Accidental Pregnancy, page 10
Then, almost as one, we part and pull ourselves to sitting positions on the couch. Neither of us try and cover up; we’ve already had sex several times and we’re not worried by the other seeing our nakedness anymore. Amanda curls her legs beneath her and looks at me.
“That was intense,” she says.
“It was,” I agree. “Damn, it felt good, though.”
Amanda laughs. There’s something about it that doesn’t sound quite right, but I’m sated and tired, too far gone to be concerned by the odd tone.
“Yeah,” she agrees. She pauses. “Want to stay for dinner?”
“So, you seduce me and then offer me dinner?” I joke. “That’s a little backward, isn’t it?”
She smiles. This time I definitely notice that something is up. Normally, she would have laughed at something like that.
“Anyway, I can’t,” I say regretfully. I feel oddly like it would be a mistake to leave now, but… “I have a dinner planned with some friends tonight. I should be going soon so I can get ready.”
“Fair enough,” Amanda says. She gets to her feet, yawning. “I’m tired and didn’t feel like cooking, anyway.”
“Next time,” I assure her.
She just smiles again, not agreeing. Something that feels a little like panic makes my heart start to beat a little faster.
“Amanda,” I say on impulse. “There are still things we need to talk about. But, I need to tell you… No one else has ever made me feel like you do. I know we haven’t known each other for very long, but I’ve already come to really care about you.”
I can see myself falling in love with this woman. Not just that, I want to fall in love with her. She’s perfect in every way.
Amanda glances away and then looks back.
“Thank you,” she says. “You should probably go so that you’re not late.”
Thrown, I nod.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’ll talk to you later.”
“Yeah,” Amanda says with that odd smile once more. “Bye, Lyle.”
I head to the elevator, hearing the door snap behind me. It feels strangely final. I shake my head. I’m being ridiculous and paranoid. Everything is fine.
As I head down to the ground level, however, I try not to be too worried that she didn’t reply to my feelings.
Chapter Sixteen
Amanda
Stupid, stupid, stupid!
The moment Lyle is gone, I feel awful. How could I do that? I know my plan is to break up with him. He still hasn’t told me who he is, after all. I’m mad at him.
But then he flounces into my apartment, concerned for my health and wondering what’s been going on, his huge eyes beseeching me to tell him, and I just…
“Argh!” I say out loud, running my hand through my hair.
My phone rings. I glance at it and scowl at my mother’s picture before picking it up.
“What?” I ask sourly; I’m still unhappy she let Lyle into my apartment without telling me.
“It didn’t go so well?” my mother asks sympathetically.
On the contrary, it went a little too well, but I’m not about to tell her that. I huff.
“Why did you let him in?” I demand. “Especially without warning me first?”
“Sorry,” my mother says, though she doesn’t sound apologetic at all. “I met him at the door, and he seemed really sincere.”
“He was,” I say grudgingly. “He was concerned because he hadn’t heard from me in a few days.”
“See? I told you that you need to talk to him.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I snap. “I’ve already made my decision. I’m not changing my mind now. He’s had plenty of time to talk to me, and he hasn’t.”
“Just like you’ve had plenty of time to tell him that he’s going to be a father?” my mother asks.
I hate it when she makes sense, sometimes.
“That’s different,” I protest.
“I fail to see how.”
“Lyle hid the truth from me first,” I say, feeling a little sulky. “And I am going to tell him about the baby. When I’m not so mad at him.”
And when I can be assured that I won’t jump on him the moment I see him, I add silently.
“When will that be?” my mother asks wryly. “When the baby is born?”
“I definitely wouldn’t do that to him,” I say. “That’s horrible!” I sigh. “If I still haven’t calmed down in a week, I’ll tell him, okay? I’ll definitely tell him.”
“Of course, honey,” my mother says, though she sounds unconvinced. “Well, I’ll let you get back to what you were doing.”
“Reading,” I lie, glancing at the book on the couch, where I left it last night.
My mother laughs.
“Fine, I’ll let you go back to your book,” she says. “I’m sorry things didn’t work out with Lyle. Remember I’m always here if you need me.”
I soften. It’s hard to stay angry at my mother. She’s so supportive and amazing.
“I will,” I assure her. “Thanks, Mom.”
I hang up the phone and look around. Now, finally, I’m completely alone, and I don’t have to speak to anyone.
And maybe I can finally figure out what I’m doing.
I slump down on the couch. I still can’t believe that I just had sex with Lyle. Damn it, I wish that he hadn’t come here, then I wouldn’t feel so conflicted.
I want to break up with him. Well, no, not so much want, but I feel like I have little choice. If Lyle can keep such a large secret about his own identity, then how will I be able to trust him in the future? No matter what he thinks his motivation was, omitting the truth like that is just incredibly wrong.
Though, honestly, I feel more hurt because I’ve been talking his ear off about my job with Energy Plus Co. Couldn’t he have found at least a single moment to say “Hey, I do some work at that company”? He’d still be technically hiding the truth, but at least that would have been better than just not saying anything at all.
