Page 56 of Mating of Convenience
“Yeah, sorry, I’m too used to watching my words around here.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I wish I could say that there’s no way this alphahole is going to gain custody of his children, but the world we live in is very, very far from perfect and when it’s alpha vs omega you know the game is always rigged in favor of the alpha. It’s why the work we do here is so important.”
“I get that. It’s great work.” I licked my lips, wondering if this was the right time to tell Conner that I’d be handing in my resignation soon. Probably not. Instead, I chose to focus on Laurence. “He’s told me that his ex might not be the kids’ bio dad. Apparently he’s had unprotected sex with someone else around the time he conceived.”
Surprise flitted across my friend’s features. “He told you that?”
“Yeah. Would it tilt the scales in his favor if the alphahole wasn’t genetically related to the children?”
“It might. I need to talk to our lawyer.” He made to grab for his phone, but then realized that I was still in the room and it might be rude.
“Go ahead,” I said with a short laugh. “I’ll get back to work too.”
Conner reached for the phone, but again, paused before he could reach it. “Speaking of work… how much longer do you think you’ll be working with us?”
I stopped halfway to the door. “What do you mean?”
“C’mon, Raph, you know what I mean.” My friend looked at me with that ‘don’t give me any crap’ look he’d patented over the time we’d spent living together. “I know working here isn’t exactly your dream job.”
“No, but the work we do is important.”
“I know that. I love this job and what we do here, but that doesn’t mean I think everybody wants to be doing it. It’s good work...” He let his eyes roam over his desk as if taking in all the papers stacked there and planning out the next few days’ worth of work in his head. “It’s good work, but it’s also exhausting,” he said eventually. “Especially if you don’t have a passion for it.”
“So what are you saying? That I should quit?”
“I’m saying that maybe you need to start thinking about getting a job that’s better suited to you if you’re staying in town. You’re staying in town, right?” He glanced at the ring on my finger.
I glanced at it too. It had an almost red glint to it in the light of the evening sun shining in through the office window. “I’m not going to leave Nathan, if you’re suggesting that.”
“I’m suggesting that not leaving Nathan means staying in Oceanport. I don’t get the feeling that you’ve quite wrapped your head around that. You have ahouseand ahusband.”
“I know that!” But I was cringing all the same. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, my friend had a point. Whenever thoughts of the future tried to creep to the forefront of my mind, I’d shove them back into a distant corner to gather some more dust. None of this had been planned.Noneof it. So what if it took me a little time to process it all?
And what if Nathan changed his mind about how much he wanted a family?
We’d never even talked about whether or not we were going to stay married after our year was up. I didn’tthinkNathan would want to get a divorce, but how could I know for sure? And how could I blame him if he did?
“I don’t mean to pressure you,” Conner said. “It’s just something I feel you need to think about more. Wouldn’t it be cool for you to have a tattoo studio in Oceanport?”
“A tattoo studio in Oceanport?”
“You could probably make it work if you really wanted to. You’re still getting money from your grandmother, right?”
“I am,” I admitted grudgingly, because this was not something I wanted to talk about even if the fact was that my grandmother’s money was the reason Nathan and I were getting by as well as we were. “We need to focus on Nathan getting his store first,” I tried to weasel my way out of the conversation.
“Sure, whatever you say.” Conner gave me a long look, but finally he relented. “I gotta get back to work. See what I can do for Laurence and his kids.”
“All right, I’ll be at my computer, pushing papers.Happilypushing papers,” I added before I ducked out of the room.
The less time I had to spend thinking about the future the better.
What was wrong with living in the here and now?
28
Nathan
As summer turned into fall, we got an unexpected visitor one day. Out of the blue, the doorbell rang around 3pm on a Sunday afternoon, Michel went wild with excitement, and when I went to get the door, it was no other but my great-grandmother in her electric wheelchair.
I looked at her and then at our driveway before letting my gaze sweep the road. No cars in sight, except for those parked in front of the neighboring houses anyway. “Grandma? Did you come here all by herself?” It wouldn’t be the first time she escaped the care facility to wheel her way all over town.
