Chapter 8
eight
. . .
Jake
A forty-page licensing agreement is open on my screen and I’ve read the same sentence four times. I still couldn’t tell you what it says because my brain is not here.
My brain is in a tiny exam room watching Natalie’s face go white when the doctor said the word pregnant. My brain is replaying the feel of her hand under mine in the parking lot when she pressed her palm to her stomach. My brain is stuck on a loop thinking about one thing.
I’m possibly going to be a dad.
My phone buzzes on the desk. I grab it so fast I almost knock over my coffee.
Natalie
Thanks for the groceries. Can we talk? Tonight?
The relief that hits is stupidly intense for such a short text. I feel like I’ve been holding my breath since I left her at her door yesterday.
Jake
Of course. I can come to you. What time?
The dots appear, vanish, reappear. I have never in my life been so desperate for someone to finish composing a text.
Natalie
Maybe around 7?
Jake
Perfect. I’ll bring dinner.
Natalie
You don’t have to do that.
Jake
I know. See you at 7.
I set my phone down and blow out a long breath. I’m so relieved she wants to talk. She could have ignored me. Could have told me she needed space, or that she’d decided to handle everything alone.
“Jake.”
I look up. Ryan is standing in my doorway, one hand on the frame, the other wrapped around a coffee mug. My stomach drops straight through the floor and keeps going.
Does he know? Did she tell him already? Is this the part where he fires me, sues me, or buries my body behind the building.
“Hey,” I say, aiming for casual and landing somewhere in the neighborhood of mildly constipated. “What’s up?”
He steps into the office and settles into the guest chair like he owns the place—which, to be fair, he kind of does.
“I just wanted to thank you again for yesterday,” he says. “For taking care of Natalie.”
Guilt punches me right in the solar plexus.
“I tried calling her last night,” he goes on, “but I think she crashed as soon as she got home.”
“Yeah,” I say. “She was pretty wiped out.”
Not technically a lie. Just not the whole screaming circus of the truth.
“What exactly did the doctor say?” He takes a sip of coffee, watching me over the rim of the mug.
I choose every word like it might be used as evidence later. “They said her blood sugar was a little low,” I say. “She needs to eat more regularly. Rest. She’ll be all right.”
Ryan exhales, some of the tension leaving his shoulders. “Good. She pushes herself too hard.”
“She’s tough,” I say.
“Thank you Jake. I really appreciate you taking her to get checked out. You’re a good man.”
I almost choke.
If you only knew.
“Thanks,” I manage. “That means a lot.”
He nods, and stands to leave. “I’ll let you get back to it.” He lifts the mug in a little salute and disappears down the hall.
I slump back in my chair, staring at the ceiling. This is a disaster. A hopeful disaster, sure. A disaster with a tiny heartbeat at the center of it. But still.
I force myself to work the rest of the afternoon. Contracts, emails, a quick call with a client. By six, though, I’m done. I shut down my computer, grab my jacket, and head out.
In the parking garage, I sit behind the wheel for a minute, hands loose on the steering wheel, letting the quiet soak in. I unlock my phone and pull up a browser and type in “typical pregnancy cravings.”
The results are endless. Pickles. Ice cream. Pickles with ice cream. Spicy food. Sour candy. Things that should never occupy the same plate. One result says meat. That I can do.
I put in an order at Five Guys for burgers and fries. It’s way too much food for two people. While I wait in my car for the order to be ready, I let my head fall back against the seat and finally admit the thing I’ve been dancing around all day: I want this.
I want the baby. I want to be a dad. That part has always been there, humming under everything else like background music.
Even at my lowest point after the divorce, when I was pretty sure the universe had stapled a “Do Not Resuscitate” sign to my love life, there was still this small, stubborn feeling that someday I’d have a family.
I just assumed there would be a more conventional route to that destination. Marriage, then kids. Not fireworks, champagne, and my boss’s daughter breathing “This is one night only” in my ear.
Six months. That’s roughly what we have before everything changes on a practical level. Six months to show her I mean what I say. Six months to earn her trust. Six months to figure out if we can be more than two people orbiting the same baby.
In my ideal version, yeah, we end up together.
We raise our kid under the same roof. We argue about paint colors for the nursery and names and who gets up for the middle-of-the-night feeding.
