“I can’t be pregnant.”
He sat at the edge of his bathtub dropping his face in the palms of his hands.This is not happening.He wanted to scream, but then he was worried he'd end up scaring the hell out of his child. He got up when he heard his phone ringing and knew it was the doctor’s office. He recognized the number from earlier.
“Hello?” He cleared his throat, a bit choked up unable to speak fully.
“Mister Hamilton, this is Doctor Horgan.”
“Yeah.”
“I spoke with my nurse today, and he told me you requested that we run a second test on your lab results.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“I had the lab put a rush on the processing, and the result hasn’t changed, Mister Hamilton. I understand this comes as a shock to you, but you are definitely pregnant. There are few ways to correct it, if this was a mistake. The choice is up to you.”
Lucas’ brows creased together, and he pulled the phone from his ear and looked at it with malice as if the doctor could see his face. He would never think about getting rid of his baby. Bringing the phone back to his ear, he responded, “Thank you, I’ll need a copy of my results.”
“Of course, Mister Hamilton, my office will send you the information you need to obtain your results. And let me be the first to say congratulations.”
“Yeah, thanks.” He hung up and sat on his bed, after a dozen positive tests, there was no denying it—he was pregnant.
How the hell am I going to tell Tucker?
* * *
Tucker satin his car across the Hamilton home, he kept telling himself it was a mistake to be there, but he also wasn’t driving away. He hadn’t seen or spoken to Lucas because of the way he left.I’m such a fucking coward. Get the hell out of the car and face him like a man.He was never good at pep talks when it came to himself, that was always Nick or Rochelle’s job. It seemed Lucas had a way of calling him on his bullshit too, in the little time they’d become friends.
He opened the car door, got out, and walked up to the front door with confidence. He wondered if Lucas would be happy to see him or ignore him completely. His family was inside but the only person he wanted to see was Lucas. He knocked on the door and waited for someone to answer. It was the day of the Hamilton family monthly Sunday dinner, and they were used to anyone showing up at any unannounced time. He entered when no one answered after waiting a few minutes and was greeted with laughter coming from the other room.
“You guys should learn to lock your doors, any riffraff could walk in,” he said walking into the dining room. The room went completely silent, and everyone stared at him as if he was a stranger and maybe in some ways he was. This was the first family dinner he’d been to in a while. He always found an excuse not to attend whenever anyone asked, so they gave up on asking him. “Don’t all speak at once.”
“We are just all shocked to see you,” Stephen said to him.
“You see me every day at work, well, except for the past couple weeks,” he said to his nephew.
“Yeah, about that, you never take a vacation—”
“You can interrogate him at another time,” Marilyn interrupted as she got up from her seat and walked over to him. She kissed him on the cheek. “It’s good to see you, Tucker.”
“You too,” he said to her.
“Are you hungry?” she asked but didn’t wait for him to answer. “Of course, you are, it’s the reason why you came.”
She pulled him over to one of the chairs someone just vacated and placed an empty plate in front of him. He thanked her then looked around the table taking in the various dishes. It was as if they knew he was coming because all of his favorites dishes were on the table: barbecue ribs, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, and baked chicken. He scanned the faces at the table and noticed that Lucas wasn’t sitting in any of the chairs.
“Hey, Mom, I just put Zoi down for a nap . . .”
He looked up when Lucas walked into the dining room,his body instantly reacted, and his heart skittered a beat seeing the man he’d been dying to get a glimpse of for the past month. He looked just as shocked to see Tucker as everyone else did when he walked into the room.
“What was that, Lucas?”
“Um . . . don’t worry about it,” he said. “Hey, Tucker, it's good to see you, man.” He sat down across from him and looked away from him.
“You too,” he finally said.
He started eating, and conversation flowed around him, a few times he felt Lucas’ eyes on him but whenever he looked at the man he was looking elsewhere.
Maybe it was a bad idea for me to come here today.
