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And I still have no fucking idea how I’m supposed to feel.
My phone vibrates against the sofa and I answer it without looking. “Hello?”
“Hey, baby girl,” Tyler says. “My parents are in town a day early. Are you free for dinner tonight?”
My whole body goes rigid. Shit. Too soon. There’s no way I can go to dinner with his parents now.
“I’m not feeling too good,” I reply, guilt threading through my veins. “I think I ate some bad seafood for lunch. Can we reschedule?”
“Of course,” he answers. “Do you want me to come over later?”
“No, it’s okay. In case it isn’t the food and is a bug or something.” I’m the worst liar ever. Shit. Crap. Ballbags. “I’ll call you in the morning.”
“All right, babe. Go to bed, yeah?”
“Got it. Have fun with your parents.” I hang up and drop the phone.
I’m awful.
I’m completely fucking awful.
His baby is inside me and I’m too chicken to tell him. What kind of person does that make me, really? If I can’t even tell the father of my very unexpected baby that he’s going to be a father? That he already is? Inside me or not, this baby is alive. A person. From the second this baby was conceived I became a mom, and he became a dad.
And just a few days ago, I was drinking wine like it’s going out of fashion.
Guilt riddles me. Unnecessarily. I didn’t know. I had no way to know—it’s not like my womb held up a neon sign proclaiming “Baby in residence. ETA: 8 months.”
Evolution should really get on that.
But still… I knew this morning. A moment of utter clarity came from nowhere, and something, I have no idea what, told me to drop everything and pee.
I stare at the wall. Everything is about to change. Everything.
I’ll have to cancel the Balfour shoot. I can’t be the face of a swimwear campaign when I’ll look like a beached whale in said swimwear by next season.
The bar. How will I be able to I run the bar when my ankles are swollen and I’m walking with a waddle that would put penguins to shame?
How will anything be what I expected? My job, my dream, even my relationship. My reluctant relationship is now as serious as it’s ever going to be. Our fun, playful, heated relationship is going to change the most.
Neither of us will be the same. My body will change irreversibly. What if Tyler never looks at me the same? What if the way we feel isn’t enough?
There’s no way we can base us on our addictions. Not now. I have to let him say the words and I have to say them back, because they’re the truth, the reality, and we’ll need to hold on to them if we’re going to take our whirlwind relationship and make it into something stable enough for a child.
If he even wants to stay.
I cover my mouth with my hand. What if it isn’t what he wants? After all, we’re not the ones who should be having a family. We’re nowhere near close to a forever kind of commitment.
Well, we weren’t. A baby is about as forever as it gets. You won’t get anything more binding than that.
And really… What do I know about Tyler aside from the menial things I’ve asked in a fit of hazed addiction? We’ve never spoken about his life in London. I know nothing about this guy. Not really.
I pull my laptop up from under the coffee table and rest it on my lap. I open it and type his name into the search engine.
I feel like a stalker. Almost like I’m invading his privacy—which is totally fucking ridiculous because any information I’m going to get is public. That and I haven’t clicked on a link yet.
Stupidly, I click on the image search first. There are loads of pictures up. With Tessa. With Aaron. With two people I assume to be his parents. And with countless women. Different women, different nights, different events. I scroll down the page with bile rising in my stomach, twisting and turning up my chest until it burns my throat.
I swallow it down and get off that search. I click on the first link, which happens to be his website. The only new thing I gain from this is his portfolio. Family photos, relationships, headshots. There’s just about everything, including images from campaigns he’s shot. But my favorite part is the store. It’s full of landscape shots, from city images to beach sunsets.
