Page 55 of After-Hours Heir

She pulled up a text bubble.

Kid: Getting an ultrasound to determine gender tomorrow. Do you want to know?

There was no response. She went into the kitchen and began to rifle around in the fridge.

Her phone buzzed.

Baby: Yes.

Kid: Should I wait for you to come back?

There was a pause.

Baby: No.

Kid: Are you ever coming back?

Baby: Of course I am. Do not be dramatic.

Kid: Oh, I’m sorry, is my two months long abandonment meant to feel normal?

Baby: You don’t even like me.

Kid: Do you care?

Baby: I don’t want you to be unhappy.

She stared at those words. She had a feeling that they were a large admission.

Kid: You said that you don’t have any friends. Why is that? Because you’re a very powerful man. And you’re charismatic, and I have a feeling that you could command the attention of any room that you wanted to. I’ve seen you do it. So why don’t you have friends?

Baby: An interesting question. Because I have found that it’s better to live life without connection.

Kid: You said something to me when I told you about the baby. About how people can die of loneliness.

Staring at the phone, she went and sat down on his couch. It mirrored the times that they had talked before. But this time, she could picture him.

And she had the very sudden, visceral realization that the man she had been talking to all this time wasn’t alive. He was Christos.

A part of him that he didn’t seem to be able to show in person, but he was very real.

It made her feel a strange longing in her chest.

This was what she had been longing for over the past two months. This connection.

Today, talking to her mother, she had realized something about herself, and somehow, that had moved enough stuff out of the way for her to finally see this. Finally understand it.

She missed him.

It had been so awful, so shocking to find out that the man of her dreams was Christos, because some part of her had known it would only break her heart.

She wished she knew why.

Why it was so…intense with him? And why he was just so hard to reach?

Baby: My mother died when I was very young. It changed my entire life.

Kid: I’m sorry.