Page 181 of The Single Dads Club
Trent’s jaw slackened. “You’re shitting me?”
“Oh, how I wish that were the case, because it was awkward as fuck, but nope. It definitely happened.”
“And you’re just telling me this now?” Trent demanded, spearing me with that betrayed and pissed off look like I’d just violated the man-code.
“There’s nothing to tell for sure, yet. I didn’t want to be an alarmist,” I reasoned, kicking back and stretching my legs out in front of me.
“When you couldn’t find her after your night together, you deemed it a dire emergency, holing up in your apartment like a pussy-whipped fool. Now she might be pregnant and you decided it wasn’t worth mentioning?” His voice had hopped up an octave as he stared at me, incredulous.
“When you say it out loud it sounds stupid,” I admitted with a half-smile.
“So, you’re waiting to see…” Trent started.
I nodded, finishing his sentence for him. “…to see, when her blood results come back to find out if she’s pregnant.”
“So, what are you going to do?” Trent leaned back in the chair and folded his hands in his lap. “You seem pretty chill about the whole thing, weirdly enough.”
“Only one thing to do. If she’s pregnant, I take care of the baby and figure out how to be a good dad.”
“Obviously. But what about her?” Trent pressed.
I leaned my head back, staring at the tiled ceiling for a long moment before answering. “That’s the thing, isn’t it? I like her—”
“I remember that much.”
“But I mean, I really like her. We went on a sort of impromptu date last night, and I like who she is as a person. I want to get to know her more, but with this baby thing between us and not being sure how she actually feels about me, it makes things way more complicated.”
“Well, seems like it would make her want to make it work, right?” Trent shrugged.
“Exactly why I want to get to know her better before we find out about the pregnancy. There’s no way to know our real feelings. Once those test results come in, we’ll never know if a natural relationship could have developed between us. We’d always wonder if we were just trying to make things work for the baby.”
“I don’t get what’s so wrong with that,” Trent said. “We’ve seen plenty of couples who are trying to make it work because they got pregnant.”
“I know that. It’s just that don’t want either one of us to settle, you know? If we didn’t know the results—if there was some way of keeping the possibility of a baby out of the equation—we could date like normal people and see if there was a chance. If not, no hard feelings. And if so…”
“Then you know it’s the real thing with or without a baby.” Trent nodded. “Sounds good to me. So just don’t look at the results, then. Seems simple enough.”
“Are you kidding?” I said with a harsh laugh.
“No. What do you have to lose? She wants to keep the baby regardless, right? So what’s the harm in waiting a little longer?”
I thought back to the stack of custody papers she’d handed me on Friday night. “Yeah, she does.”
“What difference does it make, then? She gives up drinking for a month. You put the results in an envelope and date until it’s time to open the thing.”
“But if the pregnancy is ectopic or something—”
“Then I’ll know the results and run things smoothly as they normally would go,” Trent said. “Now, I came in here to tell you the hematologist just dropped off this week’s tests. What do you want me to do?”
My stomach clenched into a tight knot. Could I live with not knowing about the baby for an entire month? If it meant I got a shot at developing a real relationship, naturally, with Bren, then the choice was easy. For me, at least. I just hoped she’d let me lead in this situation.
“I guess pitching her the idea couldn’t hurt.”
“It can’t. I’ll go take care of everything.” He pushed himself from his seat and strolled from the office, and I stared down at my half-eaten sandwich, suddenly no longer hungry.
Could I really do this? As badly as I wanted to rip into that envelope, I knew that Bren deserved to be the first person to know.
More for something to do than anything else, I picked up the sandwich on my desk and took a bite, barely tasting the food before swallowing it. In a matter of minutes, Trent returned, a sealed, unmarked envelope in his hand.
