She keeps her eyes on the baby as she wipes his face with a paper towel and shakes some rice puffs from a small container onto the table. His chubby hands grab them immediately and he brings them to his open mouth. “Well, you and Diana had sex. A lot of it, and I guess you weren’t always safe.”
"We were. As far as I know," I reply quickly. She frowns and glares at me with the wide-set hazel eyes. "I mean we used condoms. We had two break, but she said she was on something."
“She was,” Mallory admits. “But that time we came to see you out here…”
The memories flick through my brain like snapshots. Most of them involved that last night where we did things that maybe we shouldn’t have.
“That was… a great weekend. Mostly. Except you getting weird at the end,” I mutter and I know the second I say it I shouldn’t have.
"Sorry I couldn't cope with fooling around with my bestie's boy toy while she watched," she snaps. "Anyway, he was conceived that weekend. Diana had just gotten over a sinus infection. Just finished a course of antibiotics and so her birth control was weakened. Some drugs do that. Of course, she didn't figure that out until she got a positive pregnancy test the day before she moved to London.”
“Oh.” I take a deep, slow breath and look at the back of his blond head, and his chunky legs swinging in contentment as he eats his rice puffs. “And she went anyway? Without even telling me?”
“Diana had a job waiting for her in London and her sister, and she knew I was moving there too, and she wasn’t going to give that up to tell you about a baby she thought you didn’t want.”
“And now she’s… gone and I’m a dad.”
“If you choose to be, yeah.”
I glare at her now. “I don’t have a choice. It’s fact. He’s mine, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m his dad.”
“Dads are more than sperm donors,” Mallory counters. “And you didn’t ask for this.”
I stand up and run my hands through my hair, still damp from a shower. A shower that feels like it happened a lifetime ago. I was joking with the guys, high off the win and the anticipation that I would beat my dad’s record. I scored yet another shorty tonight. Now smashing the record is a mere two goals away. One if I was just to tie with Dad, which wouldn’t be horrible.
And now… I'm sitting here with a long-lost frenemy and a child. My child. "Diana didn't ask for it either, but she kept him. And I would have stood by that decision and been there for him and for her if she had fucking told me. Why didn't she tell me?"
Mallory’s face softens with compassion. So she doesn’t totally hate me, I guess. Or at least she can relate to how I feel. “She knew that you would be there for her, but that it wasn’t what you wanted. Or needed. She knew what she was and wasn’t to you, and she didn’t want to force you into making her into more than what she was just because of Dylan.”
“Dylan,” I say my child’s name for the first time. It feels weird on my tongue. I hate that it feels weird. I like that his name is Dylan though. It’s nice. “Why didn’tyoutell me?”
Mallory frowns. “Diana and I… we both moved to London at the same time but not together, as we originally planned. I didn’t talk to her for a while after the weekend here. I changed my flight so we were on different ones. I didn’t reach out to her. I ignored her emails. By the time I knew about Dylan, she was all settled into this new life, with a fiancé who said he wanted them both. She did promise me she would tell you this summer. Before the paperwork with Felix was signed in case you did want to claim parental rights. She promised me she would give you the option.”
“When’s his birthday?”
“July twenty-fourth.”
I nod. My son's birthday is July twenty-fourth. What was I doing while he was entering the world last summer? I was in Silver Bay. I was probably at my uncle's bar, joking around with my cousins, drinking some beer, or maybe playing golf with my dad and uncles. I was doing nothing of any kind of importance and something incredibly important was happening without me. I have a wave of anger toward Diana that is drowned out only by a wave of guilt. Whatever her reasons for doing this to me, she's gone and she didn't deserve to have her life cut so short. God, this is so fucked.
Dylan lets out a bit of a high-pitched noise and slaps his hands on the table. "Okay Dyllie Bear, just need you to drink more for me, okay?"
She hands him a bottle she has filled with what looks like milk. I have no idea when she got that. Did she bring milk from England? Mallory must see me eyeing it, confused. "Powder formula. He was still being breastfed but… well, she was weaning him anyway."
Oh my God. She’s dead. Diana is dead. The revelation keeps pounding me, like a hammer. I just stare as Mallory goes about unpacking other stuff from her suitcase. She glances up at me. “He’s going to need to go straight to bed after this, to try and regulate him to this time zone.”
“I don’t—I have a guest room but, like, no crib.”
“Of course you don’t.” She smiles, but it’s not happy. It’s full of woe. “I have a portable sleeping pod for him.”
“A what?”
“It’s like a crib-tent thingy.” She doesn’t elaborate further. “It’s in the yellow suitcase still in your trunk.”
“I’ll go get it now.” She winces as she picks Dylan out of the chair thingy. “Are you okay?”