So, no, I can’t stay together with Lyle under these circumstances. I can’t trust Lyle anymore. Maybe, in the future (and, hopefully, the near future considering I already have our child growing inside me) we can gain enough trust to amicably interact for the sake of our child.
Though…who would the kid live with?
I pause as I consider this. Lyle and I live separately and we both lead very different lives. Would we share parenting, with the kid at one house one week, and the other the next week? It would be like history repeating itself, considering what happened to my own parents.
Is that what Lyle and I have already become? A broken home? The kid isn’t even here yet, and we’ve already broken up.
Growing up, I didn’t class my home as broken. My parents were still polite to each other and they still did things together with me. Sometimes I even forgot that they were actually divorced, and there were never any step-parents or other partners to worry about.
Can Lyle and I be a family like that with this child?
I shake my head. I’m getting ahead of myself. I haven’t even told Lyle about the baby yet. Maybe he won’t even want it. Maybe I’ll end up raising it my myself.
Though, I haven’t even decided what I’m going to do about my pregnancy yet.
I lean back. It feels like I can’t make any real decisions right now. I don’t know what the right course of action is. I both want to break up with Lyle and don’t want to, and I suspect that it’s the latter that are my true feelings; no doubt I only want to break up because I’m mad at him.
Then there’s the baby. It’s Lyle’s kid, too. I need to at least tell him about it before I decide what I’m going to do.
There’s also my father to think about. As much as I don’t want him to be a consideration into my relationships, he is in this one, just because of who it is that I accidentally started dating. If my father ever finds out that I dated, however briefly, Lyle Thompson, he would be furious.
And if he found out about a baby…
I grimace. No. I’m not telling him anything until I know for sure what I want to do.
Absurdly, I kind of wish that Lyle had stayed. Of course, that would have made breaking up with him much harder, but I could really use his thoughts right now. In everything I’m trying to muddle through, he’s prominent in every issue.
It’s too much. I don’t want to think about this anymore. My emotions are out of whack, my head is spinning and, on top of all that, I really, really want beetroot.
“What the hell is it with you and beetroot?” I groan at my stomach, where the tiny life is currently growing. “I hated beetroot, I’ll have you know.”
I sigh and haul myself to my feet. At least food is an easy thing to decide right now.
Chapter Seventeen
Lyle
“We need to break up. Sorry.”
This is the message I’ve woken up to. I’m staring at the screen, part of me thinking that I’m just dreaming and this is some sort of nightmare.
Yesterday happened, right? I went over to Amanda’s house, tried to tell her what was going on in my life and find out why she was so angry at me, and ended up having sex with her, didn’t I? I’m one hundred percent certain that I didn’t just dream all of that.
So…why?
I blink and look at the phone screen again. No, it’s still exactly the same message from Amanda.
“What the fuck?” I burst out.
None of this makes any sense at all. I know things felt off yesterday, both before and after we had sex, but surely that didn’t matter, right? We still needed to talk. I still needed to tell her who I am. Together, we needed to get past all the obstacles in front of it so that we could be with each other.
But now, Amanda is breaking up with me.
I try to cast my mind back and remember if I did anything wrong recently. Did I upset her? The only thing I’ve done wrong, that I can think of, is hiding my identity from her. That’s a pretty big wrong, admittedly, but she doesn’t know about that.
Does she?
Is there any possible way she could have figured it out? Amanda is smart… It would probably be more of a surprise if she didn’t figure it out, if I’m honest with myself. I slide out of bed and gather up my clothes. I’m so distracted that I don’t realize until I get to the bathroom that they’re the same clothes as yesterday’s.
Shit, why is this happening? I turn the shower on and wait as steam fills the bathroom. Damn it, this is ridiculous. I step under the spray, and the scalding water wakes me up.
I need to figure this out. But…not now. Yesterday, I didn’t trust Alicia when she told me to take a step back, and I still think I made the right move. In fact, I think the wrong move was leaving at the end. I should have stayed and talked with her, something I would have done if I hadn’t had a prior engagement.
This time, though, I know what to do. I’m not going to text Amanda and beg for an answer. At least, not yet. I still don’t know if she’s being serious, if she’s thought about this or if it’s a spur-of-the-moment thing because she’s upset about something. If this is something she’s thought about seriously and decided on, then I’ll respect her decision, no matter how upsetting it is.
But if she’s made a sudden decision in the heat of emotion? Then I need to wait for her to calm down, and then talk to her when she’s feeling better.
I’m leaning toward spur-of-the-moment decision, anyway. If yesterday told me anything, it’s that Amanda definitely still wants me just as much as I want her.
So where did this come from? The theory that she might have figured out that I hid from her the fact that I’m the boss of the company that rivals her father’s is definitely looking more likely. Guiltily, I think that her being upset probably has less to do with the fact that I’m technically her rival, and is more because she’s been working at my company and gushing about the deal to me, while I never mentioned once that I already knew about it all.
In retrospect, that’s definitely what I would be most upset about, if I were her.
