9. Keeley
KEELEY
I meet up with a group of friends for dinner, the burgeoning swell of my stomach cleverly hidden by a tiny, waistless dress that ends at the top of my thighs.
I pair it with the highest, strappiest heels I own.
Perhaps appearing to be all legs will distract from the fact that I am now, at nineteen weeks pregnant, built like a Barbie doll—the anatomically incorrect version whose weight is so off balance she defies gravity just by staying upright.
I still haven’t told work that I’m pregnant. How can I when they’re so backlogged from the previous departures? How can I not, when I’m bursting out of every bra and can barely button a single skirt? I won’t be able to pass it off as bloating for much longer.
I also haven’t told Graham, of course. It’s not like the kid is here. It’s not like I’m depriving him of something. And I already know how he’ll react if I call, as if this is all some scheme I’ve sucked him into. And why should I have to put up with that?
I order a seltzer with lime and let everyone think it’s a gin and tonic.
I could tell them the truth—unlike my family, unlike Graham, they won’t insist I’m too incompetent for motherhood—but they’d find the whole thing hysterically funny, a lark, and I don’t think it’s funny, or a lark, so I’m keeping it to myself until I do.
They regale me with what I missed while I was in DC, but their stories aren’t nearly as hilarious as they think.
There’s the night Jason had a threesome and later found out one of the girls had just turned eighteen, which is a little disgusting.
Then there’s a story about them getting misspelled tattoos on purpose, which I’m glad I wasn’t around for because I’d probably have done it.
These were my wildest friends, the ones who made me feel like a dulting was a waste of time because there was too much fun to be had, but our fun was clearly alcohol-induced. Sober, I realize their jokes are stupid, their stories are barely engaging, and they’re kind of shitty to the waitstaff.
“Keeley, what’s wrong with you?” demands Erik. “You used to be the life of the party!”
I did. And if they bored me, I drank more or made everyone go dancing.
I force a smile. “I just need another,” I say, shaking the ice around in my empty glass.
I go to the bar, and some guy in a suit tries to buy my drink for me.
“It’s just seltzer but thanks anyway,” I tell him. What I want to say is “you’re not my type” , but who knows if that’s even true? Because somehow, I chose a guy in a suit last January over much better options, twice , and I haven’t wanted anyone else since.
When I return to the table, they’re prank calling someone’s ex, which seems like the kind of shit we should have outgrown around middle school.
“Keeley’s too quiet!” shouts Candace. “Which means we need shots!”
I shake my head. “None for me. Work tomorrow.”
“Why does DC make everyone lame?” Aaron complains. “Snap out of it.”
I blink. “You know I’m a doctor, right? I don’t have the kind of job where I can just fuck around all morning because I got no sleep.”
“Never stopped you before,” he says.
He’s an asshole—they all are—but he’s also not wrong, which leaves me wondering if maybe I was an asshole too.
I leave by midnight, painfully early by my standards, but pregnancy is honestly…
exhausting. I used to think pregnant women were kind of sandbagging when they’d complain about the fatigue.
The baby plus all the extra crap is maybe twenty pounds at best, so how bad could it be?
I was wrong, though. Just the act of getting out to my Uber has me breathing like I just ran a 5k.
Which is, coincidentally, something I’d never do by choice.
I yawn as I grab the mail downstairs and take the elevator to the sixth floor, shuffling the bills behind the catalogues so I can pretend they’re not there.
Turning toward my apartment, the mail falls from my hands.
Graham Tate.
Stands at my door.
And he looks really pissed off.
I don’t know if I should kneel to pick up my mail or simply make a run for it. I do neither. Instead, I just stare in shock as he walks toward me.
Did he grow? He looks even bigger than I remember, and I already remembered him being big. I’m not sure my body was built to carry offspring his size. My vagina definitely wasn’t built to deliver it.
He squats to pick up my mail. His gaze catches on my legs as he rises, then rests on my face as he hands the mail to me.
I feel a little…spellbound, looking up at him, noting the smug lilt of his upper lip, the curve of his cheek, and how blue his eyes are.
How did I not notice just how lovely his face was the first time we met?
“Is it mine?” he asks, and the spell evaporates.
I fucked up by waiting. I know it now. But what am I going to do ? How do I crawl out of this Keeley-sized hole I’ve created?
I could lie and tell him it’s absolutely not his, but when this kid turns out to be an oversized geek whose favorite toy is a graphing calculator, he’s going to demand a paternity test. He’s probably going to demand one anyway. He seems like the type who’d be a stickler about that kind of thing.
