“In the doctor’s office, you thought I was trying to take you for money,” I said suddenly.
He stiffened and his knife stopped moving. “Are you going to rehash all my insults?”
“No, but last night I was thinking about it and it made me wonder. Why did you ask me to move in before you got the results of the paternity test?”
He resumed chopping, but more slowly. “Yesterday, when I saw that ultrasound screen and heard the heartbeat, I just thought, that’s my baby. It was…I’ll never forget it,” he said, shaking his head. “Then I looked at your face. You were so shocked that I knew you weren’t trying to pull anything. You were as thrown as I was.”
“That’s how I’ve been feeling,” I agreed. Thrown. Like off a roof or a moving train. “You said you talked to your mom about pregnancy. Did you mean that you told her about me? About this situation?”
“Sure.” César pushed things off his cutting board and into a wok. “I talked to her and my dad last night for a long time.”
“What did they say?” I asked.
“Well, since you don’t know Spanish, I can’t tell you exactly. Some of the insults were very specific to Puerto Rico, too. She led off with about an hour of yelling at me for being stupid. Then she moved to crying and happy that she was going to have a grandchild. My dad is really, really disappointed in me, though.”
“I’m sorry. I hope he’ll change his mind.”
“I hope so, too. Did you tell your family?” he asked me.
“No. I only have Ellie and she just moved down to Florida to start a new job. She’s already a mess, missing her boyfriend and lonely without us. I don’t want to make her more upset.” I thought. “Actually, I’m still having a hard time believing it myself. I can’t imagine announcing this to my friends. Wait, did you tell anyone else? Anyone on the Woodsmen?” I asked urgently.
“Do you want to keep this a secret?”
“I just don’t want anyone on the team involved. Someone would tell Warren Wilde and I don’t want him to know.” I hadn’t spoken to my father in about three months, and I didn’t plan to start again in my lifetime.
“We’re not going to be able to hide it forever,” César said. He looked at my flat stomach. “Eventually, it’s going to show.”
A lot of things were going to happen eventually, but at the moment, I was going to eat whatever he was cooking and be content with that. It smelled even better than the s’more and pork chops that I had been dreaming about.
Chapter 4
“I don’t understand. What…”
“Ellie, it’s not a thing,” I told my sister impatiently. “I had to move out of my cottage because Kaya and Denny were forcing me to go with their disgusting sex sounds. I have a new address and a new roommate. Don’t freak out.”
“But Cam, César Hidalgo? You moved in with him? You and César, you know!”
“You’re also doing that activity now,” I told her. “You must be able to say it.”
“Fine. You and César Hidalgo had sex,” Ellie announced. I could picture her blushing and it made me smile. “Given that, do you think it’s a good idea to live with him?” she asked me.
“Really, it’s not a big deal. We’re roommates.” I still hadn’t told her about the baby, but Ellie was my best friend, and it was getting harder to keep it back. I needed to talk to someone besides César, but I knew how upset she would be to hear it. And if I was honest with myself, I wasn’t ready to deal with her disapproval. She’d never liked the way I dealt with the men in my life, and I wasn’t ready to hear an “I knew this was a bad idea” about my behavior, no matter how nicely she would phrase it.
There was a little silence. “Oh, I get it,” she said knowingly. “This is a thing where César is the new Lincoln.”
“No, César and Lincoln aren’t the same at all,” I said irritably. “It’s a totally different situation.”
“This is exactly the same situation! You’re with César, but it’s just like when Lincoln was your boyfriend. You wouldn’t ever admit to the fact that you were in a relationship with him, either.”
“No! That’s not right. Lincoln and I were not in a relationship, as you like to call it, and he wasn’t my boyfriend. It was a loose kind of connection.”
“A loose connection? You were together for five months, exclusively,” Ellie pointed out. “Most people would call that a relationship, and Lincoln certainly thought that he was your boyfriend. He broke up with you when you wouldn’t meet his family after almost half a year together. Five months, and you wouldn’t even make him a contact in your phone. You wouldn’t follow him on anything, you didn’t even want me to like his pictures…”
“Whatever,” I told her, even more irritated. She was always trying to force me into a romantic commitment. “I’m not sleeping with César again, anyway. We’re roommates and that’s it. Like me and Morgan at Kaya’s cottage.”
“Morgan has been in love with you since freshman year of high school,” she informed me.
“That’s ridiculous.” Ellie was always saying stuff like that, but she way, way overestimated everything about relationships and about love in general. I changed the subject. “Tell me about Florida! Are you finally tan?”
“No, I can still blend well with a blank piece of paper,” she answered, but at least we left off talking about César, and I had to hang up not too much later. I was heading out with some friends for a night of fun, which I needed more than ever.
I gave myself one last check in the mirror before I went downstairs. I was still pale myself, but in the
