Page 2 of A Merry Penthouse Christmas
Not tears though.Crap. I wipe my eyes before it gets too obvious that I am close to crying. I still catch a suspicious glance from the teenager otherwise glued to her phone across from me. With my phone still in hand, I scroll back through my texts to the last ones from…her.
The most recent were about me moving out. Whether I’d found an apartment. If I’d be okay. If I was sure. I eventually get to the text that started this months ago.
Emily: I need to tell you something.
The “we need to talk” of it all had caused me to call her immediately. Imagine my shock and devastation when she admitted I was not the father of our baby, after four months of being excited together. At least the real father isn’t anyone I know but a coworker of hers. I’ve been carrying our divorce papers around for a week.
My brother has been trying to get me back out there, but how do I return to dating after marrying my college sweetheart? How do people even ask women out these days?
“You could try dudes again,” Bellamy suggested.
Right. Not that I didn’t enjoy my few college boyfriends, but I haven’t been with a guy since then, before senior year when Emily and I got together. That’s five—no, six years ago now. If I don’t know how to ask out a woman anymore, I definitely don’t know how to ask out a guy.
How could I even consider hooking up with anyone when the birth of my not-child was looming? Now it’s here.She’shere.
And I’m still not the father.
I must be a glutton for punishment because instead of getting off the subway at my stop, I get off at the one nearest to First Methodist Hospital.
Because the one thing that’s different about my routine these days is how, until recently, I would have been going home to a doting and faithful wife. And now, I’m alone.
ARIK
Atypicaldayforme is usually fairly routine.
Wasfairly routine. I suppose most of it still is.
Except for one thing.
“Thank you, everyone. That’s all for today,” I dismiss the board meeting, and my peers and I in our equally expensive and expertly tailored suits and pencil skirts disperse. I am in a suit, but a pencil skirt wouldn’t be unheard of from me. I have the legs for it.
My company’s high-rise offices have already been decked out in tinsel for the coming season. I would complain but a little early glitz and glamour helps morale. Or so I’m told. Being the boss, I work even when I’m spiraling.
Without having to summon my assistant, he meets me at the elevator, tablet in hand and ready to recite the next items on my schedule with barely a nod in greeting. I love that about Skylar. He is efficient, blunt, and appropriately vicious, just as a good assistant should be.
He would wear a pencil skirt to work if he found one adequate to his tastes, but today he is in a deep burgundy suit and pink floral button-down. Although he looks like a pale, blond twink—and he is—he could break a floundering intern in two with his words alone whether in person or over inter-office email.
“Your driver is waiting downstairs. You have a ten-thirty meeting across town regarding the Johnson merger. That tie ishideous. And you have four missed calls. Two aren’t worth your time. One can wait until after the Johnson meeting. Fourth was Clara.”
That catches my attention as Skylar hands me my phone. I don’t keep it on me during important meetings. I prefer to be present and focused. Skylar only takes my calls for me if it is business related, and Clara isn’t business.
I check my texts first, scrolling down to her name to see that she also messaged me.
Clara: Hey Daddy. Guess what? It’s a boy.
A boy. It’s a boy. I would have been happy with anything, but to see it in writing feels so real. I knew it would happen any day now. I’d wanted to be there when the baby was born, but that damn meeting went longer than expected.
“Move my ten-thirty to this afternoon,” I inform Skylar.
“But Arik—”
“Codepastel,” I cut him off, and he immediately straightens. He nods, following as I exit the elevator and make my way even more swiftly than before to my waiting car.
I falter a little along the way, however, since the lobby is playing… urg.
"Dashing through the snow
In a one-horse open sleigh,