“Keeley, answer me.”
I fumble for my keys to avoid his gaze, and all the inevitable condemnation that will accompany it. “If I thought someone else might be the father, I’d be a lot more cheerful.”
He slumps against the door. “Jesus Christ,” he whispers. “Are you serious?”
Ugh . A brief, tiny wave of guilt sweeps over me, promptly chased away by resentment. “Right, Graham. You’re the one who’s inconvenienced here.”
“I’m not inconvenienced , Keeley!” His voice echoes through the hall, undercut by a note of panic, and he blinks, surprised by his own outburst. “I’m fucking stunned. I mean, I’m having a kid and…were you even going to tell me?”
I elbow him out of the way and push my key into the lock. “I know for a fact I wasn’t planning to tell everyone on my floor .”
I enter and he follows. My apartment is delightful—full of bright cozy furniture and splashes of color everywhere you look, but it’s seen better days.
I haven’t had time to unpack my bags, and my luggage is now open and strewn over the surrounding areas.
I also haven’t had time to tell my cleaning lady I’m back, nor recycle all the donut boxes I’ve brought home.
He’s too upset to even notice as he paces, doing his best to avoid the clothes on the floor.
“So what was your plan?” he asks. “Have the kid and demand half my stuff?”
I love how he’s assuming he has anything I’d want half of. “I’m a doctor and you’re you . What would we be dividing—some off-brand men’s shoes and a Turbo Tax coupon? Look, I only learned I was pregnant three weeks ago. This is all new to me too. I wasn’t even sure I was keeping it until recently.”
That muscle in his cheek twitches on overtime. Oh, that did not sit well with him .
He folds his arms across his chest—I’d forgotten how nice his arms are. And his shoulders, currently straining the seams of the fabric, like Superman about to burst from his clothes. “And you’d never even have included me in the decision?”
“Make up your mind,” I say with a weary sigh. “Am I a gold-digging whore, or a heartless bitch trying to deprive you of fatherhood? Because it can’t be both.”
“Well, it was initially number one, but clearly we’ve moved on to number two.”
I’m irritated, but he’s also not wrong. I kick off my shoes and flop on the couch. I barely have the energy right now to argue on my behalf, and I’m not sure I even have much of an argument. Yes, I fucked up. And yes, I’m probably not a great person. But what’s done is done.
“If I’d called you and said, ‘hey, Graham, based on the hickeys and the condoms on the floor, I assume we slept together in Vegas and you knocked me up’, you’d have doubted me, right? You’d have said prove it .”
“I still intend to make you prove it. I mean, to be perfectly honest, maybe I wasn’t even the only man you slept with that weekend.”
My fists clench. It’s mostly easy to ignore what Graham says—if the opinion of some uptight East Coast finance bro was going to mean anything to me, I’d start with one who’s actually successful —but that weekend and its culmination in Vegas is something I might never live down, not even with myself.
“Believe me, nothing could thrill me more. The last guy who asked me out was an NFL quarterback. Can you imagine the genetic potential? All your kid will do is recite actuarial tables.”
“That isn’t actually what I—”
I hold up a hand. “Please stop. I’m already bored by this conversation.” It’s bad enough that I’m having his kid. I shouldn’t have to listen to him run through his job description too.
He glances around, looking for any clear surface to sit. I kick a bra off the chair across from me and he watches, appalled, before he finally sinks onto it and buries his head in his hands. “Jesus, Keeley.” His voice is hoarse. “Were you even going to tell me?”
There’s blame in that sentence, but what I hear most is how stunned he is by this entire thing. Which makes sense. Two hours ago, he was a single guy living his best life, and now he’s got a major, lifelong albatross around his neck.
I release a breath on a long sigh. “Probably. To paraphrase Churchill, I do the right thing eventually, after I’ve tried everything else first.” My aching body sinks deeper into the couch cushion, and I let my eyes close for a moment. God, I’m tired .
He sighs. “Fuck. At least we’re married.”
My eyes shoot open. I’d conveniently forgotten about that, for the most part. “ Were we legally married?” I ask. “I sort of assumed it was just…a joke. I don’t see how we could even have gotten all the way from LA to Vegas in time.”
His tongue prods his cheek as he holds back what he wants to say. “Well, the signed marriage certificate I found the next day would indicate that we somehow managed.”