Page 43 of Only for Tonight
“Don’t you have to go?”
“Later.” He disconnects the phone and all I can do is stare at it.
“What the hell is happening right now?” I ask the phone. “Are you really going to move across the country for him?” I ask myself. “You aren’t doing it for him,” I correct myself. “You are doing it for the baby also.” I put my hand on my stomach. “I mean you work from home anyway and there are days that you don’t even leave your apartment.” I tap my belly. “Besides, if he could move, he would without even a second thought.” I smile at that, knowing that he would literally move without even blinking an eye. “And ever since you’ve been back home,” I sigh out, “you’ve been lonely without him.” I’m about to say something else to myself when I hear the doorbell ringing.
Smiling when I get to the door and seeing it’s my parents, I open the door. “There she is,” my mother coos and stops smiling. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing, why?” I ask. She slowly comes into the apartment, her hands going to my shoulders as she searches my eyes.
“You look ill,” she declares, looking back over at my father. “Doesn’t she look ill?”
I close my eyes and shake my head. “She looks fine,” my father says. “Now, are you going to hug her, or am I?”
“She doesn’t look fine,” my mother hisses at him and then puts her hand to my forehead. “She’s not hot.”
“That’s because she’s fine,” he repeats, leaning in front of her and kissing my cheek. “Hey, baby girl.” He hugs me with my mother in the middle of the hug. “My two girls.”
“Dad, you’re squishing me”—my stomach lurches—“and I have to pee.” I make up the excuse as I run away from them and close the door, Inhaling through my nose and out through my mouth. “Don’t do this.” I put my hand on my stomach. “Not today.” I turn on the water faucet, wetting my hand and then putting it on the back of my neck. “Especially not today, you are going to have to tough it out until they leave if you are going to have me throw up.” I look down at my stomach in the mirror. “Do we have a deal?”
I wait a couple of minutes before I go back out there, finding my father sitting on the couch with my mother in the kitchen. “Make yourselves at home.”
“She’s funny,” my father says. “We ordered pizza.” He turns on Sports Center. “How come you don’t have the hockey network?”
“Because I don’t watch hockey,” I tell him.
“Big game tonight,” he mumbles, taking out his phone and then putting it to his ear. “Yeah, how do I sign into my account at your sister’s house so I can watch the hockey network?” he asks. “What do you mean I can’t? It’s my account,” he grunts. “Stone is playing Jaxon tonight.” He then looks at me. “You have some cable or something? I can log in online and mirror it.”
“All this for a hockey game,” I mutter, trying not to let them see that just the mention of Jaxon perks me up and I’m pretty sure my cheeks get pink.
Heading to my office, I grab my laptop and bring it to the living room. “Here.” I hand it to him.
“Do you have a HDMI cord?”
“Cable?” I ask him and he glares.
“Whatever it’s called,” he retorts and I point to the television. He gets on FaceTime, and thirty minutes later, while I’m sitting at the island listening to my mother talk about the holidays this year as I sip my ginger ale, my father finally gets the television to work.
“Yes,” he hisses, “it’s working.”
“Look.” He points to the television screen and we see a team bus pull into the arena. The door opens and then I swear my breath gets caught when I see him walking off the bus, wearing a blue suit, white shirt, and no tie. In his hand is a white cup of coffee, I think. He looks at the camera for a second and then looks away. “There’s Jaxon,” my father announces.
“Thanks for letting me know.” I smile big at him while he side-eyes me. “You act like I don’t know him. I know it’s Jaxon.”
“So much drama with him lately,” my mother mentions and I whip my head to look at her.
“What do you mean?” I try not to act like I’m panicking, but I’m secretly panicking. Did he tell someone about us? Did he tell someone I’m pregnant? Did it get back to them? I look at her and then my father, thinking they definitely don’t know or else this would be a war zone.
“Well, apparently”—my mother leans her hip on my counter—“his girlfriend called Evelyn and said she caught him in bed with someone else.”
“Ex-girlfriend.” My father comes to his defense.
“She called Evelyn, and said what?” The back of my neck turns to fire. The sound of my heart beating echoes in my ears, and I have to wonder if I’m having a stroke right now. The left side of my body goes numb. Even though Jaxon told me, hearing it from my mother is another thing. I also try to get as much information that she has to make sure that our secret is still safe.
“Just that he wronged her and strung her along while he was fucking this other woman.”
“Didn’t string her along if he broke up with her,” my father interjects. “From what Manning says, Jaxon said they were over for a while.”
“Well, she sounds deranged,” I pipe in. “Who barges in someone’s house?”
