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I nodded and sat back in the chair.
My head was spinning with different thoughts.
I was going to be a father.
I had a very difficult time thinking past that one thought. It permeated every corner of my mind. A father. I was going to be a father.
“Mark?”
I looked up and saw Carmela staring at me expectantly. I wondered how long I had been sitting there, staring into space. It was long enough that my fingers had dug into the backs of my hands and left marks where my nails had gone.
I shook my head and stood up. Carmela stood too. I was unsure of what to do. Part of me wanted to run to her, to scoop her up and hold her and celebrate. Part of me wanted to go for a walk and let the evening air breathe life into my lungs, forcing them to work since I hadn’t felt like they had done much since I’d sat down.
“I think,” I began, not sure what I was going to finish the sentence with. I was on the ride as much as she was on that one. “I think that I might need some time to think about all this.”
Carmela forced a smile. There was no fooling me. She had been expecting something else, some other kind of response, but I didn’t have it in me. I didn’t have anything in me other than the blankness in my mind and confusion as to how I felt. She nodded, and I returned the gesture.
“Sure,” she said. “That’s fine. I understand. You know how to reach me.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll…talk to you later.”
“Okay,” she said, following me as I made my way to the door. I thought I saw a tear in her eye, perfectly mirroring the one that had been in Judy’s, but she wiped her face with her fingers and brushed it away.
“Bye,” I said lamely.
“Goodbye,” she said and shut the door behind me.
I took a deep breath of the night air. It didn’t help.
19
CARMELA
I thought I'd churned through everything and was completely prepared for whatever he was going to say and however he was going to react. I thought I'd steeled myself against it and was going to be able to handle whatever direction the situation took.
But that actually stung.
He wasn't angry. He didn't scream and shout and completely freak out. Maybe that would have been easier. If he'd had an explosive reaction like that, I would have known the emotions going through his head. I would have known how to feel and how to react in turn. Him being angry would have given me something to latch on to. It would have let me be angry back at him, or defensive, or even just sad that he’d turned out to be that kind of man.
Instead, he barely reacted. He looked confused when I first mentioned the baby, but then when it occurred to him what I was saying, he just said he needed time to think about it. There was no real reaction, no sign of what he might be feeling. He didn't emote in any way, and he definitely didn't ask how I was feeling about it, or what I was going through. It almost felt like a disconnect.
And I really hated it. Even though I told myself I was going to be fine no matter what, I realized after it happened that I really did want something more from him. Maybe part of me was even hoping for him to be happy or excited.
I gave myself only a few seconds of feeling like that, then chided myself for it. It was ridiculous for me to have those kinds of feelings about Mark's reaction. We weren't a couple. We never were. We weren't even really friends at this point. Having a baby suddenly sprung on him would have been a lot even if we were together. As things were between us then, it was nothing short of a shock.
I realized I was judging him based on where I was in processing the news. When I’d first found out, I had the chance to think it through and let it settle in. Mark should have that opportunity as well. He would need his own time to let it sink in that he was going to be a father and to think about what that would mean for the two of us.
I didn't know how long it was going to take for him to have something to say about it. Maybe he would get back to me in a few days. And maybe it would turn out that he had no idea how to handle something like this, and I never actually heard back from him again. Forcing myself to remove emotion from it, I knew either way I would be fine. If I needed to, I could do this on my own.
