Page 27 of Doctor Daddy Dilemma

“I’m here to see Charlotte.” It felt odd using her given name, like after being so close with her, we’d gone back to being strangers. It hurt me. I hated it.

“Oh God…” The woman sighed hard and grimaced at the mention of Charlie’s name and something told me I wasn’t going to see her, at least not here. “This is super awkward. I know something’s going down between you two, but she’s not here.” The leggy brunette bit her lip and shook her head. “She was fired this morning.”

“What? Why?” I scowled and looked around for that piece of work, Tucker James, the man who’d made Charlie’s life hell for months. I was ready to tear him limb from limb and unleash all this anger on him so it wasn’t on my chest when I finally did see her.

“The boss didn’t like the content she was writing or something. He blamed it on budget cuts due to lower subscription rates. I’m sorry I’m the one who had to tell you.”

I could tell this woman was probably close with Charlie. She seemed like a good person and since I didn’t see any men who looked as if they could be the boss, I had to control my temper outburst so as not to come off looking like a lunatic.

“Well…” I huffed and I scowled but held my tongue from any further comment about Charlie’s obvious wrongful termination. “I will have to look somewhere else. Thank you for your time…”

“Amy… Sorry. I wish I could help.” She said the right words, but I got the feeling even if she could help that she’d been sworn to secrecy by Charlie and wouldn’t tell me anything anyway.

Nodding my acceptance of her apology I retreated back to the elevator and for the third time today called an Uber. Thankfully, the man who pulled up driving a small electric vehicle was not the Chatty Cathy who had driven me to the paper. I was able to sit in companionable silence and watch out the window as we passed through traffic.

Back at Charlie’s apartment, I knocked again only to get the same response—no response. So I sat down on her colorful doormat and picked up the paper and decided to wait for her. I’d lean against her door and nod off if I had to, but I wasn’t moving until she got home and we hashed this out like real adults.

With nothing else to do, I opened the paper and skimmed the headlines, searching for Charlie’s personal interest story. There were a few other articles by her but not the one I was searching for. I’d read the first three installments on the website after purchasing an online subscription, and they were well-written. But this one evaded me until I turned to the second to last page of the paper.

A picture of me with my arm around Ellen Drake, shielding her from the camera-wielding maniacs thirsty for their shot. Smaller images collaged into the larger picture revealed the contents of Ellen’s bag on the ground at our feet—her sundries that were no one’s business. I didn’t even have to read the article to know what was happening. Charlie had finally been so pressured by her boss into publishing trash just for subscriptions that she had caved and done it.

I skimmed the words, getting more and more hurt by every sentence she’d written, accusations of me being a player and “woman-surfing Miami,” even bits about my childhood and upbringing. It gutted me. I was so upset I almost got up and left. Was this why she just stopped talking to me? She published this drivel and was terrified I wouldn’t respect her or care about her anymore? And could she even believe this trash?

“Hey you…” I looked up at the voice; a man, mid-twenties, stood near a door down the hallway with keys in hand. “That apartment’s vacant, buddy. Chick who lived there bailed. I got this awesome radio though. Super’s coming by tomorrow to empty the place out and clean it.”

My heart clenched. I didn’t understand what I was hearing. “What?” She moved too? That was absurd.

“Yeah, man. Came home from work this morning—you know I work the night shift, so I was just getting off work myself. Anyway, she came back about forty minutes after she left and slammed the door; woke up half the building. When I was going to the vending machine for a soda, she was comin’ out carrying bags of stuff. Told me to take anything I wanted. She’s moving back home she said.”

The man was about as chatty as the stupid Uber driver, and I wanted to jam pencils in my ears so I didn’t have to hear him. If this was true and Charlie really was moving back home, there wasn’t much more to talk about. And with this article, and the very hurtful things she’d said about me, I didn’t know if I wanted to work it out anymore anyway.

I thanked the man and walked out, heading straight to the closest bar for a drink. I didn’t even know what to think anymore. Things with Charlie were so real to me, but maybe she just used me, the way she accused me of using women. It was the only thing that made sense, but then, it made no sense at all. All I knew was a drink was essential, and I didn’t stop at one. This night called for a bottle.

21

CHARLIE

Iforgot how warm El Paso was when I came rushing back here. Tampa might have been farther south, but with the cool breeze off the ocean, it never felt like this. And being pregnant, carrying this little bun in my oven, only seemed to make the heat worse. I sat behind my parents’ house at the patio table with the large orange umbrella shading me from the sun. Even in the clutches of late fall, the temps were so hot it was unbearable. I sipped a glass of ice water and fanned myself.

“You should be inside in the air conditioning,” Mom chided me as she sat down on the chair to my right. Dad, seated to my left drinking a cup of hot tea, raised an eyebrow as he scrolled through his phone, but I didn’t ask what he was looking at.

For the past few months, they’d both been doting on me and my growing stomach. With Thanksgiving and Christmas approaching they were already hitting the stores to purchase every single thing I could possibly need for this baby. There would be no point throwing a baby shower; I’d already have it all. The hallway closet was stocked full of diapers, wipes, baby clothes, you name it. I felt grateful for their outpouring of love—and lack of judgment when it came to my out-of-wedlock pregnancy. But they really couldn’t afford this.

“I don’t want to sit inside all day every day.” I rested my hand on my stomach and felt my little guy kicking. It wasn’t happening all the time yet, but the flutters were growing stronger, and my belly refused to fit into normal pants now. I had to use a rubber band through the buttonhole to make space. Mom promised to take me shopping, but again I refused. I would survive on leggings and baggy dresses for a while longer.

I had no income, had no prospects for a job either, though I’d applied at dozens with no luck. There was no doubt in my mind that Lex had probably looked me up and knew exactly where I was, but he’d stopped calling weeks ago and he never showed up. He’d finally gotten the point, which both broke my heart and made me relieved.

“We could go to the mall, buy some maternity clothes,” Mom suggested, but their budget was already stretched with me here. I wasn’t taking another thing from them. And as soon as I found a job I intended to pay them back for everything they’d already done. Being here was a blessing and a curse.

“Says here they’re having open auditions for a news anchor position and potentially a host position for Wake Up California.” Dad flashed his phone at me, raising an eyebrow. “You should go and try out.” His thick accent still warmed my heart. It was a part of his life in Guatemala that he never got rid of, no matter how long he lived here in the States.

“Dad, I’m not a news anchor. I’m a journalist.” And the positions for print journalism were shrinking just as fast as the market for news publications. I had an interview for a job in New York, but it was too far away from my family now that I was pregnant. There was a job available in Toronto, and they probably would have hired me on the spot, but I couldn’t move to a different country. And there were plenty of jobs behind the scenes writing prompts for teleprompter machines for local news stations, but those had been inundated with the growing population of out-of-work writers.

The more frustrating my job search became, the more I ached to have Lex back, my former job back, the life I had only a few months ago. That ache pulled at the corners of my mouth, but I forced a smile anyway. If I allowed myself to break down over him, there would be a never-ending spiral of negative emotions. I didn’t want my tiny growing baby’s brain developing in all that negativity.

“I think you should try, Charlie.” Dad shoved his phone toward me and I glanced at the screen. The colorful infographic was displayed on a news website, which made me cringe. Even my aging parents were choosing to move away from print to more online news sources. It didn’t bode well for my career.

I stared at the phone screen while Dad gently lectured me about considering shifting my expectations and goals for what I wanted to do with my life. His voice faded into the background noise of traffic on the highway out front and birds in the trees chirping, and my mind wandered back to Lex, then to this baby and how badly my heart hurt over keeping this secret.

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