,” I said. “Cool, cool, cool.” I dropped Erin’s hand and shrugged, like all of this was the opposite of a big deal.

  …

  Erin

  As soon as my feet hit the pavement outside the doctor’s office, I started bawling. I couldn’t control it. I’d bottled up my emotions through the ultrasound, and now they erupted from my body—through my eyes and nose. I devolved into a blubbering mess.

  Ian, who’d been a few paces ahead of me, spun around. “Are you okay?” He dashed back toward the office building, to where I’d hunched over, hands on knees, crying. “What’s wrong?”

  I shook my head as I gathered my wits. “I’m okay.” From my pocket, I extracted a pink handkerchief that had probably been in there since February and blew my nose. So classy. So chic. “Really. I’m fine.” I focused my leaky eyes on Ian. “It’s just…today was a lot.”

  He furrowed his brow and nodded. “A lot of good.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “A lot of good. But also just a lot.” I opened my arms to show him how much.

  “We’re having a James.” Ian smiled.

  And that nearly set off my waterworks again. I couldn’t put my finger on why—why I was crying about having a boy, why I was getting so emotional over Ian being there. Of course he was there. He was the kid’s father. He was supposed to be there. Being there was the bare minimum. “Yeah.” I started walking down the block, just for something to do. “It’s awesome we’re having a James. He almost feels real now.”

  Ian jogged to catch up with me. “Do you ever feel like he’s a two-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle we’re never going to complete?”

  I spun around. Now I grinned through my tears. I could picture it—this pile of puzzle pieces, scattered across the kitchen table. “That’s the perfect way to put it.” I touched my midsection. “He’s like a tiny stranger.”

  “And today we found the corner pieces. He’s going to be a boy.”

  “Well.” Hand on hip, I launched into my righteous-principal-lecture mode. “They’re going to be assigned male at birth, but whether or not they identify as male is yet to be determined.”

  “True.” Ian was practically laughing at me now, which I found both frustrating and cute. How dare he laugh at me for making a salient point and look so adorable doing it! “But can we at least agree there’s a fairly good chance that he’s going to end up being a dude? Statistically.”

  “I suppose that’s fair.” I drew in a deep breath and exhaled.

  “What else?” he asked.

  “What else?”

  He mimicked my exaggerated sigh. “There’s something else going on.” He made a come on sign with his arms. “Give it to me. I’m here to listen.”

  Where to even begin? My emotions had jumbled into such a mess I could hardly make sense of them. “Okay, well, I’ve been thinking about that couple in the waiting room and how she was all worried about him coming home late at night. I’m never going to have to worry about you like that.” A sob escaped my mouth again. WTF? Come on, hormones, give me a break.

  “Do you want to worry about my whereabouts?” Ian asked.

  I dug my fingernails into my palm to stop the flow of tears. “But shouldn’t I? Isn’t that what I’m supposed to want to do? You’re my kid’s father.”

  Ian stepped closer and massaged my shoulders with his big, strong hands. I felt small whenever I was around him. Tiny, even. Petite. Everything about Ian was so large and imposing, in a good way. He made me feel safe. None of my previous boyfriends had ever made me feel that way before—not that I wanted Ian to be my boyfriend or anything—but it was nice for once not to be the one who’d probably have to step up and kill a spider. “What you and I have is better than what those people in the waiting room have,” he said.

  “How so?”

  “We have no reason to lie to each other. We don’t have to play the stupid relationship games. From day one, you and I have practiced brutal honesty.” His eyes twinkled.

  My emotions had shifted wildly from despair to desire, thanks to his powerful hands massaging my shoulders. If there was one thing the couple in the waiting room had that we didn’t, it was easy access to sex. That was built into the relationship, but Ian and I… I released an involuntary moan, as he hit just the right spot on my neck.

  “Feel better?” he asked.

  “Much.” I gazed up at him as he stared down at me with those big chocolate eyes under the glasses and the messy hair. This man was my sexuality. I was an Ian Donovan-sexual. “We can’t have sex again.”

  He backed off, holding his hands up in surrender. “I wasn’t—”

  “I know.” I touched the back of my neck where his hands just left. “I was telling myself as much as I was telling you. I…made a bet?”

  His eyes narrowed into a question.

  My shoulders slumped. “I made a bet with Nat that I’d follow your rules for a year—no sleepovers, no second times, no strings.”

  His eyes bugged. “But we—Valentine’s Day.”

  “Our first time didn’t count for the contest, since my thing with Nat came after the fact.” I blushed at the word “came.”

  He furrowed his brow. “And what happens if you break the rules?”

  “I have to scrounge up money for a ridiculous SMARTboard she ‘needs’ for her classroom.”

  Ian laughed at me, and, yeah, maybe it was kind of ridiculous, a grown woman making bets with her friends about her love life. “Why?” he asked. “Why are you doing this?”

  “To prove I can.” I sighed. “To break old habits. I have a tendency to pick guys who don’t deserve me, and I’m breaking the cycle. I’m going to stay single until I meet someone who’s worth it. Who’s worth me.”

  Ian gazed past me toward the street. “I get it,” he said. “I get the whole wanting a reset thing. You’re not the only one with baggage.”

  “You have baggage? Ian Donovan? King of No Strings?”

  “Heh,” he said. “I’m the king of all baggage. My mom left when I was eleven. She moved to Hawaii with her b
oyfriend, Blake, abandoning me and my dad. I worry I’m going to end up like her. That’s why I threw myself into work—I chose that over rolling the dice with emotional entanglements.”

  “Relationships are not for us,” I said.

  He looked deep into my eyes. “I’d only disappoint you.”

  “And I’d grow so aloof that you’d start to think I didn’t care.”

  “We’re doing the right thing,” he said. “Open and honest communication, friendship, and respect.”

  I couldn’t hide my grin at the bizarre notion that I now had a “friend” who looked like Ian Donovan.

  He pulled out his phone. “I’m starved. Want to get food?”

  “Food? You and me together? That’s not… I’m not hungry.” And my stomach growled. Damn it, baby. Read the room.

  Ian looked pointedly at my growing gut.

  I wrapped my arms around my midsection. “Why?”

  “Why do I want to get food?”

  “Oh. It’s just…” What were we doing here? “Dining together…”

  “Too much?” he said.

  “Too date-like?” I asked.

  “You’re saying we can screw in a restroom, but we can’t watch each other eat soup?” And his stupid eyes twinkled again.

  When he put it that way… “Well,” I said, trying to rationalize this in my head. “I suppose it’s not the worst idea for us to get to know more about each other—in the name of friendship, respect, and open communication.”

  “Right, like when James starts talking about his Aunt Wendy, I’ll have a frame of reference. That’s all.”

  That was all. This conversation would not amount to some big turning point in our non-relationship. It was Ian, trying to get to know his kid’s mom a little better. He hadn’t been opening a door. He didn’t want to change what we had. He was attempting to enhance our friendship, a wee little bit. That I could handle. “Well, first of all, there’s no Aunt Wendy, but there is an Aunt Katie. You’ve met her. At the doctor’s office, right before you walked out on me and your son.” I winked with a grin.