6. Grape #3
Silence hung heavily as the lights of houses and cars thinned to nothing, only her headlights and the moon illuminating the double yellow line on the road.
“Look, Zoe, I have no expectations for, well, anything. I’m glad you invited me over, that you thought to introduce me to Jagger.
But you’re absolutely right. I travel twice as much as I did before, for work, and as much as I’d like to see you regularly, Foothills isn’t exactly on my way anywhere, and—”
“Just, hang on.” Her tone clipped with a quiet impatience.
Air filled his lungs and slowly, carefully, he released. “That sounded bad. I’m so glad to see you and I think about you pretty much every time I close my eyes, but I’m trying to be upfront. On everything.”
Without responding, she turned down a winding road, more dirt than gravel and was probably a mudhole of a path when the fall rains hit.
In the middle of the clearing, they came to a stop, and she shifted out of gear and shut off the engine.
Without looking at him, a scrunch in the top of her nose as she seemed to be working something out, she stalled.
What was going on? Ryder bit his tongue, not wanting to say something stupid again, but… why was she so hot and cold tonight? She’s the one who invited him, out of the blue, after almost two months—
A vice clenched hard and fast around his chest.
No. No way. They’d used a condom.
Still not sure whether he was breathing or not, probably shaking like a last leaf clinging onto a branch in December, he glanced over at her.
She quickly looked away and climbed out of the truck.
Fuck.
The blanket was still balled up in his lap, and he tried to dry off the sweat of panic from his palms. As soon as he felt steady enough, he followed her to the back of the truck.
She’d folded down the tailgate and hopped up. She slipped into her jacket one arm at a time, and looked ahead at the moonlit forest in the distance. In the daytime, the spring wildflowers in the field would be a stunning array, but the blooms had closed up for the night.
Ryder slid onto the tailgate next to her.
She didn’t move.
“You didn’t invite me over for a business dinner, or a hookup, did you?” he asked gently.
She gritted her jaw tight and stared ahead. “Fuck it. Ryder, I’m pregnant.”
The vice rose from his chest to his throat and cut off his ability to speak. Nail. Coffin. “Okay,” he garbled.
“That’s it? That’s all you have to say?” she said with a snorty disbelief of a laugh.
“Well. Um…” He forced a laugh and finally looked at her. “Did you drag me out to the middle of nowhere to murder me?”
She snorted a deranged laugh and knocked her shoulder into him.
“You can’t tell me you were eloquent when you found out,” he fired back, finding a laugh he desperately needed. So at least murder wasn’t on the agenda.
She patted his knee playfully and quickly pulled away. “I literally puked when I realized.”
Warmth radiated over his limbs as she loosened up with him. He shifted closer and wrapped the blanket around her opposite shoulder, and pulled the other side around himself. “Well. So. Shit. I have no idea what to say.”
She nodded and settled in at his side. As if she’d been rehearsing exactly what to say, she started reciting her lines like an amateur sports announcer.
“I’m due January sixth, about 9 weeks along.
I’m keeping it, and whatever you want to do is fine, involved or not, you know?
Of course, the miscarriage risk is still high through the first trimester, bad luck to tell people yet I guess, so I’ve only told my brothers, which means Haley knows too of course, and I wanted to tell you right away, and…
yeah. Um, I think that’s it. Oh, did you know condoms are…
well, I’m not going to say useless, but as far as contraception goes, well, I should have stayed on the pill after I broke up with Raphe.
You know, that phase where you don’t think you’re ever going to have sex again, so why bother. ”
He nodded vaguely, and halted. “Raphe Manson?”
“Yep. Oh, and…” Her cheeks puffed out and her eyes widened. The wind brought an alpine chill with its latest gust, promising a clear night.
“Raphe Manson, fuck, this is a small town. Does he still…?” Ryder quickly shut himself up. “Never mind. Sorry. He and I were friends since like, preschool. It’s just weird, realizing that we both… with… never mind.”
“I’m still, I mean, I’m sort of seeing him again,” she squeaked.
