Page 9 of Knocked Up in Alaska

“I’ve got this.” He ushered her inside but held firm on getting sustenance into her. “You’re eating for two. Even if one of you isn’t feeling it, the other could probably use some grow fuel. Something simple,” he insisted at her dubious look and, after refilling his beer at the bar, guided her through the den to the kitchen and into one of the two raw pine stools at the small, butcher-block island.

It would have to be simple, he realized while scanning the contents of his broom closet of a pantry. Aside from breakfast, he usually ate his meals at The Goose and his winter stockpile of pantry basics was pretty depleted by now. Hoping for inspiration, he opened the fridge, found a reasonably fresh loaf of bread, butter, and a block of cheddar. “Uh…grilled cheese?”

“Anything. Really. We’re not picky.”

He smiled at the novelty of her plural pronoun. Of course, she’d had months to get used to being a “we.” He began pulling items out of the fridge and putting them on the island. From the corner of his eye, he saw her get up and hunt around his compact kitchen. She’d grown up part of a business that centered around making others feel taken care of. The compulsion to be helpful was just too deeply ingrained to allow her to sit and let someone do something for her. Within moments, she’d placed a frying pan on the stove with a spatula propped along the edge. She stacked a couple plates, a kitchen knife and a butter knife on the island next to the food. “So, you’re paying something forward?”

“Thanks.” Tipping his head in the direction of the stool she’d vacated, he gestured for her to sit. “And yeah. I am.”

Disclosing this had been his idea, but now that the moment was upon him, he didn’t know quite where to start. There was a lot here he wasn’t proud of. A lot he regretted.

She reclaimed her seat and gave him her attention, but her busy hands took up the knife and unwrapped the block of cheese. She began slicing even, orange rectangles of cheddar onto a plate while she waited for him to go on.

“When I was a junior in high school, I had a kid.”

Her hands stilled. Stunned eyes clicked to his. “What?”

Okay, maybe that hadn’t been the right place to start. He turned to the cooktop, fired up a burner, and dropped a pat of butter in the pan. “Well, my girlfriend and I.”

He focused on the mundane task of buttering the bread while he dug deep for words to describe the slippery mix of panic and helplessness he’d felt back then. “Jennifer was a senior. We’d dated since my freshman year and had, you know, gained parental trust by then. One of those nights we were supposed to be at her house studying while her mom and stepfather attended some work event, we took things a little too far.”

The kitchen filled with the sound of butter sautéing in a hot pan. He turned away to place bread in the pan, stacked on the cheese slices, and topped them with more bread.

“What did you do?”

“I freaked the fuck out. So did she. Jen begged me not to tell anyone. I promised I wouldn’t and swore I’d go along with whatever she decided. We made some half-baked plan to get married as soon as she turned eighteen, but under Ohio law at that time, I also had to be eighteen to tie the knot without parental consent.”

“And did they? Consent?”

“It never actually came to that.” With a resignation he still didn’t quite feel after all these years, he lifted a shoulder and let it drop before flipping the sandwiches. The air filled with the homey scent of grilling bread and the tang of melting cheddar. He reduced the heat, then went to the fridge, and after holding up a bottle of water and receiving a nod from her, he cracked the top and handed it to her. “I went over to her house after school one day when we were in the thick of our highly strategic don’t-tell-anyone plan—or so I thought—to find her and her mother embroiled in a scene that would make what happened between you and Rose this evening look like a congenial debate.”

“Oh, no.” She got up and carried plates over to him so he could slide the sandwiches onto them. “I’m so sorry. What happened?”

He shrugged again and turned off the burner. “Her mother—Barb—had plans for her only child that sure as hell didn’t include being a teen bride and mother. By that time, Jennifer’s acceptance letter from the University of Michigan hung in a place of honor on the fridge, and by God, she was going.”

Lilah carried their plates to the island, put one in front of each stool, and sat. He did the same. “It was too late to do what would have been Barb’s first choice, but she decided Jen could forego the early-admission summer session at the university in order to have the baby, put it in the arms of agency-vetted adoptive parents, and still have time to pack her bags for college in the fall.”

Big, green eyes filled with sympathy. “You gave up the baby. That must have been very difficult, even if you agreed it was for the best.”

“I had some time to experience all the emotions. Sadness, regret…relief. What I clearly didn’t have was a say, despite the fact that I had to sign forms, too.” He let out a hollow laugh, remembering what a clueless, completely in-over-his-head, shit-for-brains he’d been. “But I honestly wouldn’t have known what to say even if anyone had asked me what I wanted. I was a passenger on the whole journey. Along for the ride. Just barely. Funny thing is, when you’re not steering, you never know where the ride’s going to end. You may think you know, but you don’t.”

To encourage her to eat, he picked up his sandwich and took a bite, washed it down with a swallow of beer almost as bitter as the memories. When she took a delicate nibble of her sandwich, he went on. “Remember how I told you when the kid arrives, Rose’s eyes will go heart-shaped and she’ll morph into Grandma Gimme-That-Baby?”

That earned him a small smile. “I do.”

“That’s the voice of experience speaking. Barb reversed course right there in the delivery room the second a nurse put her granddaughter in her arms. No adoption. That was off. Jen could keep the baby, live at home, go to the local junior college for a year or two, and then transfer to a state college within commuting distance. Grandma would help take care of little Mia.”

“Mia. That’s a pretty name.”

“Nobody asked me about that, either, but I couldn’t have done better.”

Lilah’s calm expression turned indignant. “They didn’t even give you a say in her name?”

“Well, she got Langley from me, but it only stuck for a little while.”

Her brows drew together. “Why would that change?”

“Because I still wasn’t steering. I was a teenaged kid with a child to support. Jen’s mom was a real estate broker and her stepdad a dentist. The financial impact of another child in the household didn’t really pose much of a burden for them. My single-mom family squatted at the other end of the economic spectrum, and the message I received loud and clear from her was any child support obligations were mine and mine alone. She kicked me out so fast my head spun.”

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