We keep laughing the way we did that night, and she lets me see all the parts of her she keeps tucked away behind her walls.
But I can’t say all of that to her tonight without sending her sprinting for the hills, so tonight is simple.
Tonight is “I’m here.” Tonight is “I’m not going anywhere.
” Tonight is “I will show you with a hundred small actions that I can be counted on, and if you never want anything more than co-parenting, I will still be all in as a dad.”
I get a text that my order is ready and ten minutes later I’m pulling up in front of her house.
The porch light is on. My stomach does a weird flip.
I climb out of the car and head up to the door holding the bags of food in one hand and knock.
When the door opens, whatever little speech I had queued up in my brain vaporizes.
She is beautiful. Barefoot in black leggings and an oversized sweater that hangs off one shoulder, dark hair down around her face in loose waves.
No makeup. She looks softer than yesterday, less brittle around the edges, but there is still a tightness around her eyes that says she hasn’t stopped thinking either.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hi.” Her voice is a little tentative, but she smiles, and something unclenches in my chest.
We stand there for a second locked in eye contact before she shifts back and opens the door wider. “Come in.”
The house smells like sugar cookies and mint, and looks just as comforting as it smells.
The living room has dark blue walls crowded with framed vintage movie posters, built-in shelves crammed with paperbacks and scripts and notebooks.
There’s a beat-up, overstuffed couch with a throw blanket crumpled in one corner and a half-empty mug on the coffee table.
Her laptop is open on the small desk along the wall, surrounded by a perimeter of pens, sticky notes, and what looks like a stack of notebooks.
“Nice place,” I say, setting the food on the kitchen counter. “It looks completely different from when Blair lived here.”
“Thanks,” she says, closing the door behind us. “I told her I appreciated the beige, but my soul needed color.”
“Bold choice,” I say. “But it suits you.”
She eyes the bags in my hands. “Smells delicious.”
“I hope it is,” I say. “Google said meat, so I thought maybe burgers.”
Her eyes light up in a way I did not see yesterday. “Seriously?”
“Yeah.” I shrug, suddenly feeling self-conscious. “If you want something healthy I can go get something else.”
She stares at me, then laughs, this surprised, real sound that hits me right under the sternum.
“That is exactly what I’ve been craving all day,” she says. “Like, specifically Five Guys.”
“Really?”
“Really. How did you—” She shakes her head. “Never mind. That’s…that’s perfect. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
We unpack the food together in her small kitchen, brushing elbows as we reach for napkins and plates.
We sit at the little table against the window and for a minute all I do is watch her eat.
She doesn’t pick at it. She dives in like someone who finally remembered food tastes good.
She hums under her breath at one bite and looks mildly embarrassed when she realizes I heard it.
“This is so good,” she says around a mouthful, eyes closing for a second.
Her response is fucking turning me on. Jesus.
Eventually, she slows down and then sets the last bit of her food down. I can see the moment she switches tracks when her shoulders shift and her gaze sharpens. “So,” she says.
“So,” I echo.
She twists her napkin between her fingers, eyes dropping to her plate. “Tell me about yourself,” she says suddenly.
I blink. “What?”
“I mean, I know some things,” she says. “You work for my dad. You are terrifyingly good at predicting comfort food.”
She’s buying herself time. Keeping the spotlight on me instead of all the “what now” questions clanging around her head.
I recognize it because I do the same thing. In the conference room, in negotiations, when I need to control the pace of a conversation. Keep things where I want them until I’m ready to pivot.
Her eyes flick up to mine for half a second, and something passes between us. A flash of recognition. Of memory. The way I kept her exactly where I wanted her that night in July, slow and deliberate, until she was the one begging me to move faster.
Her cheeks flush, just barely, and she looks back down at her plate.
I clear my throat, pushing the memory aside before it derails me completely. “Okay,” I say, deciding to play along, at least for a minute. “I grew up in Seaside, Connecticut. Moved out here for college. UCLA.”
Her eyes brighten. “I went to UCLA.”
“Small world.” Something about that makes me smile.
“I met Wyatt freshman year,” I say. “We were roommates in the dorms. We survived that and decided to stay roommates all through undergrad and law school.”
“So he’s been stuck with you a long time.” She grins when she says it, eyes lighting up in a way that makes her whole face soften. It’s teasing, not mean, and something in my chest loosens.