Page 30 of A Fighting Chance
They did, but they also sounded like illness and anxiety. However, Sydney didn’t eat much at their beach barbecue, and Tayler and Mike did most of the cooking. Only illness, or in this case, a possible pregnancy, would stop anyone from consuming anything Mike and Tayler made, especially together.
“You’ve been pregnant before?” she asked.
Sydney stroked the column of her throat, as if trying to keep food down. “Eons ago.”
“Honestly, Sydney,” she shrugged, “you’re really going to have to take a test. That’s the only way to know for sure.”
“I can’t.”
“What if I help you—”
“The baby might not be Joel’s.”
“Oh.” Ayesha leaned back.“Oh.”
Laughter floated through the open balcony doors. Sydney looked toward the sound, working her bottom lip with her teeth.Tears collected at the bottom rim of her eyelids.
“This isJoel,Ayesha. How do I tell him that? How do I tell the former love of my life, who everyone knows I’m still sleeping with regardless of what me and him believe, that he’s a possibility?”
“Who’s the other potential father?”
“You remember when Tayler’s cousins came to visit?”
“The Ghanaian cousins or the Cuban cousins?” Ayesha flicked her fingers. “Like it matters. They were all fine.”
“That’s what I’m saying. It’s unnatural.” Sydney leaned closer and lowered her voice. “But you remember Kofi, right?”
A few months ago, while the guys were on assignment, Tayler introduced them to her racing cyclist cousin, who’d stopped by for a visit with his brother when they were all in Malibu. It had been the only safe time to visit with the guys, namely Giorgio, out of the country.
All she recalled of Kofi was a lovely smile and cycling shorts that had held a package that looked like it could only be delivered by freight.
“Yeah, I remember Kofi. So you slept with Kofi, and now he might be the father? Well, the other father?”
“I didn’t sleep with Kofi one time,” Sydney said. “I slept with him many times. Many, many times. We’ve been…we’re together. We’re dating.”
“And does Kofi know you might be pregnant?”
“I told him.”
“Does he know it could be Joel’s?”
“No.”
“So, you told him but didn’t tell Joel.” Ayesha leaned even closer, dropped her voice even further. “Sydney, statistically, who is more likely to be the father of this potential baby?”
The collected tears burst through their dam. Sydney’s nostrils flared, and she faced away from the doors.
Ayesha left her seat and sat beside her, using her body to block the line of sight from the house to the balcony. If Joel caught her crying, with the state Sydney was in, she would likely blurt everything out, and that wouldn’t bode well for either of them.
“Do you love Kofi?”
Sydney shook her head. “No. I like him, though. I like what I find out about myself when I’m with him. Joel is fit and active and sexy—god, he’s so sexy—but I like that me and Kofi have sports backgrounds. We connect on that a lot. Right now, he’s still conditioning for the Tour de France, but when I told him, he wanted to come down to be with me when I took the test.”
“I don’t mean to sound like a mother,” Ayesha began, “but do you and Joel use condoms?”
Sydney shook her head.
“And Kofi?”