“Oh.” Ryder stilled as he calculated what she meant. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out, so he closed it again. Before he could stop himself, he blurted out, “You’re sure the… um… it… it’s mine?”
Zoe Halseth shined in her honest and bouncy self, bursting out with a laugh and leaning comfortably into him. “You really just asked that.”
“I really did,” he said as he bit the corner of his tongue to avoid laughing desperately. “I’m sorry. That was rude of me. This can’t have been easy on you, trying to figure out how to even tell me, inviting me up here under the guise of a business dinner, and then I asked that question.”
“I’d been thinking of you when Evan met up again with Jagger a few weeks ago, but it happened to be a convenient excuse.
Anyway, it’s a natural question, so I’ll let it slide.
We’d been broken up for a few months when you and I…
before the wedding. Now, we’re more playing with the idea of getting back together than actually back together, and we haven’t been together since.
” Her light chuckle rattled her entire throat as she tipped her head back.
“Oh god, I am so glad I don’t have to try to calculate down to the day or do paternity testing or anything.
Wow, that would add another level of complication. No, it is absolutely yours.”
Despite the absurdity of it all, he laughed with her. “I can’t even imagine that. Going through all the stress of testing and waiting, only to find out I don’t get to be a dad after all.”
Zoe quietly turned to face him, her chin tilted up an inch, her dark eyes soft in the dim light. “Do you want to… be involved?”
“Hell yes,” he said easily, shocking himself at how quickly the words came out.
Hands suddenly not his own, swollen and fidgeting, he gripped them together and cleared his throat.
“Only a few minutes ago, I was telling you I’m too busy to even date you.
Now I’m saying I want to share a baby with you.
” If only he was a rocket scientist, complex calculations coming to life on the chalkboard and magically becoming solved with the sort of genius they make movies about.
Instead, Jerry MaGuire style images flashed in his mind of himself sprinting off the plane and piling up speeding tickets as he commuted to make his regular monthly visitation on time, showing up in a wrinkled suit and haggard smile for a drooling toddler who didn’t even look up from his stuffed dinosaur when Daddy walked in the door. “Fuck,” he mumbled.
“You don’t have to figure this all out tonight. We’ve got time.” She leaned into him and shrugged. “Maybe in the meantime, you’ll convince your company to expand and get an office up here.”
He nodded vaguely, then snorted. “My boss has this notion that we all need to be under one roof, a united sort of image. He’s even gone so far as to move an all-staff meeting to fucking midnight to ensure everyone could make it.”
“Oh, ouch. So no working from home for you, huh?”
“Not likely,” he said as he searched for the words, and the air to even be able to say it. “Thanks, Zoe. For telling me in person, instead of over the phone and leaving me terrified and alone while it sank in.”
“I wanted to fly down right away, but then what if you weren’t home. The meeting with Jagger, by the way, it wasn’t a ruse. I mean, it was, but he really did want to meet you, so it was more of a double dipper than a ruse.”
“Thanks for that, too.”
“I knew it meant a lot to you, and it meant a lot to me, what you said about inclusivity. You really think Bellamy is going to go for it?”
“Absolutely. After you and I talked at the wedding, it inspired my whole pitch, to let the world know they were a good company. I’ve got this campaign visualized for the long haul, starting with this badass edgy vibe, but contrasting it with humor and fun.
I’m so excited to let them know about Jagger; he’s perfect for the gig.
Having the best quarterback in the NFL would bring a massive level-up for them. ”
“I’d love to watch you pitch it to them. You sound so passionate about it, it’s… okay it’s your job to make it sound exciting, but still, I’m convinced.”
Breath warmed in his lungs, and he savored the peace of the moment. Without a doubt, this was probably the most terrifying moment of his life, but somehow, he wasn’t ready to say goodnight. “You really vomited, when you found out?”
“And many times since, but that’s the nature of the beast. Oh,” she quickly stopped and reached into her jacket pocket. Black and white glossy photos reflected the low light from the moon.