I sigh as I step out of the shower. I’ve really messed things up, haven’t I? If Amanda really does know what I’ve been hiding, I can’t blame her for being upset. This is exactly what Alicia warned me about if I wasn’t honest and upfront from the start. I’ve had plenty of time to correct my mistake, and now it looks like it might be too late.
Do I still have a chance to fix this? I wipe the mirror and look at my reflection steadily. I don’t know. It depends on what Amanda’s thinking about why I hid from her.
Should it matter? I press my lips into a thin line. Regardless of what she does from here, Amanda definitely has the right to know the truth of the matter. I’ve lied to her by omission and she needs to know why. If she still wants to break up with me, that’s her decision and I can’t say I’d blame her. But I don’t want her to go around thinking I was only using her. I want her to know that I did this because I wanted to get to know her without the stigma of the rivalries between our two companies.
I grimace at my reflection. That sounds ridiculous and overly sappy, if I’m honest with myself. But it’s the only truth I have.
Maybe, if I’m lucky, I can still make it out the other end of this with my relationship intact. Amanda is a very special, unique person. Letting her go, I feel, would end up being the greatest mistake I ever made.
“You,” Alicia says, her cheerful tone completely at odds with what I just told her, “are an absolutely idiot.”
I sink low in my chair across from her, almost sliding under the table our coffees are sitting on.
“Yes, yes,” I mutter. “We’ve established that already. Now, will you help me?”
Around us, the small coffee shop bustles. I asked Alicia to meet me here during the lunch hour, not wanting any of my employees to overhear us. Especially Brandon… I can’t imagine he’d be too pleased if he realized that I might have single-handedly put the deal he’s been working so hard on in jeopardy.
“Give me a moment,” Alicia says, tossing her head. “I’m just basking in the moment as you realize just how utterly right I was.”
I huff and roll my eyes. Alicia can be a real jerk sometimes, I think sourly. She’s my best friend, of course, but sometimes she can be a bit much to deal with.
Unfortunately, I have to deal with her now. I need her help, desperately.
“Yes, you were right and I was wrong,” I say, annoyed. “While you’re busy laughing at my misfortune, can you make sure that some part of you pities me enough to think over how to help me fix this?”
It’s times like this that I miss my parents most dearly. Despite being incredibly rich, Jessica and David Thompson were both down-to-earth, having both come from simpler backgrounds. They tried to instill those values in me, something that was toughest when I was a teenager and was certain that the world revolved around me. I’m thankful that they got to see me mature before they died, but I sorely miss their advice, especially in times like this. With them, things wouldn’t seem so bad, and they would definitely have a way to help me fix my relationship with Amanda.
Alicia eyes me and her face falls.
“I’m sorry,” she says, slumping. “This is really hitting you hard, isn’t it?”
“What do you think?” I ask sarcastically.
Alicia gives me a small smile.
“I’m sorry for teasing,” she says. “That was crass of me. What do you need?”
“That’s the thing… I don’t even know,” I admit. “I just know that I need to do something. I don’t want Amanda to think I was only dating her to help the company’s alliance.”
“Wait…” Alicia frowns at me. “You don’t want me to help you fix your relationship?”
“Well, yes, that’s why I need to deal with this first,” I say, shaking my head. “But even if I tell Amanda why I lied to her, she might still want to break up with me. So, until she makes that decision, I just want to show her how much I care about her.”
Alicia stares.
“Damn, how the hell haven’t you been snapped up before now?” she says, shaking her head. “I hope Amanda listens to you; she’ll be letting go of someone really great, if she doesn’t.”
I cough, feeling myself flush. My relationship with Alicia is typically one of ribbing, advice and laughter. Sometimes, in moments when I feel lonely, I imagine that my relationship with her is what it would be like to have a step-mother. She certainly stepped up to the plate when my own mother died. It’s very rare that we say things like that to each other; she usually shows her appreciation in other ways, like bringing me coffee in the morning, or sorting my paperwork so I know what’s most important to do first.
“To be fair, I’m the one who might have driven her away in the first place,” I point out. “I should have just told her the truth to start with.”
“You should have,” Alicia says bluntly. “But you didn’t, and now we need to fix this. Have you messaged her?”
“Not yet,” I say. “I wasn’t sure if I should or not.”
“It was a smart move not to message immediately after, even though your first impulse was probably to ask ‘why’,” Alicia says with a nod.
I smile wryly. It was close; I almost asked, but I managed to stop myself.
“But I should message now?” I ask.
“It would probably be wise,” Alicia agrees. “But try not to question or demand too much. Politely ask her if she could give you a reason, and tell her that you respect any decision she makes. If she did make this decision out of anger, like you suspect, then that might make her think twice about it. After all, she had sex with you just because you offered to leave her to her thoughts yesterday. She’s obviously a woman who doesn’t like being coddled, and wants her independence to decide things on her own.”
“Yeah,” I agree; everything I know about Amanda tells me that Alicia is right. “She’s really ambitious and doesn’t want anything standing in her way. On our first date, she made a point of telling me that her work would be her priority. It took me ages to figure out why she felt she had to tell me that.”
