Shatter (True Believers #4)(19)
Author: Erin McCarthy

Fortunately, she dropped it. Unfortunately, she brought up my dad.

“Does your father know?”

“No. I just found out an hour ago. And I don’t think I’ll tell him until the semester is over.” I wanted to add that I didn’t think he would be particularly interested, but that seemed a cruel truth my mother already had personal experience with. “Kylie is actually in his class. I don’t want to cause problems for her. And I graduate in May and I don’t feel like hearing his opinion on what’s next.” On how I was disappointing him by not going on to get my PhD, which was basically out of the question now. I had been debating whether I wanted to pursue it or not, but with needing to support a baby, I needed a job more than another degree.

Maybe that was revealing too much about my father to my mother, though. My relationships with them were separate entities.

It was amazing to me that suddenly, within the span of an hour, my whole future had changed. I picked at the congealed cheese on my sandwich and tried to stay rational, not succumb to emotion. I felt like I might actually have a heart attack. “Mom . . . do you think I can do this?”

I heard the doubt in my voice and she obviously did, too.

“Oh, Jonathon, of course you can, honey.”

“Dad couldn’t.”

“At the risk of bad-mouthing your father, sweetheart, you were more of a man at fourteen years old than he is at fifty. You can do this. I know you can.”

I took a deep breath, feeling more calm. “I don’t know anything about babies or pregnancy.”

“You’re a scientist. Do your research.”

She was right. So three hours and three cups of coffee later, I had made my way through a refresher course on conception, just out of curiosity, plus the first two trimesters of pregnancy, and the legal rights of non-custodial parents in the state of Ohio.

I had also spent a ridiculously large amount of time browsing through baby name sites. Never once in my entire life had I given a single thought to the name I would like to gift my future conceptualized infant, and it was a daunting task. I gave up by the time I got to C names. It was insanity. Just the As and Bs alone presented the basic options, the bewildering, the just plain bad, and the beautiful. I couldn’t deal. Besides, I wasn’t sure that I was actually entitled to an opinion. That may be something Kylie felt was well within her rights to decide solo.

Having kids was never something I’d given much thought to. It was a nebulous concept, something way off in the future in my mid-thirties or even later, after I had achieved certain career goals. After I had proved myself. I didn’t think I had ever even actually held a baby. My mother only had one sibling and Uncle Mike had kids who were in their late teens. My father had two sisters that I had never even met. I had grown up in an apartment with my mother and she hadn’t been particularly friendly with the neighbors, and basically there just hadn’t ever been an occasion to hang with a tiny human.

It was a damn good thing gestation was a lengthy process because I needed every second of that nearly eight months to figure out what the hell I was doing.

My phone dinged with an e-mail alert. It was Kylie, giving me her phone number. Plus it said, “If you could not tell your father just yet I would appreciate it. And thanks for not running screaming. ”

I tapped a message back to her, giving her my number as well. “I won’t tell my father. Trust me, I don’t want to. I did tell my mother, though. I hope that is okay. Don’t worry, my parents never talk to each other.”

Seeing that about my parents written in front of me on the screen just before I hit SEND, like it was a positive thing to tell her, hit me hard. I didn’t want that for myself. For her and I. Ever. I would do whatever it took to maintain a friendly and reasonable relationship with Kylie so that my child didn’t have to grow up the way I did, wondering where the hell my father was and why my mother was so angry.

History wasn’t going to repeat itself. Any more than it already had, that is.

So I sent a second e-mail. “Hey, Kylie, why was the mole of oxygen molecules excited when he walked out of the singles bar? Because he got Avogadro’s number.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

I laughed when I read Jonathon’s e-mail. I couldn’t help it. I even actually knew what Avogrado’s number was, sort of, so I could appreciate the silliness. But more importantly, I appreciated what he was trying to do. He was trying to make me feel comfortable, to lighten the tension between us. To remind me of the night we had met, our one and only private joke.

It was sweet.

As I lay on my bed in my stupid apartment, eyelids heavy, tummy churning again, music softly playing from my phone, I stared at my laptop next to me and wondered how to answer Jonathon. I felt a little bad over the way I had left him in the coffee shop. Yes, he’d been patronizing, but Jessica was right. I had totally caught him off guard.

I didn’t want to do this alone. I would, if I had to, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t like to do anything alone. And while I’d been telling him the truth in my pissy rant before I stomped off, I was realistic and didn’t expect him to fall in love with me and want to be with me forever and ever behind a white picket fence. I was still an optimist. A romantic. In a secret corner of my heart, I wanted to see if there could ever be anything between us, because I wanted to have a child with not just a partner, but a lover, a best friend.

It was stupid. I knew it was stupid.

But while I might not need someone to go to the doctor with me, or help me change diapers, I wanted a shoulder to lean on, a masculine body next to mine on the couch, in bed. I had missed the intimacy since RAN and now I missed it all over again. The only time I had felt it had been that night with Jonathon, and I wanted it again, but I knew I couldn’t have it. Though it wasn’t like I could get pregnant a second time. Why couldn’t we at least have sex? It was amazing sex and we could do it all we wanted guilt-free, right?

Wrong. Because, duh, it was stupid. It would complicate things. Like seriously complicate things. Then I would want a relationship with him and he was with mystery woman. Shit. I’d forgotten about the mystery woman. Whoever she was, I hated her. Why did she get his heart when all I got was his sperm? With Nathan he’d given me his heart, but his penis to someone else. Was it so hard for one guy to give me both his heart and his hard-on?

Apparently it was.

My phone rang. Jessica. Shit, I’d forgotten to call her back.

“Um, you said you would call me back in twenty minutes and that was like three hours ago.”