Something foreign tightened in his chest, his heart becoming physically palpable. He slowly took the shiny paper from her and stared at the image. Too dark to make out any details, but it was enough.
“There’s not much to see anyway,” Zoe joked with a snort of a laugh. “Just a little peanut.”
A smile popped out of nowhere and drew the sensation of his heartbeat back to flow with the rest of him. “When do you see the doctor next?”
“Wendy, my Certified Nurse Midwife, is amazing. You’re going to love her. She set me up to meet with her nurse to go through everything next week, do tons of initial tests, then I start seeing Wendy monthly until we reach… I can’t remember when, actually, but I’ve got it all on my calendar.”
Ryder laughed and drew out his phone. “Now you’re talking my language.” With the ultrasound photo in one hand, he paused.
“That one’s your copy,” she said lightly.
He neatly slid it into the chest pocket of his jacket and held out his phone with both hands. “I’m making a shared calendar for us.”
Zoe slowly pulled out her phone and stared at him quietly.
He lowered his phone back to his lap and turned to look her in the eye. “Or… sorry, I had visions of going to appointments with you, but you might want Raphe, or to not have me tag along—”
“No, no. That’s… I think that would be good.
” She snorted a laugh and looked down at their feet dangling off the tailgate.
“Honestly, I’m not sure how Raphe is going to take this.
After, well, everything before, I insisted on taking things very, very slowly this time around.
I’m not sure I have the energy to manage an already fragile relationship on top of everything right now.
I don’t know. I still haven’t told him, so I guess I’ll wing it. ”
Ryder’s stomach sank, her tone, her brow low, the distance in her voice.
Time was everything right now, and they had plenty of it, before…
before things became unavoidable. Time to figure out how he was going to not be the dad he would have had, if his own father hadn’t drunkenly driven into another car and gotten himself killed.
He released a long breath and put his arm around Zoe.
She leaned in and rested her head on his shoulder.
“I don’t remember my dad at all. Patricia hardly even mentioned him.
A self-absorbed mess with a temper is about all I know about him—my mother’s words, not mine—and, well, you know Patricia.
I have no doubt that her expectations on him were insurmountable, so it’s hard to even guess what he was really like. ”
“Haley’s dad was there for you for a while, right?”
“Sort of. Haley walked on water to him, and he was good to Grady and me. Patricia was severe, to put it gently. Hattie was the one who hugged us and told us everything was going to be okay, and I love her to bits, but she has her own family; kids and grandkids. What I’m trying to say, is that I had a team of people around, but, I never had anything like your family.
Mine was a rigidly calculated relay, but your parents were always together, a genuine team, you know?
You all seemed like the sort of family they’d make a sitcom out of, a happy ending with a sappy message every week.
So, I guess, what I’m trying to say is, there is nothing on my resume, personal or professional, that even remotely supports that I stand a chance at being any good at this—”
“You’re a Mallory. By definition, you’re good at everything.”
“Except for being human.”
“Hey. I know for a fact that your sister and your brother are amazing humans. There’s hope for you.” Zoe tilted a look up at him, and pinched his chin between her thumb and forefinger until he looked her in the eye, until his confused laugh faded into a quiet calm.
Fuck, bad idea. All night, before this conversation anyway, he’d been trying to catch her eye long enough to share that zing again.
In the dim moonlight, he could see the glassiness coating her eyes, but it made the spark even brighter than usual. He bit down on the corner of his bottom lip to remind himself that he didn’t get to kiss her.
“Ryder Mallory, I had a hell of a lot of fun with you a handful of weeks ago. A lot has happened since then, in both of our lives. I am freaking out. But I’m going to take this one step at a time.
How about this? We’ll start with that calendar, and if you can make it to any appointments, great.
It’s a starting point. As we get closer, we’ll figure out the rest. Okay? ”
“Okay. Perfect. We got this.”
“And, Ryder?”
“Yeah?”
“Want to come with me to tell my dad? I can be with you, when you tell Patricia.”