“César, did you hear me? Anything I just said? Your nutritional plan is the least of my worries. And I can’t eat most stuff, anyway, because everything makes me sick, but I never seem to know what will trigger it. Then sometimes I just want to eat something weird, like over the weekend all I wanted was mozzarella cheese with grape jelly. I ate a bag of the shredded kind like it was popcorn.” I shook my head. “But there’s a bigger issue. Not just the pregnancy, but what comes after. You and I, as parents.” I paused. “I’m going to keep the baby, for sure. You should know that before we talk about anything else.”
I waited a tick, but he just sat there, which frankly shocked me.
“You’re nodding, but do you understand what that means?” I pressed. “It means that you and I are going to be Mom and Dad, the whole ten yards.”
César and I, the two of us strangers, tied together life-long as parents. The pasta wasn’t sitting so well.
Chapter 3
César remained totally calm. “If you’re having my baby, then everything you eat and drink—” he started to say.
“Will you stop with that stuff? We don’t even know each other,” I said desperately. “I’ve only read your Woodsmen bio and you couldn’t spell my name at the doctor’s office. How are we going to be parents together?”
“We have twenty-eight more weeks until the baby comes. That’s a lot of time to learn.”
“Only twenty-eight weeks?” I asked faintly. The pasta in my stomach roiled more.
César didn’t notice, because he was busy stacking up papers on a clipboard, much like the one I’d had at the OB’s office earlier that afternoon. “I made up questionnaires so we can get to know each other. Here.” He slid over the clipboard. “You fill out yours, and I’ll fill out mine, and then we’ll trade.”
I had to admit that I was impressed as I flipped through the multiple pages. “This is going to take me a while to complete. You were very thorough,” I noted, reading the questions about my preference of cats versus dogs, my best and worst subjects in school, my favorite songs, apps, and colors.
“Here.” He handed me a pen and a glass of milk. “You should have the calcium and protein. Also, potassium and vitamin D.”
I stuck out my tongue but I did drink the milk as I worked through the questions. I had to grit my teeth as I came to the family history section. I didn’t like to talk about that very much—I had been the recipient of very surprising news about my parents in the fall, and it still felt fresh and raw to me. I filled it in anyway, because César was probably going to need to know about grandparents. Oh, God, grandparents?
“Are you done?” he asked.
“Almost.” I skipped ahead a little to the last question, which surprised me very, very much.
“You want to know about the night we spent together?” I asked César.
He nodded. “I wanted us to talk about it. I was really drunk.”
“We both were.”
“I’m sorry,” César said on a sigh. “I can’t believe that I didn’t use protection. I’m assuming I didn’t,” he said, looking at my stomach. I covered it with my hand.
“It’s as much my fault as it is yours. I don’t know what I was thinking.” I sighed too. “I guess I wasn’t.”
“At that point last year, I was so upset about the football season and how things were going for me. I was out on the field, but Coach Trener had basically removed me from the offensive strategy.”
“But a lot of the coaches got fired, right?” I asked. “They’re all gone for next year.”
César nodded again. “But at the time, it was a mess, and I was going crazy. And you and I started drinking tequila out of mugs.”
I felt the need to defend myself, too. “I had just stopped seeing someone. I was acting out, too.”
“I made a mistake,” he said simply, but then, unfortunately, felt the need to go on. “I made the biggest mistake of my life. A gigantic, terrible—”
“Right.” It did feel fairly awful that he considered me that way, but I couldn’t blame him. I put my hand on my stomach again, then swallowed hard, keeping the pasta at bay. I tapped my pen on the questionnaire. “As far as the details of that night, I don’t remember very much.” I had flashes of memories of his body against mine—flashes of moaning, of panting, of pleasure…
“I woke up in your bed and didn’t know what the hell I was doing there. It was awful,” César told me.
“Awful,” I repeated. “Exactly. Yeah, that was what I thought, too.” He was looking at his computer and didn’t seem to notice me wiping my eyes.
“I don’t know the last time I was so hung over. I couldn’t get out of your house fast enough.” Now he glanced up, but I was under control. No more weeping.
“I was thrilled by how you ran out,” I told him. “Overjoyed to see the back of you. Never happier than when you didn’t say a word and the door slammed behind you.”
“What were we thinking?” he commiserated.
“Exactly. Here.” I shoved the clipboard at him. “I’m done. Learn away about Camdyn Riordan.”
César nodded and passed me his papers too, and I started to read.
César Gael Hidalgo Carmona, age 26. Born: Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. Parents: Ana Carmona Clemente, Gael Hidalgo Gautier. Siblings: Valeria, age 29. Favorite hobbies: sailing, reading history, talking to grandmother.
“Is this all true, or were you making yourself sound good?” I asked suspiciously.
He looked up from mine. “Mine is accurate. Is yours?” he asked me, equally suspicious.
He was reading the part
