Chapter 2
Ahint of a smirk curved Mitch’s upper lip. His dark eyes lit up. Something about his expression had Callie appreciating just how good-looking her roommate was, though maybe that was because he was still watching her belly as if it was something amazing.
“No dad, huh?”
Callie shook her head decisively.
If there was one thing she was sure of, it was that she never expected to see Ash again.
She’d given up calling out for Aislinn; whether he tricked her when he told her that was his true name or not, she didn’t know, but despite how many times she used it, he never appeared.
In the beginning, she avoided the park and the charred tree where she first spotted Ash in his pristine white Faerie uniform, but she’d been there countless times over the last three months and… yeah. No sign of him.
Why would there be?
He’d made his rejection plain and clear. And as swayed by his charm and his persistent pursuit of her as Callie had been, she had some pride stubbornly lingering.
“No dad,” Mitch repeated, “but the little guy’s gonna need a role model. Someone to look up to.”
Callie felt another flutter down low as her baby kicked again. She rubbed her belly. “It might be a girl, you know. Doctor hasn’t told me yet.”
“Girls could use a male role model, too,” Mitch pointed out. “A kind of stand-in dad.”
Her fingers stilled. “What did you say?”
“Before you get any ideas, I know that I can’t replace him, whoever he is.
And this isn’t me making a move on you or anything.
We’re just friends, and I’m perfectly good with that.
But because we’re friends, I can’t think of anyone better to help you out with it.
Her,” he hurriedly corrected, clearly remembering what Callie had called the baby earlier. “I can help you with her.”
Callie screwed up her face, trying to understand. “Like platonic parenting? Is that what you’re saying? Best friends raising a kid together?”
“Something like that.”
“Mitch, I don’t know—”
“You don’t have to say anything now, Cal. It’s just an idea. And if you want to tell people that I am the dad… I’m okay with that, too. To be honest, I think our moms will love hearing that, even if we both know it’s not true.”
He… actually had a point.
The biggest reason why Callie was holding off on telling her family was that she’d have to figure out some way to explain how she got pregnant in the first place.
Mitch might’ve been joking when he called her the second coming of the Virgin Mary, but while Callie hadn’t been a virgin when she met Ash, this definitely wasn’t a case of immaculate conception.
Her baby had a dad, but not one she could ever explain.
But if Mitch was offering...
“And you’re okay with this?” Like Callie, Mitch was only twenty-two.
He’d taken a knock at his job when he quit after he didn’t get his promotion, but his boss was pleased with his work ethic.
Maybe by next year he’ll get another chance, and she was pretty sure playing daddy to his best friend’s baby wasn’t the life goal he had.
She’d been pregnant when Mitch moved back in, though she hadn’t known it yet.
Callie hadn’t taken the test until more than a month and a half later, and she made sure to throw it out in the dumpster so that Mitch didn’t accidentally find it in the trash.
She hadn’t been ready to tell him, either.
Would he want to share the apartment with a baby?
She’d never asked. Before Ash, children had been a “one day” thing, not a now thing.
Callie wouldn’t blame Mitch if he decided this wasn’t the lifestyle he wanted. Still, she wanted so badly to believe that his offer was genuine—and that’s when he nodded.
“You know me. I’d do anything for you. I can be the perfect partner. An extra set of hands, and no expectations. We’re roommates. Friends. Hell, you’re my sister-in-law’s sister so that makes us family, right? I want to help you, Callie. If you’ll let me.”
When he put it like that…
Callie rushed forward, throwing her arms around Mitch’s neck. Even if he was only offering because she’d just casually dropped the bomb of her baby on him, she’d forever be grateful that he had.
“You’re fucking awesome, Mitch. You know that?”
He patted her back as he returned her hug, laughing as he agreed, “Yup. I gotta say that I do.”
When Mitch said that he would be the perfect partner, she didn’t know what to expect. Just the relief that she wasn’t on her own for everything anymore had been enough for her to accept his offer. And if he backed out of it, that was all right.
But he didn’t. He also didn’t wait until Callie was further along before he started to prove that he really meant it when he said that he would do anything for her.
