Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 66453 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 332(@200wpm)___ 266(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66453 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 332(@200wpm)___ 266(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
Now Christi was the one to pat his knee. He glanced over at her questioningly. She gave him a stop talking look. “He’s like a father to me,” Jake concluded, “but if he were actually my father, I’d feel sorry for my mom.”
“Because she married her brother?” Christi teased.
Jake made a face at her. “No, because I think he’d make a terrible husband.”
“I wasn’t asking him to marry me,” I said quietly, although I couldn’t lie to myself. The thought of Dominic down on one knee had painted a rosy picture in my mind. Now, though, the memory of his face, scowling down at me overlaid it. How could I have ever imagined it? Jake was right. He wasn’t capable. I’d deluded myself into thinking that he was something he wasn’t, that I had changed him, but I’d been wrong.
He hadn’t changed.
He couldn’t.
I fled back into my room before Jake and my sister could see me cry.
And later that day, after I threw up again, I took a pregnancy test.
It was positive.
I stared at it in disbelief, joy and horror singing a discordant chorus in my head. I was pregnant with the baby of a man who wanted nothing to do with me.
Merry Christmas to me.
29
DOMINIC
I called Marjorie about Christmas Eve dinner. I didn’t know if Jake had told her what he’d walked in on or not, but from the sound of her voice, I suspected he hadn’t. Marjorie wasn’t the type to beat around the bush. If she knew, I guessed she would lead with that. My stomach tensed as I counted up the rings.
One. Two. Three.
Anyone else, I’d assume they weren’t going to pick up, but Marjorie was notorious for just getting to the phone on time. Sure enough, in the middle of the fourth ring, she picked up.
“Hello?” she asked breathlessly, a sure sign she’d had to run up from the first floor to get her phone off the nightstand or dump out her entire purse to find it.
“Hey,” I said tersely. If she did know, I wanted it to be clear from the start I wasn’t going to take any shit about it. “Christmas Eve dinner at your place, right?”
“Right,” she confirmed. “Come over around five to trim the tree.”
Marjorie and Jake had a fake tree, so trimming the tree mainly meant spreading out the PVC plastic boughs.
“Will do. What should I bring?”
This was her opening. If she knew, and she wanted to be an asshole, she’d say something like, ‘someone who can rent a car’ or some snarky shit like that. I braced myself, ready to take her head off, Christmas be damned. But Marjorie just said, “Bring the good gin and be ready to make the martinis.”
“I can do that.” I got off the phone, wondering why my stomach still felt tight and my teeth were clenched so tight that my jaw was starting to ache. Marjorie didn’t know. Jake hadn’t told her. Odds were, he wasn’t going to. So why the hell didn’t I feel better?
Maybe it was because I was due to see Jake in just over twenty-four hours and we would have this big fucking elephant in the room. I couldn’t imagine a shittier Christmas Eve than trimming a fake tree and wearing a fake smile while my nephew silently wished me dead and my sister played Bing Crosby on loop.
I had to clear the air with Jake. It might blow up in my face, but it was better than the specter of that terrible Christmas looming before me. He didn’t answer, so I sent him a text asking him to meet me for a drink. He didn’t drink much, but I figured this was the kind of conversation that went best with something to take the edge off.
I was surprised when he sent a quick text back, I’m finishing up some last-minute Christmas shopping at The Grove. Just tell me when and where.
I looked down at the text, surprised on two counts. One, there wasn’t a trace of I-just-found-out-you’re-fucking-my-ex-girlfriend attitude. Two, what the hell was he doing at there? The Grove was an upscale shopping center
I was even more confused when I met him at a bar near the shopping center and he walked in with a bag that had Janie and Jack scrawled along the side in fancy print. I’d gotten unfortunately familiar with that store since all my friends started having kids. What did Jake need with overpriced kid shit?
“It’s for Christi,” Jake explained when he noticed me staring at it. He set it on the floor and slid into the barstool beside me. He gave me a funny grin that tried to say everything is fine but in actuality said everything is really fucking weird, right?
“This is really fucking weird,” I said, putting it out into the open. There was a tall Yuengling sweating in front of me, but for some reason, I wasn’t drinking it.