She stepped up to the counter, where a barista she recognized was making up an order. The young woman looked up with a wide smile.
“Hi, Meredith. I haven’t seen you in a while. Don’t tell me.” She pointed. “Medium iced oat milk brown sugar shaken espresso?”
Meredith sighed, knowing her favorite drink wouldn’t go down well. “Actually, I just need to see Trevor. Is he in?”
“Oh, yeah,” the girl said. “He’s in the back doing paperwork.”
“Can you get him? I’d like to talk to him for a minute.”
The barista nodded, finished her order, then disappeared into the back.
Meredith’s heart thumped in her ears. She suddenly felt warm and exposed and vulnerable. Her gaze scanned the lobby, grateful she wasn’t likely to run into anyone from Acacia Architecture on a Sunday.
Trevor appeared a moment later, wearing a backwards hat and his usual Beans & Buns shirt. Coming out from behind the bar, he gave her a surprised flicker of a look, which she’d expected.
They’d mutually decided their short relationship was going nowhere. His entrepreneurial spirit had attracted her and seemed like a great fit. Well, his looks and easy-breezy sex appeal had really attracted her, but it didn’t take long for her to spot that he was cagey. Distant. Even secretive.
They’d gone out for about a month, but he refused to answer enough questions that she’d broken it off and got no pushback from him.
She knew it was a mistake to get involved with him. But her close girlfriends were married and moving into the next phase of life, and all Meredith had ever done was work.
She should have stuck with that strategy, she thought glumly.
Go off plan…and get knocked up.
“Hey, Mer,” he said, giving her a quick once-over, probably because she never showed up in this building looking less than impeccable. “What’s up? I’m kinda slammed.”
“I’m sure you are,” she said. “But I need to talk to you. Privately.”
He raised an eyebrow, but nodded. “Okay. Outside?”
They stepped into the warm morning air, finding an empty table tucked next to a wall of hedges. A breeze rustled the shrubbery as Meredith sat, running damp palms over her jeans.
He perched on the other chair, looking like he might bolt at any second. “What’s going on?” he asked.
She met his gaze, clearing her throat. “I have to tell you something.”
Trevor’s face paled in a way that was more guilty than worried. He always had that furtiveness about him, which she really didn’t like.
“What? What is it?”
She swallowed what felt like a gulp of sand and stared down at the table, then back up at him. “I’m pregnant.”
He blinked, the slight bit of color remaining in his face completely gone, his jaw slack. “Wait…what? Are you serious right now? Is this some kind of joke?”
She considered a sarcastic “just kidding” response, but he didn’t deserve humor. He deserved to be smacked for pushing her to have unprotected sex because he liked it that way.
“It’s not a joke and, trust me, it’s not funny.”
He cursed under his breath, looking unsteady. “Wait, are you sure? I mean—how, Meredith?”
She sliced him with a look. He knew exactly how it had happened.
He pushed back, then whipped off his baseball cap to stab his hair with shaky fingers. “Whoa. This is really, really bad. I…can’t…”
Did he think shecould? What did that mean? “Look, I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I had to tell you first, so?—”
“I don’t care what you do.”
