SEBASTIAN
This can’t be real. This has to be some sort of bad dream. Lana didn’t just reject my proposal.
As I watch her race up the steps to her apartment, I feel my heart breaking.
Needing to know what’s going on in her head, I race after her.
I come to a halt at the door, which is slightly ajar, as I hear raised voices coming from within.
“You have to tell him about Noah,” Monica says firmly.
“It’s too much,” Lana replies desperately, and I can hear the sorrow in his voice.
Without announcing my presence, I push open the door and demand, “Who is Noah? Are you cheating on me, Lana?”
Lana spins around to face me, her eyes wide. “No, of course not. Never. Sebastian, I can explain.”
Before she says another word, the kitchen door opens, and a boy of about five comes into the room.
He gazes up at Lana and asks, “Mama, what’s going on?”
Mama. Lana has a son. This is why she had to keep rushing off. This is what she’s kept secret for so long?
Everything starts making more sense -- her weird disappearing act whenever we’re intimate?
It was always around the same time; she must have been rushing off to collect him from school.
Her not opening up about New York. Because she didn’t want to tell me she had a kid.
And needing to arrange things with Monica before she came away to New Orleans with me?
Because she needed someone to look after her son while she was away.
All this time, all her weird behavior, it’s been to hide the fact she has a child.
I look down at the boy, who has the same kinky, curly hair his mother used to when she was younger, and a smile that reminds me of Delia’s.
A million thoughts race through my mind, the foremost being, who is the father? Is it that ex who hit her?
Lana bends down, making eye contact with the boy, and says, “Noah, can you go back into the living room with Monica, please?”
Noah pouts, and he gazes back at me, but before anyone says anything else, Monica scoops him up in her arms and carries him from the room.
“This is why you rejected my proposal? Because you have a son?”
“Sebastian, slow down. Sit down and please, let me explain everything.”
I drop onto a seat at the little dining table, and Lana sits down opposite me.
I take her hands in mine. “I don’t care that you have a child, Lana. I love you. I want to be with you.”
I can’t read the expression on Lana’s face. It’s half hopeful, half regret. Finally, she says, “Noah is your son Sebastian. You’re the father.”
You’re the father.
The words don’t make sense. I know what the words individually mean, of course, but together in that specific sentence, I don’t understand.
“I know this is a huge shock, and you have every right to be upset with me, but please, before you say or do anything, let me explain.”
“Explain?” I explode. I don’t mean to. Normally I’d never raise my voice like this, but something inside me snaps.
I have a son. A son who looks to be about five years old, and all this time, Lana kept this hidden from me? She’s been back in East Hampton for months. We’ve been sleeping together, and falling back in love, and she still didn’t tell me.
All those years I missed out on. All that time I could have been bonding with Noah. Does he even know who I am?
“Does he know?” I ask.
“Yes, but I only told him today, before I met you for dinner. It’s what Monica and I were arguing about when you came in. I told her about your proposal--”
My proposal. God, it seems like a lifetime ago.
Is this why she said no? Because she was lying to me? Because she was keeping this huge secret from me.
I stand up and start pacing. “I can’t believe you kept this from me.”
“I had a good reason, if you’d just calm down--”
“Calm down?! I have a son. A five-year-old son, and you never told me. You’ve been back in town for months, and you never even hinted that we had a child, I can’t believe you did this.”
I don’t realize the volume of my voice until Lana screams, “Get out!”
I freeze, my eyes going wide. “What?!”
“I don’t want you here, around Noah, when you’re angry like this. Theo used to get like this, and it traumatized both of us. I don’t want my son’s first impression of his father to be that he’s a monster.”
“Our son!” I correct. I want to scream. I want to cry. Part of me wants to wrap Lana in her arms and tell her everything will be okay.
Another part of me is unsure things will ever be okay again.
She lied to me. For years. She came back to town. She let me make love to her, and told me she loved me, all while she was hiding my son from me.
Suddenly I can’t stand being in the same room as her.
“Fine. I’m leaving. But this isn’t over. I will see my son,” I say, before leaving the apartment without a backwards glance.