Page 116 of Finding Fate
He grips my hair and jerks my head to the side, running his lips up my neck. “Ow.”
His hand runs up my shirt and he grabs a lace covered boob. “You think I’m stupid? What is he to you?”
“What I told you. We started hanging out and talking a couple of weeks ago. What is it to you?”
He pulls down my lace bra cup and starts massaging. I close my eyes. “And he asked you to make it official when?”
“He changed his Facebook status. That’s as idiot proof as you can get.”
He smiles against my ear. “But you never agreed to it?”
My breathing gets heavier when he pulls at my nipple. “I never told him to take it down either. You can’t just touch me where and when you want.”
“Tell me to stop.” He moves to the other breast. My body starts to shake, making me angry. He grips my hip after releasing my hair and rubs his erection against my ass crack. “You can’t, can you? Because he doesn’t make you shake or make it hard to breathe. He doesn’t turn you on with a simple touch. He’s not me.”
“I’m not admitting anything to you. God knows how many you’ve shoved your dick in since me.”
“You think you know me, huh? How about this. I had it first, so as far as I’m concerned, I can do whatever the fuck I want with it. You slid down my dick, remember? If you don’t want to be a cheating whore, do something about it.”
He pulls his hand out of my shirt and walks back into the main area with everyone else. I drop my head on the table, reaching across the bar for the wine that’s sitting out. What the fuck. I bring the bottle to my lips and chug. Baby time. Then drunk time.
* * *
“It’s recording in three,two, one.” I give a thumbs up as I look through the phone screen at all of them in front of me. Three couples. All standing side by side. Each with a different way to reveal the same thing. It’ll be a domino effect. Sayler and Riggan. Gabby and Maddox. Presley and Konnor last.
“Hey, everyone, Konnor and Presley here. For anyone that didn’t know, we’re expecting, so we decided to announce and reveal the sex at the same time for everyone. We’re thankful to have some special friends help us out and share our special day. We couldn’t be more excited. And finally, the day is here that we’ll find out what Baby Baker is. Balls or Bows, here we go in three, two, one. It’s a . . .”
Sayler looks down as she pulls Riggan’s hands off her very pregnant belly, revealing two masculine pink handprints on the white shirt forming a heart around her belly button. She squeals. Maddox and Gabby each blow a bubble with a piece of gum, Gabby’s pink and Maddox’s blue, and as soon as they’re full, Gabby slaps her hand against Maddox’s mouth to pop the blue bubble, only the pink remaining. Presley is gleaming as she looks at Konnor, and at the same time they twist the mystery cannons, pink confetti shooting into the air and falling in small, rectangular foil pieces. “GIRL!” she shouts, jumping up and down as the confetti shower rains down on her. “Oh my God, it’s really a girl! You were right all along.”
“I knew it was a girl. Just a feeling.” Konnor smiles back at her, making my heart dance to see them so happy. She jumps in his arms and wraps herself around him.
I keep recording, waiting for it, because I know it’s coming. When she pulls back, she’s crying. “I love you so much.”
He grabs her cheek and pulls her closer. I love that she’s got pink confetti in her hair. “I love you too, baby.”
He pulls her in for a kiss. I keep it aimed at them. My turn to do the part I’ve been rehearsing. “There you have it, people. Girl is born. Boy meets girl. They become best friends, then, after a whole lot of shit that doesn’t matter, they fall in love, and they live happily ever after and have a girl of their own. I love you, bro and sis. Congratulations.”
I cut the recording as she jumps down and runs to hug Sayler. “Girls! They’re going to be best friends!” Then she hugs Gabby. “I can’t wait to do this with you too.”
Now time to celebrate. I’ll have lots of booze for the rest of them while they cheers with their virgin cocktails, because I’m in emotion overload and it’s making me feel stabby.
Sixty-Four
Adonis
Istare at the credit card transactions from Gabrielle’s credit card on my office computer, and then over at the bridal magazines I made my assistant get to try and figure out how in the hell to plan a wedding. This is why men have women. The transactions are few and far between, and mostly clothing type stores. No gas. No food. Nothing to signify all of her needs are being met. She doesn’t use it as much as I’d like, but she’s slowly getting back to the daughter I raised. All I’ve ever wanted was to take care of my family. Make sure they had everything they ever wanted and needed. I lost her for a while.
The day she graduated high school she left and didn’t come home. I kept tabs on her, but I sacrificed my need to drag her ass back home and hold her hostage in a nice house instead of the dumps she was always living in, because I knew she needed to work out her anger at me somehow in a way that wouldn’t tear her apart. She knew I wanted her in college. She knew I wanted to financially take care of her, but I always made sure she had food in her refrigerator by slipping cash to her roommate here and there or just bringing groceries over when I knew she wasn’t there. Autumn—the one she lived with the longest—gave me a key. I paid their rent to keep her mouth shut. She put Gabrielle’s part up and when she moved out Autumn brought me an envelope of cash with all the money she’d paid toward rent. I put it in her bedroom safe. Gabrielle is as stubborn as me. She couldn’t know about it.
I’ll never tell her how hard it was for me to take Madden from her. Nothing will ever replace the memory in my head of showing up at home to her screaming in pain and laboring in the bathtub. She was doing it on her own to avoid asking me for help, and that gutted me. She wore me down the entire pregnancy begging to keep him, throwing in my face that giving him away would be disrespectful to our heritage. Even bargained that I could pretend he was my son, her brother, if I would just let him stay.
She was right. I’ve raised her in a way that she knows nothing is more important than family, but her mother isn’t here. People would question where he came from, and it wouldn’t take long for them to figure it out. Any way I looked at it, he wouldn’t know a whole family, so I called my parents. They didn’t even question me. Said to call the second she goes into labor and they’d be on the next flight, but I had to keep up the pretense he was with another family or it’d have been all for nothing. She would have just moved to Greece. My parents would have never told her no had she found out and showed up at their door.
The more I got to know him the more weighted I felt. He’s my grandson, and I see so much of her in him. But I believe in a stable home life with parents that enforce a good education and upbringing, which is something that isn’t within the mental capacity of a fifteen-year-old whether the biological father is in the picture or not. Too many teen mothers are leaving their kids with shitty people to party. Not making sure they have regular, healthy meals, let alone clothes that fit. Constantly bringing different men in and out of the picture.
She needed to be a kid. Make mistakes so that she could learn from them, because God knows she won’t listen to me. She needed to grow up. That way, when she has him, she’ll do right by him. And even though she may not understand my motives, everything I did was to keep from losing her. I’ve only ever loved three women: my mother, her mother, and her. Since the day Mary Elizabeth left, I’ve done everything in my power to be both roles. The second she realized that boy was gone she would have dropped out of school to go with him. I know my daughter. I wasn’t far off.
The phone intercom comes on. “Mr. Thanos, your father is on line one.”