Page 18 of Only for Tonight
I walk toward his white door, not sure what I’m thinking, but for the last week my head has been all over the place. I think I’ve gone through every single emotion that you can possibly go through. I have nothing to compare it to, but, in that moment, I felt like the world was crashing all around me. Finding out I was pregnant was one thing, but then it was like, wait a second. Not only am I pregnant, but I’m pregnant with Jaxon’s baby and it was a whole different emotion. It took me a week to come to terms with flying out here and telling him. Something I almost chickened out of doing by being the last one to board the plane. Fuck, even arriving yesterday and going to the hotel, I kept having to remind myself this isn’t news one hears on the phone.
In all honesty, how do you break the news to someone you had literally one night with that you are having their child? It’s actually insane. I press the doorbell before I can chicken out, and the minute I do, I feel like I’m going to yack all over the place. I turn around, looking at the car I parked next to and then suddenly wonder if I should maybe have called him before I just showed up at his house unannounced. I close my eyes, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth to calm down the nerves and also to push away the nausea.
“This is a bad idea,” I tell myself and I’m about to take off when I hear footsteps coming toward the door. “He probably has a Ring cam and he’s going to watch this after and be like this bitch is One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” I mumble as the door opens and I start to turn around to face him.
I can’t help the smile that forms on my face. He’s wearing basketball shorts with his team’s logo on them with a black T-shirt, with the team name, Warriors, in purple also with his number 13 on the shoulder part of the shirt. A black baseball hat is backward, hiding his hair. “Ariella,” he says my name, shocked that I’m standing here on his doorstep. If the roles were reversed, I would probably be as shocked as he is right now.
“Hey,” I reply, lifting my hand in the air, “I was in the neighborhood.” The minute the words come out of my mouth, I want to bite my tongue. How the fuck would I be in the neighborhood if I live in New York and he lives in California? “I mean, not the neighborhood, but I was in town. I was in the area is more like it.” I laugh nervously.
“Oh, come in, please,” he invites, moving away from the door so I step in, standing in his entranceway right next to him. The smell of his aftershave brings back memories of that night that I have forced myself not to think about.
“I should have called,” I state when I hear the click of the door behind me. “I was out for a drive and—” Stop talking, my head yells to me, for the love of God, stop fucking talking.
“Come in, come in.” I take a second to look around the living room. It takes me a second to know that either his mother designed this room, or he hired a decorator to do it. Everything matches, and as a bachelor, this doesn’t make sense. Unless his girlfriend decorated the house and my stomach lurches for a whole other reason. “Do you want something to drink?” he asks me as we walk past the staircase. I look up to see the glass ceiling showing you not a cloud in the sky. He steps into the family room and I stop in my tracks when I see the back wall that faces the ocean.
“Oh my,” I gasp, my feet walking on their own toward the glass as I watch the water in the distance softly roll to the shore, “this is stunning.”
“It’s the main reason I bought the house,” he says and I chuckle.
“It would be the only reason for me,” I admit to him as he stands side by side with me. The smell of him makes my mouth water for a whole different reason. “I love the ocean,” I tell him for reasons unknown to anyone, myself included. My mouth is just nervously speaking and I would like it to stop before it blurts out things that should be said rationally. However, how does one rationally say you and your super sperm got me knocked up after one night?
“And yet you live in New York City.” He chuckles.
“There is water all around me.” I shake my head. “Not this kind of water”—I point to the aqua ocean—“but still.” My eyes roam the balcony in front of me, a firepit in the middle of it with two couches on one side, and then on the other a square table sits with six chairs. I could literally see him eating outside.
“Let me get you something to drink.” He turns and walks away from me, and it gives me a chance to look around. The big plush couch is so deep it’s almost as big as a double bed. To the right of me is a big, long wooden table with a white bowl in the middle. Ten chairs are all around the table, and I wonder if he’s ever had ten people over to have a meal with. “I have Gatorade or water.”
I shake my head. “I bet you have chicken in there also.”
“You would be right,” he confirms and I shake my head, walking over to the island that separates the kitchen table from the fridge.
“Shocking. I’ll have water.” He grabs the bottle of water and then comes back and hands it to me.
“This is a surprise,” he says as I twist open the cap.
“You have no idea,” I mumble and take a sip of the water. “There was actually another reason,” I start to tell him, but something catches my eyes from the side.
I look over and see a woman walking down the steps wearing one of his white shirts, her blonde hair swaying side to side. Her eyes are on me and not in a friendly way at all. “What do we have here?” she says once she gets to the last step and walks into the room.
“Tiffany,” Jaxon says her name and I feel like I’m going to be sick, and the only thing now going through my head is getting the fuck out of here.
“I was just leaving,” I reply quickly, taking one look back at Jaxon. “Thank you so much for the water.” I hold up the bottle. “I’ll let myself out.” My feet move so fast I’m practically running out of the house, the door closing behind me. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.” I open the driver’s door to the rental car, tossing the water bottle onto the passenger seat while I get into the car and press the button to start it. I pull out of his driveway and head down the road, not even knowing where I’m going but needing to get the fuck out of there.
I drive for five minutes before I pull over to the side of the road. With the water on one side and mountains on the other, I put my head on the steering wheel. “Well, that went well.” I turn my head to the side, looking at the water in the distance. “That didn’t go at all like we planned,” I say, putting my hand on my stomach. “I don’t know what I’m going to do, little nugget.” I take a deep inhale before I sit up and put the hotel name in the phone.
I make my way to the hotel, my head spinning as I pull up to the hotel by the fountain in the front where people drive in. I stop in front of the valet sign, my door opens as soon as I put the car in park. “Welcome back, Ms. Weber,” the man from this morning greets me, “I hope you had a fun afternoon.”
“It was eventful.” I smile at him. “I won’t need the car the rest of the day,” I tell him as I grab my purse from the passenger seat and the bottle of water. I walk around the car as he gets in and head into the lobby before going to the elevators. People bustle around in the lobby while other people lounge in the area in front of the check-in desk.
Once I’m standing in front of the elevators, I glance to the back where the restaurant overlooks the pool area. Half of the tables are empty while the other half are filled with people enjoying their lunches. The elevator doors ping and I step in before I press the number twenty-two.
Only once I’m inside the room do I lean back against the door and close my eyes. “What the fuck am I going to do now?” I turn my head and look at the couch in the room, tossing my purse on it before heading to the bedroom and collapsing on the bed. “Well, the plan to tell him I’m pregnant did not look like that,” I say to myself. “There was never a girlfriend anywhere in the scenarios I had in my head.” I turn on the bed and reach over to the bedside phone.
Pressing the room service button, I wait for them to answer. “Good afternoon, Ms. Weber, how can we help?”
“Hi, can I please have some french fries,” I tell her, “some chicken tenders, and then do you have burgers by any chance?”
“We do, we have smash burgers or regular burgers.”
