Patrick
Lydia frantically pressed the button the elevator and pounded on the metal doors with her free hand.
“Kitten, please stop, he’ll be back soon.” I pulled her away from the elevator and led her back inside.
The door shut behind us and I watched her start to crumble in front of me; tears streamed down her face and she sunk to the marble floor. I knelt beside her, wrapping my arms around her and pulling her to my chest. My hand rested on her stomach and felt my skin prickle with excitement. She was upset and so was I that Jon had just left, but I couldn’t help the thrill of knowing she was pregnant. I don’t care whose baby it is; blood doesn’t make it mine. Being there for her pregnancy, raising it together, that’s what made someone a father, that’s what made Nora my mother too. Mum will be so happy.
I was ready for this, even if Jon wasn’t.
“Dia, baby,” I murmured into her hair. “I love you so much.”
“Please don’t go,” she choked out, looking up at me with watery eyes. “I need you—”
“Shh,” I hushed pulling her head to my chest. “Come on, let’s go fit in the living room until he gets home.”
She sniffled and I helped her up off the floor, she clung to my arm and I led her slowly to the sectional sofa. I flicked on the lights as we went and helped her get comfortable in the corner seat.
“Do you want a blanket?”
She nodded and pulled a pillow into her lap.
“Hot water bottle?”
“Please,” she whispered.
I’m not going anywhere, sweetheart. I leaned down and kissed her forehead. “I’ll be right back, stay put.”
I managed to find blankets in the linen closet but I had to knock on the maid’s door to find out if Jon had hot water bottles. Kathleen was more than happy to pull out a white and pink polka-dot one and get it set up for me. I always liked Jon’s housekeeping staff, like mine they were always extremely friendly and willing to just hang around for conversations. Kathleen and Anne loved Lydia, though they did tease that she was helping steal their jobs. I thanked her and she patted my shoulder before heading off to their rooms.
When I came back, Lydia was tapping away at her phone, her face was dry but she still looked heartbroken. I handed her the water bottle and sat down beside her, spreading the blanket over both of us while she got comfortable beside me.
“When did you find out?” I asked, tracing patterns on her arm.
She let out a breathy laugh and looked up at me with a faint smile. “You reminded me last week. Remember when you said we could start trying in the New Year? It reminded me that I got my IUD taken out back in June or July, whenever that went down and because of how things worked out with us going to the Bahamas, I just sort of…forgot. I took a test today, and I got that ultrasound too.”
“In one day?” Wow, what happened to Miss Chronically Late?
She nodded and held up her bandaged hand. “I got this beauty earlier in the weights room, Jon called a doctor for me and she said I could come again this even to talk about my happy accident.”
I’d noticed her hand but I hadn’t said anything, at least I knew where the injury came from. Self-inflicted, of course, she’d hurt herself with a spoon if you left her alone with it long enough. Lydia could be an airhead at times, and she admitted it too, but she rarely hurt herself badly enough that it left a lasting mark, usually that was me and Jon.
“Is your hand alright at least?”
She shrugged and showed me the finger splint. “Broke my finger, but Dr. Auyeung said it should heal fine.”
That’s good. “Did she say anything about the baby? Or is there anything we need to watch out for?”
Lydia looked away and I squeezed her good hand in mine, trying to reassure her that this was going to be alright.
“She said that medical professionals used to recommend waiting at least three months after an abortion to get pregnant again, but while that’s not the practice anymore she still wanted me to know that there is some risk.”
I nodded slowly, taking that in. “We’ll just take it one day at a time, when you’re ready we’ll start telling people. Anything else?”
“Um,” she began shakily. Her breathing was off kilter and noticed the way her lip trembled. Gently, I cupped her cheek and turned her to face me, trying to make sure she knew that she could tell me anything at all. “I don’t talk about it because it’s embarrassing, but I used to have an eating disorder and I talked with her about that. She’s referring me to a pregnancy outreach group for women that also had eating disorders and how they coped with them during and after…”
I had no idea what to say to that. An eating disorder? She’d never looked twice at her food, scrutinized a menu, or counted a single calorie – not to my knowledge anyway. My mind went over those files I had seen, the reports of Lydia’s behaviour “relapsing” and resulting in her being removed from a home and hospitalized. Was that what it was about?
“I didn’t know about that,” I said finally. “But I do now, and that’s what matters, right? You can talk to me about it, Dia, anytime.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
“Why are you sorry? You don’t need to be, I know that sort of thing is incredibly personal and if it’s a part of your past, I’m sure you’d rather leave it there.”
She nodded eagerly and wiped her eyes. “Thank you for understanding.” She paused and reached up to touch my cheek. “And not leaving.”
He always wants to leave. Things were crumbling around Jon, that’s how he phrased it to me a few weeks ago. He thought that Lydia would leave him when she found out about him and I, he thought Christine would alienate Maritza from him, and I knew without asking that he was worried about the baby. Not to mention my job offer.
“Please tell me you aren’t taking it,” she begged. “Please, Patrick, don’t tell me that you’re honestly considering it.”
“Lydia, it’s a great offer—”
“Pat, no!”
