She snorts. “My mom does not.” She winces. “But she also doesn’t know…everything.” She shakes her head. “Are you okay now? The article I looked at said you got hit pretty badly.”
“Hazard of the job.” I point at her. “We’re not skipping the point where you didn’t want to date me. Don’t you think I’m pretty?” I clutch my chest with a gasp.
She searches the table, probably for something to throw at my face. “I’d just broken up with an asshole ex who did a number on me. I didn’t want to date anyone. Especially hockey playing someones who didn’t tell me they play hockey.”
My stomach falls. “Why wouldn’t I have told you I play hockey?”
Her face turns red again. “I was pretty vocal about my loathing of hockey players.”
“So you never knew I played hockey. But you knew my name was Raffi, and I went to school here?” I can’t figure out how she couldn’t have tracked me down. There can’t be all that many Raffis here on campus.
She shakes her head, toying with a piece of pastry crust. “We gave each other fake names.”
It’s a fucking Greek tragedy. I’d say it’s Shakespearean, but so far, no one’s died.
Please God tell me no one dies.
“Because of course we did.”
“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?
