Page 72 of Stone Rules

She nods and pulls up a chair. “I see. Well, yes, Charlie, to answer your question, there are a few prenatal paternity tests we do here. The only definitive one relies on amniocentesis which can pose the risk of miscarriage. It’s not a big risk, but big enough that we don’t like to do it unless there might be some genetic reason to perform the test. The other test is a simple blood test. Blood from the mother and blood or saliva from the potential fathers. It’s accurate, but only so far as to be able to rule out a man as the father or to conclude that a man cannot be excluded from the possibility of being the father. There is always a chance both men could have the same result as far as not being able to exclude them as the father.”

“We don’t want the test,” I tell the doctor. “We don’t need it,” I say to Charlie. “It doesn’t matter,” I tell them both. “If we don’t have the test, can I still be considered the baby’s legal father?”

“If you’re married, and nobody is around to question the paternity, then, yes, you’ll be considered the legal father and your name will be on the birth certificate.”

I turn to Charlie. “This is when I ask you to marry me again.”

Charlie smiles.

The doctor excuses herself, telling us to think about it and we can talk more at her appointment next month.

“I’m serious, Charlie. Do you want me to get down on one knee? Shout it from the rooftops? Hire a skywriter? Because make no mistake about it, I want to marry you.”

She gets up from the examination table. “Maybe,” she says to me.

“You heard the doc. This is meant to be.”

“You and your silly rules,” she says. “If it’s meant to be then waiting won’t change anything, right?”

“I guess not.”

“Then how about we keep taking it slow, Ethan? These past weeks have been great. I love spending time with you. You have become another best friend to me. But I feel like I’m just getting my bearings straight here. I’m hormonal. I have a new emotion every five seconds. I’m not sure I can trust myself to make a life-long decision just yet.”

I nod. How can I argue with that? “Then how about you just make an easy decision and let me take you on that date we never got to have?”

She looks at her watch and then she smiles up at me. “I work until seven. Pick me up at eight?”

A victorious grin threatens to split my face wide open. “I’ll be there.”

~ ~ ~

“What’s it like?” Charlie asks me over dinner. “Watching a baby being born? I mean, if it’s not too hard for you to talk about.”

“I’ll talk about anything with you, Charlie. But to answer your question, I don’t know. I wasn’t at Cat’s birth.”

“Oh, right, because you weren’t married to her mom.”

I shake my head, not overlooking the sadness on her face. “No, it wasn’t that. I was going to be there. I had every intention of being at the delivery. I’d even taken those Lamaze classes with Cara. But Cat was born two weeks early and I was in school taking a test. Our professors had warned us early on that if we were caught using our phones during a test, it was an automatic fail. So it became a habit for me to turn it off and put it in my backpack. I had back-to-back classes that day and just forgot to turn it back on. So it was hours until I remembered to look at it. By then I’d received a dozen calls and texts. I headed straight to the hospital, but I was too late. Cat was born about twenty minutes before I got there.”

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“No, it’s okay. I was seventeen. I’m not really sure I wanted to see all that stuff anyway, but I was trying to be supportive. And by the time I got there, Cat was all cleaned up. She was perfect.” I smile remembering the first time I held her. It was awkward. I’d never held a baby before. I was sure I was doing everything wrong; that I’d drop her or make her cry. But at the same time, it was one of life’s incredible moments; one I’d always remember.

“You don’t have to be there, you know,” she says. “I’m not going to make you. I don’t really want to be there myself, but I kind of don’t have a choice in the matter.”

I reach across the table and grab her hand. “I’m going to be there, Charlie. I promise you I won’t miss it. I’m not that squeamish seventeen-year-old boy anymore. This is the most important thing to me. I won’t let you down.”

“Okay, but make sure you stand by my head.” Her body shivers like she’s thought of something disgusting. She motions to her lower half. “I don’t want you anywhere near there. After seeing something like that, you might never want to touch me again.”

I smile. I smile big. She wants me to touch her again.

“What?” she asks, seeing the amused look on my face.

“Do you not realize what you just said, Charlie?” I lean over the table and whisper to her. “You want me. Quit trying to deny it.”

A blush works its way across her fair skin. She’s so damn beautiful. I love her creamy-white skin. Her freckles that go on for days. Her incredible red hair that frames her heart-shaped face in soft waves and falls down past her breasts.

My pants tighten and I shift in my seat thinking about her breasts. They were nice before, but now—Christ, they’ve gotten bigger and are stretching the buttons of her blouse. I long to touch them. See them. They are the center of my schoolboy fantasies.

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