“You really didn’t want me to know you played hockey.”
Nodding, I give past Raffi both a high five and a head slap. “If I’d told you that, you most definitely wouldn’t have dated me. Was it a good date?”
Her mouth snaps closed, fork poised in front of her face loaded with her last bite of pie. Her eyes brim with tears. “The best. I gave you my number. And despite myself, despite my cheating asshole ex leaving me damaged, I wanted to hear from you so badly.”
There goes the chin again.
Nooooo. Can we go back to banter and eye rolls please? Please? Anything that isn’t this stunning woman crying. It hurts on a level I’m not sure I’m ready to accept yet.
“So I ghosted you, and a few weeks later you find out you’re pregnant, don’t know who the father is, and have to make a decision about whether or not to be a single, teenage mom? Fuck.” Anguish sears my skin as I scrape my hands over my face. This woman has a titanium spine. The past few years couldn’t have been easy for her, and yet, she’s in college, she has a gorgeous kid, and she hasn’t stabbed me with a fork.
It’s not my fault. Rationally, I know this. But at the same time, it is. If I hadn’t lied to her off the bat, if I had just given her my fucking name, I could have helped her.
Did she get morning sickness or those stupidly painful leg cramps my cousin got when she had all three of her kids?
Who was with her in the hospital?
The pie in my stomach sits like a lead weight.
“What?” Her piercing jade eyes nail me with a hard look.
“I just… I don’t know how you did it. You’re a fucking badass.” There’s no other word for it, she truly is a gladiator. “Were you completely alone? Did your friends and family at least rally around you?”
It’s my turn to fight tears. If she says no, if her family kicked her out for getting pregnant, or her friends abandoned her… My heart can’t take it.
“Mom had my back the whole time.” She gets a far off look in her eyes. “Friends drifted away. But I’m getting back out and making some new ones.”
“Like Eloise.”
She nods, smiling. “We’re like oil and water in some ways, but we work well together.”
An awkward silence hangs between us. I’m not sure where to go from here. “You want a dessert slice?” I’m half out of mychair, ready to snag us round two of pies, but she shakes her head.
“I should get back.”
Of course. She has a little boy to look after.Ourlittle boy. My stomach flutters. It’s not the time to ask to meet him, not yet anyway. She’s flighty, and emotional, and she’s probably going to have to wade through a lot of trauma before she’s ready to talk about me meeting him. But the thought of getting to hang out with a piece of me… It’s almost too much to keep contained inside my body.
Should I ask to see a picture of him? Is that too far?
A photo might keep the rabid grandmother at bay for long enough for me to figure things out with Victoria—Tori, gah, dammit.
“Tori or Victoria?”
She stares at me for a long beat. “Either’s fine. From you. I think. But I reserve the right to change my mind. Mom calls me Victoria when I’m in trouble.” Her lips purse like she’s fighting the urge to say more.
“What is it?”
A shake of her head dislodges a springy curl from her ponytail. “We’ll work up to it.”
I dunno what that means but it sounds like some time in the future which means she’s not walking out of here with no plans to ever see me again. That statement unwinds tension in the crease of my neck. I hadn’t realized how worked up I was over the outcome of this get together.
There’s every reason for this woman not to believe me. The news articles all say I took a hit, but nowhere in them did we release the information that I lost my memory. She’s just going on my word alone for that. And it’s awfully convenient for me to hit my head, forget about a woman I knocked up, and never reach out to her again.
For all she knows, I saw her waddling around the store one day and actively decided not to be a participant in their lives.
She’s taking a lot on faith right now, and I don’t want to take that for granted. For all I know, I scared the fuck out of her by refusing to let her leave, and she’s telling me whatever I need to hear until she gets outside and can run fast and far away.
“Do you think I could have a picture of Wyatt, please?”
