Page 51 of A Match Made In Evan
“Hey!” I splay my left hand over my chest dramatically. “That’s my engagement ring you’re mocking.”
My timing is impeccable. Spluttering and coughing, Connor gasps for air over his coffee mug. He has dribbles of the lightbrown liquid down his chin and he swipes at them with the back of his hand. “You waited until I took a sip on purpose.”
“You can’t prove that.”
He snorts. “Seriously, though. Engagement ring?” He cocks his head. “Your fiancé has…interesting taste in jewellery.”
On game nights, we all shoot the shit and talk about our lives. I’ve mentioned going on dates with women a few times, but he gets points for not asking me outright whether I’m engaged to a woman or a man.
“I bought the rings as a joke, actually,” I admit. “My best friend, James, he…got himself into a situation.”
Connor raises his eyebrows and ignores his husband —who has bundled Vicky up in her pram with a nappy bag hung over the handles and has paused by the front door to bid us farewell— in preference of rolling his wrist in a ‘hurry up’ gesture.
I wave at Will somewhat apologetically. He just shakes his head, calls out a quick ‘love you’ to Connor, then leaves as I start telling my story.
“So, because it’s Jay, I said that I’d pretend to be his fiancé. That…kind of snowballed.” I give the summarised version of being roped into co-parenting for school events, and being forced to share beds and, ultimately, working out that I’ve fallen arse over teakettle for my best mate. “I had a little freak out about that. Not so much about being in love with a man, but being in love with my best friend. Turns out, he feels the same way about me, and we’ve spent a few weeks in a happy little relationship bubble.”
“Why do I sense a ‘but’?”
Pushing away the twelve-year-old-like instinct to laugh at the word ‘butt’, I nod. “Things are a bit…strained…in his house right now.”
“The daughter?”
I nod. “Yeah. Mia.” I smile softly. “I love that kid.”
“Did she not take the news of you being together well?”
“She doesn’t know yet. We were going to tell her —we actually had a conversation about that the other day, after Jay came out to his colleague— but she dropped a pretty big bomb of her own.”
Placing his mug on the coffee table, Connor inclines his head again. He reminds me a little of a chihuahua every time he does. I’m not quite sure why. Maybe it’s the big, round, curious eyes.
Exhaling, I tell him, “She might be pregnant. And, you know, Jay was a teen dad himself, so he’s…well, he’s kind of alternating between freaking out and wanting to be the kind of parent to her that his were for him. The difference is, she’s still in high school while he was already at uni…so, yeah. Things are…tense. And I might have made them worse.”
He blinks. “How?”
“I, uh, I told Jay that if she was putting the baby up for adoption…maybe” —I clear my throat and look at the remnants of coffee and milk foam swirling at the bottom of my mug— “maybe we could adopt it.”
“Jesus,” he breathes. “That’s…”
“I know.”
“It’s just—”
“No, I get it. We’ve only been dating —really dating— for, like, a month. And kids are a lifetime commitment, and they put strain on any relationships, let alone new relationships, and…I just thought, y’know, that kid would be a quarter James.”
“So,” Connor says tentatively, as if he’s trying to be as tactful and gentle as possible, “did you make that suggestion because you want kids? Or because some part of you feels like, with James as its biological grandfather—what?”
My face must be contorted in the same level of rising horror that I can feel. “Grandfather,” I repeat. “Holy shit. He…he might be a granddad at thirty-five.”
Connor’s lips twitch in amusement before he schools his expression. “That’s generally what happens when someone’s kid has a kid.”
“Would…would that make it weird? Adopting his grandkid and raising it as his own?”
“I’m raising my niece as my daughter, so you’re asking the wrong person,” he shrugs. “But, for the record, no. I don’t think that’s weird. However…”
I sigh. “You’re going back to asking if it’s an obligation thing, aren’t you?”
“Is it?”