“I could take care of us,” I pressed. “Him too, if he just pulled his head out of his ass—”
Lydia jumped up from her seat and stood in front of me, glaring incredulously. “You’re killing him over money?” she demanded. “Over fucking money? You already have that! You have a trust fund that could pay for like, a dozen apartments in this city and now you own multiple properties in different countries, but for some dumbass reason you think you need a job offered by a woman to hurt your best friend?”
“Jon’s not my best friend.”
“Bullshit. You share everything with him! He was the first person you opened up to when we got back, and I was the one that was actually there for the funeral!”
What was I supposed to say? I struggled to talk to women about things like that, I’d had so few relationships that weren’t entirely sexual or purely familial, that being with Lydia like this, being expected to be open with her was foreign. I expected her to be open with me because…I really didn’t want to finish that. Lydia wouldn’t appreciate it, and my mother would fucking hang me out to dry if I ever told her that I just expected women to be open by nature.
And the properties, what did they matter? I had to pay for them somehow, and my savings would dry up eventually. But there is also my investments, my stock, that rental property I bought a few years ago…
“Jon should be happy for me,” I argued. “He should be happy that one of us gets to stay at the company we created, and if I take the position then I can work on getting members of the board on my side, win them over and get Jon back in.”
“She will never let that happen,” Lydia snapped. “You aren’t stupid, Patrick, you know Christine did this purposely.”
She wasn’t wrong. I knew Christine had been trying to play Jon, but she wasn’t just dangling a fake prize in front of me – she was offering me the keys to the universe. Bower & Rosing’s was a company that had its hands in the back pockets of hundreds of companies across the United States, there were a million opportunities that working for them, being an ally to them, would offer. Lydia had to understand that, she came to the company for experience, she expected to eventually move into a paralegal position while she finished school to become an attorney. Her experience at the company was invaluable, that’s why we offered the position to only the best grads at certain schools.
“We can’t all just sit around day and night, Lydia. Things aren’t stable and we’ll all fucking murder each other with that much alone time.”
“I have a publishing deal,” she blurted out. “I can’t do anything with it if you do this.”
“You have a what?”
“I haven’t given them an answer, I needed to talk to both you and Jon about it because it’s about the three of us and I won’t do it without both of your blessings.”
How? When? I didn’t even know that she was looking to get officially published, fuck I didn’t even know she was writing at all. Suddenly it dawned on me – it was her blog. The posts the suddenly got a lot of attention in Poland and she’d been ecstatic about it. “Is this about your blog? Is that how this started?”
She nodded. Her lips were pressed together in a hard line and she stared at the floor. This was the choice then; my career or hers. No, that’s not right. It wasn’t her versus me, it was my ego versus her future and Jon’s trust. I wanted to believe that the company was my only choice, but it wasn’t true; I could start another, I could sell off the properties and earn enough to be more than comfortable for the rest of our lives. Except for one, that’s for Magda and A.J. and his sisters. My sisters.
“Is that what you want?” I asked, reaching out to tilt her chin up.
“Yes.” She watched me closely, looking nervous and pale and unusually anxious. “Pat, I want this so badly and I want you to be happy too but not at Jon’s expense.”
I couldn’t hurt him. Fuck me, I really couldn’t hurt Jon like that. It was easier in the abstract to think of it like a normal deal that he could accept, but I couldn’t hurt him after the summer he had. After all the anger I had for him months ago, I never thought I would reach this point.
I couldn’t hurt her either, I couldn’t tell her not to do this.
“I don’t want anything sexual in the book,” I told her finally, my tone resigned despite my happiness for her. “I don’t want anything about me and Jon in the book either. Not about us romantically, sexually, our arrangement with you – nothing. Okay?”
“Okay.”
No fight? “That’s it?”
She blinked and looked around, confused. “What else am I supposed to say?”
“I don’t know, I expected you to argue or something.”
“Do I argue with you that much?”
I smirked and looked away, trying not to laugh. “Lydia, arguing with you is starting to become the only thing that gets me hard at this point.”
She laughed and reached for me, tucking her head under my chin and wrapping her arms around my waist. “Pat,” she whispered, looking up adoringly. “We’re having a baby.”
“And married,” I reminded her lightly.
She grinned and reached up to touch my face. “And married,” she agreed. “I’m sorry that part isn’t coming first like you wanted.”
I shrugged. “Maybe it can, if you don’t mind rushing thing’s anyway.”
“How rushed?” she asked cautiously.
“November at the earliest, January to get some proper planning.” The faster, the better, I wanted to marry her in the spring, when we could have an outdoor wedding in the Hamptons near my mum’s estate. We could always go to the West coast to have an outdoor wedding, or even go somewhere beachy.
“January might be nice…”
Her eyes sparkled and there was something in her tone that made me smile. “January then.”
“That’s good with me.”
We waited around for Jon after that, an hour or two went by before I convinced Lydia to go to bed with me. I didn’t push my luck to have sex with her, not after that. It also felt wrong to do that in Jon’s bed without him. Maybe it was weird that we laid down in his bed, but I held out hope that he would come home and we could put things back together. Everyday his apartment becomes more and more my home. And now we had a family. I couldn’t believe it. I turned to look at Lydia as she snuggled up under the blanket, watching her sigh in content. I can’t believe how much I got with you.