That very night, he ran out into the snowy cold to pick her up a hot chocolate, a box of microwaveable popcorn, and three different movies from Blockbuster—and only one of them was a horror flick.
Though Mitch had been putting more than sixty hours into the office since his return, he slowly began to lessen his workload; rather than sixty, he topped out at forty-five so that he could spend more time at the apartment when Callie was home.
Now that Mitch knew about the baby, she finally told her boss that, in a few months, she’d be giving birth and taking time off.
Buster’s Photo was a two-man op. There was Buster, who owned the shop, and Callie, his sole employee.
If telling Mitch had been weighing heavily on her, letting Buster in on the secret was just as tough.
Luckily, he took it well, congratulating Callie while—thankfully—never asking any personal questions aside from if she planned on coming back to work after the baby was born.
That was Buster for you. It was one of the reasons she got along with him, even though he was older than her father.
Like Callie, his life was his camera and his film and his pictures.
He was more than happy to give her as much time as she needed, promising he wouldn’t replace her if she didn’t want him to.
And she didn’t. Not only did she need the steady paycheck from working at the store, but the added bonus of selling her personal shots would only help buy everything she needed to get ready for the baby’s arrival.
But just because Mitch and Buster knew, Callie still couldn’t bring herself to call her family and give them the news.
That’s where her roommate came in. Mitch was a friggin’ godsend.
He ran interference between Callie and her family, making sure Ariadne and Tony, Hope, and her parents all knew that Callie was doing well in the same way that, after Mitch moved in again, she had his back.
On his two days off, he went shopping with her, helping Callie slowly pick out essentials she would need once the baby was there.
He rubbed her back and her ankles when they started to ache, he came home every night with another list of names—a mix of boy and girl names because he teasingly argued that he was sure she would be a he—that he thought she might like, and he made her smile when the pressure got to be too much.
Most of all, Mitch made her realize that this—all of it—was real, and that it would be okay.
He never pushed, either. Once she made it clear that the topic of her baby’s father was off-limits, he never mentioned the topic again. And while he told her repeatedly that he was content with their friendship, Callie really believed it when he went back to casually flirting with her.
It was like the olden days. In fact, the only thing that seemed to change about her friend was his diet.
She hadn’t noticed it right away. Before Mitch left last summer, they usually fended for themselves when it came to dinner; sometimes, maybe once or twice a month, they would trade off for take-out, but it wasn’t often.
After he returned to the city, clearly embarrassed that he had run off in the first place, he spent most of his time at the office.
He ate there, and if he didn’t, Callie wasn’t good company.
She cooked simple meals because she knew she had to, spending her time in the privacy of her bedroom as she switched between missing Ash and hated him for making her miss him.
Then, after she took that fateful pregnancy test, she couldn’t even pretend that she wasn’t avoiding her roommate.
Now that she didn’t have to, though, she finally noticed something that she had missed before. Every time she walked into the kitchen and found him either prepping at the counter or sitting at the table, eating, it was always the same thing.
Fruit.
Seriously. In the dead of winter, when not a single one of the overpriced fruits he bought was in season, Mitch was chowing down on an apple there, a plum there, even peaches.
At first, she didn’t say anything. When a majority of her diet was made up of sugary ice cream and decadent hot chocolate, who was she to judge? But she had to ask when Mitch turned down Chinese one night, then grabbing a pizza together the next, all in the name of friggin’ fruit.
Turned out, it was his therapist’s suggestion.
Callie hadn’t even known that Mitch had a therapist, let alone that Mitch’s therapist was qualified to give nutritional advice, but her roommate told her that he’d been seeing Dr. Waylon since he came back to the city.
It was on the advice of one of his co-workers, and he swore up and down that his weekly appointments had been a huge help.
She wanted to be supportive. In Callie’s opinion, Mitch deserved to be happy, and if talking to this Dr. Waylon and trading pizza and burgers for oranges and kiwis did that, that was fine with her.
And it was, until Mitch got the idea that she needed even more variety in her diet.