Page 20 of Boss's Baby Surprise

I gave in and we went to the movies. I spent the entire movie wondering if the characters up on the screen were as dumb as me. Did they use protection? Of course, they did. None of them were pregnant, or were they? The action and comedy on screen couldn’t take my mind away from being preoccupied over the pregnancy test.

For Marci’s sake, I pretended that I was paying attention. I pretended to eat a handful of popcorn when I could barely choke down one kernel at a time

Back in the apartment, I let Marci take the bathroom first and get ready for bed before I went in there. I stared at the instructions, knowing what they were telling me, but I still stared at them as if I could find out whether I was pregnant or not by reading them. I watched as the purple lines slowlyshowed up. Definitely purple lines, and they grew darker, two of them. There shouldn’t have been two of them. I didn’t want to be pregnant. I didn’t want to accept the truth.

“Are you okay in there?”

I didn’t say anything.

“Clarissa, it’s gonna be okay,” Marci said softly through the door.

“No, it’s not.” I opened the door and continued to stand in front of the sink and stare down at the positive test.

She wrapped her arms around my shoulders. “We’ll figure this out. You’re not alone.”

“What am I supposed to tell him? He has barely spoken to me. When I asked if I was gonna get to see him this weekend, he told me he was really busy.”

I spent the rest of my weekend trying to figure out exactly how I was going to tell Kyle he was going to be a father. I took long walks and I practiced my words. There had to be a better way to get the words that I needed without feeling like an idiot.

Monday came around, and I was so nervous. I couldn’t have eaten even if my stomach was behaving and letting me keep anything down. I planned on immediately going to Kyle and getting this over with. Why drag it out? Why torture myself? But as soon as I got to the office, Alayna had me and Steve leave with her to an offsite facility that would take Kyle’s drawings and build models.

Every time I went to go see Kyle, Alayna had another project for me to work on and managed to send me in a different direction so that I didn’t see him. I knew he had a busy week, that he hadmeetings with his client. But I also wanted to let him know what was going on.

I hated the fact that when I finally did manage to get to his office on Friday, he was already gone for the day.

I didn’t bother to try to find him the following week. It was the last week of the internship. I had to see him. I went to his office. The door was locked and the lights were off.

“Can I help you with something?” Alayna asked.

“I was looking for Kyle,” I said.

“Well, he’s not here.”

“I noticed. Do you know when he’s getting back? I wanted to tell him something.”

“He flew to Hong Kong.”

“Hong Kong?” I could barely fathom what she was saying.

“Didn’t he mention that to you? I guess he was too busy. What did you want to tell him? Maybe I could pass it along for you?”

“I wanted to thank him for the internship,” I said, trying to think of something to say that wasn’t blurting out the way I'd let him knock me up. “I wanted to tell him personally. Do you know when he’ll be back?”

“He’s not planning on coming back for a while. He bought a one-way ticket.”

10

KYLE

Igave myself plenty of time to get to Hong Kong. International travel always kicked my butt. It took too much time, too much effort, and for the amount of actual effort that was involved, I spent most of my time sitting on my ass or asleep in an airplane.

It was still exhausting having an open-ended travel schedule. I still had to hustle through airports and make connections. But it was nice not to have to stress over the hustle to get to the hotel where I would have to scramble to make it to appointments and meetings while feeling like a zombie while pretending I was anything but, only to have to repeat the process to go home, all in less than a week’s time. It was nice to be able to relax through the process.

Airports would always be airports, and that part of traveling always took a certain level of energy. But for once, it was great that as soon as I landed in Hong Kong, I wasn’t in a huge hurry to get everything together for a meeting. I had given myself more than a couple of days to allow myself to get settled, get over the jet lag, and catch up on sleep.

One of the first things I did as soon as I arrived was to plan with Alayna to have the building models shipped directly to the client. As soon as she was able to give me an estimated arrival schedule, I called and made meeting arrangements with the client.

I may not have had to be in the client’s office right away, but it didn’t mean I wasn’t busy. During the few days of downtime, I located an apartment and signed a one-year lease. I also was able to spend time surveying the job site on my own. I wanted to take a look without having to answer any questions or provide any opinions. I had seen copious photos and videos of the location, but that was never quite the same as being there in person. Photos and videos always miss something. I liked to see the whole picture, not just the pit where the foundation was being constructed, or the buildings next to the site. I liked to see the entire neighborhood, and yes, tall office buildings had neighborhoods. Even a working community was a community.

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