Page 23 of Play the Game
Maybe one day I’ll question this wordless communication between us. How, for this one moment in time, we are so in sync,reading each other’s thoughts like we’ve spoken them out loud, like maybe when you find out the person sitting across from you is pregnant with your child you suddenly mind-meld and words become unnecessary.
But not today.
Today my hand moves of its own accord, laying over Evan’s, a little zap of electricity where we touch, our eyes still locked together. “How do you feel?”
She doesn’t move her hand from under mine, the only evidence she registers the connection at all the slight twitch of her fingers. “I’m surprised that’s your first question.”
I tilt my head and study her. The slight challenge in her gaze. That same vulnerability I saw the other night that I can tell she’s desperate to hide from me. “What did you think my first question would be?”
She huffs out a laugh, sliding her hand out from under mine and sitting back in her chair, reaching into a drawer for an unopened seltzer can, popping the top and taking a sip. She makes that face again and presses her hand back to her stomach, sighing when she registers my eyebrow raised in question. “It’s not cold enough. Apparently, the only drink that doesn’t make me want to puke my guts up is cherry seltzer so cold it’s practically frozen.”
Most of my brain is still racing with the implications of Evan’s quiet bombshell, but a smaller, more instinctive part somehow knows exactly what to do.
“Stay here,” I say, standing up and striding down the hall to the kitchen, grabbing the tallest glass I can find and filling the whole thing with ice. I walk back to Evan’s office and take my seat again, pouring her drink over the ice and swirling the glass enough that the seltzer gets cold but not so much that it goes flat. When I slide the glass across the desk, she’s staring at me like she’s never seen me before. “So, what did you think my first question would be?”
She shakes her head, as if she’s trying to reorder herthoughts, and takes a sip of the now-cold seltzer, letting out a little hum that sounds like relief. “I thought you would ask me if I’m sure you’re the father.”
“I don’t need to ask you a question I already know the answer to.”
“Other men might ask.”
I run a hand through my hair, trying to decide how to respond to that. Not much is out of my depth, but I think I’ve found one of the things that is. “Have any other work enemies you’re fucking in a conference room at two in the morning?”
She shrugs, making an attempt at casual, but I can tell she feels about as casual as I do, talking about our conference room interlude for the first time since it happened almost eight weeks ago. “You don’t know. Maybe I’m having sex all over this law firm.”
“You could be, but you’re not.”
She gives me that narrow-eyed glare, and in this moment, something about it is oddly settling. I’m not sure if I like that, but here we are anyway. “And how do you know that?”
I smirk at her. “Because when I touched you, you moaned like it’s been years since someone fucked you properly.”
Evan scoffs, taking another sip of her seltzer. “Maybe I just really, really like sex.”
“You should like sex. And damn, are you good at it. Doesn’t change the fact that I was the first person you had it with in months. Maybe a year.”
She looks at me for a long time, like she’s trying to figure me out, and somehow, despite the fact that I just found out she’s pregnant and I’m the father, and at any other time except for this one Evan and I spar like fighters in a ring, this moment is oddly comfortable. “You’re kind of spooky, Cooper. Like, you just know things.”
“I always have,” I say, leaning back in my chair and kicking my legs out in front of me, wondering why I feel like opening myself up to her, letting her see who I am beyond the guy atwork she likes to fight with. “I take after my grandma. She likes to tell everyone she’s a little bit psychic, but I think it’s mostly just intuition.” I shrug, trying to figure out how to explain it. “I understand people. I think it’s as simple as that.”
“Simple, huh?” When she presses her mouth into a line and drops her eyes down to her stomach, I know we’re not talking about my intuitive side anymore. I choose my next words carefully.
“Not always, but I’m pretty good at figuring things out and pivoting when necessary.”
“This is one fucked up pivot,” she mumbles.
For some reason, I chuckle because I guess when you find out your work rival who has made your life hell for the last two years who you kind of, sort of sometimes hate is pregnant and the baby is yours, you either laugh or scream. “I’ll say.”
Evan leans forward, face suddenly changing to something resembling exasperation. She slams her hands on her desk and stares at me. “How are you not freaking out?” she demands. I open my mouth to respond, but she plows on ahead. “I’m pregnant. With a baby. A baby that’s mine and yours, and we don’t even like each other. We had a one-night stand in a damn conference room, and now we’re going to be tied together for the rest of our lives. I’m dizzy all the time, so exhausted I could die, and I can’t stop throwing up. The only things I can eat right now without my stomach rebelling are sesame bagels with plain cream cheese, cherry Jolly Ranchers, and cold cherry seltzer—the weirdest combination of foods on the planet. I’m a goddamn lawyer up for partner next year right around the time I’m probably going to have this stupid baby, and I don’t know what to even think about that. I have a shitty mom, which means I don’t know how to be a mom, which means this baby is probably already doomed before he or she is even born. I don’t even know how pregnant I am. Did you know they measure pregnancy by the date of your last period? I didn’t know that, and now I can’t figure it out since I have no fucking clue when Ihad my last period because I fucked up my pills with all my all-nighters and then forgot that little detail, which is why we find ourselves in this delightful little nightmare scenario. I don’t have the PhD in the female reproductive system that you evidently need to figure out all this shit. I’m a lawyer. I know how to do that. I’m good at that. I’m not going to be any good at this. Everything is horrible about everything, and I don’t know how you can be so calm right now when the sky is fucking falling.”
Evan’s rant is abruptly cut off when she slaps a hand over her mouth and slides off her chair onto her knees, throwing up in the trash can. Standing quickly, I grab the box of tissues off the desk and kneel down next to her, gathering her hair up like I did at the stadium.
We stay like that for a few minutes until her stomach calms down. Handing her a tissue, I reach up and grab one of the Jolly Ranchers from her pile and hand that to her too. She mutters a thank you, unwrapping it and popping it into her mouth before sitting right down on the floor, her back against her desk and her legs stretched out in front of her, feet bare and eyes glued to the ground.
“I don’t want to be pregnant,” she whispers.
I sit back on my heels, considering my next words. “You don’t have to be if you don’t want to. It’s your body, Evan. It gets to be your choice.”
She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. “I can’t. I thought about it all night last night. I didn’t sleep at all. I came into the office at four thirty this morning because I couldn’t stare at my bedroom ceiling anymore, contemplating the fact that I’ve spent my entire life as a champion of a woman’s right to choose and yet I, myself, don’t want to make that choice. I always figured I would but I just…I can’t.”
