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“Like I’m his father?!” he yells, leaning over the console toward me.
Our eyes lock.
“Don’t you dare yell at me,” I say in a soft, unforced way. “You can be angry with me, but you know I won’t be spoken to like that.”
Rex rests a hand on the dashboard. “I don’t know you at all, Isabella.”
He’s right. We are strangers. One month together five years ago doesn’t mean we know each other.
And yet my heart breaks. That time of my life, that month, felt untouchable. A perfect crevice of time before life got really real.
Now, Rex is back. And everything is different.
“You were a kid,” I say, finally.
“I was twenty-six.”
“Yeah,” I say. “A kid.”
Rex scoffs. “Don’t act like because you were a few years older than me that meant we were so different.”
“Rex, we were different! You were literally about to become famous. Don’t tell me you would have sacrificed any of your dreams to deal with an unplanned pregnancy,” I reply.
These are all facts I’m telling him. Not assumptions. We both know that it would have resulted in more trouble and heartbreak than either of us could afford, evidenced by Rex’s silence and pursed lips.
His gaze drops to his lap. “I could have at least helped with money.”
“I was able to handle all of that on my own,” I say.
Rex hesitates and then laughs. Not a mean laugh. A genuine, wistful laugh. “You haven’t changed.”
“I thought you didn’t know me,” I say coldly.
Rex looks at me again and, against my better judgment, I look at him too.
I have never seen a man more beautiful than Rex and that’s remained true even since our affair. There’s something in the edges of him that’s so masculine and then a softness in the way his hair falls and the plumpness of his lips that hedges on feminine.
Rex’s eyes search mine. He once told me my eyes were like a forest he’d get lost in, all brown tree trunks and dirty. I gave him shit for it, but I never forgot it.
Every time he’s gotten lost in my eyes though, I’m so afraid he’s going to find the things he’s searching for. Things hidden so deep inside me I don’t know what they are.
“I could have helped, Isabella, at the very least, I… I’m not a monster,” Rex says.
I bite the inside of my cheek. I’ve never resented him for the life he gets to lead. I do make good money. And, yes, being a new mother in the throes of residency was hard. But I did it because I knew I could. Or because I had to. Not sure which actually. “The truth is, I was afraid you’d try to talk me out of it,” I say.
“I –” he stops suddenly. He knows the truth. Twenty-six is the new sixteen. It would have been like a teen pregnancy in his eyes. “I can’t say for sure.”
“And I mean, you wouldn’t have been able to,” I say with a half-smile. “But that would have just made it harder and less… less beautiful.” For all the hardship, for all the sleepless nights, for all the shit that comes with being a single mom, it’s all been beautiful in its own way. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Neither of us speaks for a long time. The minutes tick by. What do you say when you’re faced with a child you didn’t know you had? And what do you say when the father of your secret child returns? It’s not a situation I’ve ever let myself think about.
“I’d –” Rex’s voice is garbled for a moment. He clears his throat. “I’d like to meet him.”
I’m not sure how to process that. “W-why?”
“Do I need a better reason than he’s my son? I’d like to know him,” he says.
My heart beats so hard I’m worried it’s visible through my shirt. “No.”
