My stomach rumbles. “Aren’t you little miss ingenuity? Here’s your favorite coffee as a thank you, but I spilled a little. Sorry.”
I hand her the ice coffee, put mine down on the counter and tug off my coffee stained shirt. She looks at it, reads the label and gives me a smile that isn’t really a smile. “Thanks but pregnant women can’t drink coffee. And this is Terra’s favorite drink. Not mine.”
“What?” I ball up my shirt and put it on the counter.
“I love the iced coconut mocha. Terra gets the iced caramel coffee. Every time. Without fail since she was sixteen,” Aspen sips her orange juice, puts the coffee down on the counter and motions to the plates of food. “Eat. Before it gets cold.”
Did I really mix up their drinks? We started dating because Aspen asked me to be her prom date. By the time we went to prom, Aspen and Terra, who had been lifelong best friends up until that point, were no longer speaking. They had actually gotten into a food fight in the cafeteria one lunch hour. I wasn’t there, having dropped out the year before, but I heard all about it like everyone else. Terra dumped a plate of the special—spaghetti and meat sauce—on Aspen’s head.
They told people it was a fight over a prom dress. Aspen bought the one Terra had been saving up for. But damn, it was quite the fight over a dress. After prom night, when we started dating, Aspen wouldn’t even let me say Terra’s name without getting pissed off. It strained our relationships because when I wasn’t with Aspen I was with the Hawkins family. Lucy and Charlie had really helped me out a few years earlier, when I was sixteen and applied for emancipation from my mom, by letting me rent the apartment above the restaurant. And although they weren’t thrilled when I dropped out of high school, they gave me full-time dishwasher hours at the Shack so I was around Terra all the time. I always wondered if the real problem was that Aspen sensed how much I liked that.
But now she’s clearly matured because she doesn’t make a snide comment about the mix-up. She just drinks her orange juice and leans against the counter. She points to the shirt she’s wearing, which is one of my T-shirts. “I didn’t grab much clothes and needed something to sleep in,” she says as I reach for the one of the plates of food. “Hope you don’t mind.”
“It’s fine,” I say and grab the fork from my camping kit that’s beside the tin camping plate. I jump up to sit on the counter, since I don’t have furniture yet, and Aspen walks over to the fridge. The shirt hits her mid-thigh but when she bends a bit to put the unwanted coffee inside the fridge, I get a clear view of the bottom of her ass, covered in lacey hot pink boy shorts.
I feel nothing sexual at the sight. That’s new.
“You sleep okay?”
“I was out like a light. Pregnancy makes you sleep like you’re in a coma. Probably because once the baby is born your body knows you’ll never sleep again.” She says it so casually, like the fact that she’s pregnant and her entire life is about to change, is no big deal.
“How are you so calm about this?”
She shrugs. “I had a bit of a meltdown when I realized my period was M.I.A., and I was shaking so hard taking the home test I almost didn’t even get enough pee on the stick. But I knew the minute I saw the little plus sign that this was just happening and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it but accept it. I won’t get an abortion, Jake. I’m not against them at all and fully support anyone who wants one, but I don’t want one. So I’m at peace with this new, unplanned path and I’m rolling with it. And that’s why I’m not keeping you on the hook. This is my decision. I’m not giving you a say.”
“First of all I would never ever ask you to consider abortion,” I reply. “This is one hundred percent your body and your decision. But if it’s mine, I’m a parent and that’s my decision. Don’t try and take it from me okay? The way Bethany tries to take it away from Logan.”
“Logan gave her good reason in the beginning,” Aspen reminds me but then she smiles. “You’ll be great at it, Jake. I know you don’t think you will, but you will. I hope it is yours because the other guy … he wants kids less than you. And he’s not the person you are.”
“Who is he?”
She shakes her head. “Nope. Not telling. I mean, if he isn’t the dad, you don’t need to know I hooked up with him. If he is, well, he should know first.”
I want to fight her on that, but she’s right. “Fair enough. But it was more than a hook-up wasn’t it?”
She nods. “It was for me. A lot more. Went on for months. But I don’t think he ever saw it as more.”
“Have you told Abbott about the baby?” I ask and she shakes her head. “But you will.”
“Eventually.”
“The parents?”
She laughs out loud at the idea she’d tell her parents. I’m not surprised. Mr. and Mrs. Barlowe are cold, rigid, mean people if you really looked past the money and power they hide behind.
“I have no intention of telling them,” Aspen replies, her tone indicating there is no room for discussion on this. Not that I would talk her into telling those sanctimonious assholes.
“So… I Googled information about paternity tests,” I say as she motions for me to continue eating, and I spear some scrambled eggs covered in melted pepper jack with my fork. “We can find out really easily as soon as we want. It just takes a couple blood tests and about five days wait time.”
She glances up at me with puppy dog eyes. “Can I at least figure out the whole ruined apartment thing first? I can only handle so much at a time.”
She has probably lost almost everything. She’ll be allowed back in there today to assess the damage and see what can be saved, then there’ll be a lot of debating back-and-forth with insurance companies because they’re never easy to work with. “You need to tell Abbott so he can help you find a place to crash. It’ll take a few weeks to sort stuff with the insurance companies.”
She sighs. “He just got to training camp and he’ll want to turn around and come back. That can’t happen.”
“Unfortunately, you can’t stay here, so he’s your best bet, Aspen,” I say. “I’m not trying to be mean.”
She frowns but reaches for her phone which is on the floor by air mattress. “You can feed Major my breakfast. I’m not going to want it after this call.”
