Quarterback's Secret Baby (Bad Boy Ballers) (19 page)

I don't want to say it was easier the second time. Getting over Kaden, that is. Not that there was any getting over Kaden, I suppose I just mean the knowledge that I could endure it. I could go on, living my life and getting up and going to work every day and supporting my family even with a hole in my heart. Sleeping with him had been so monumentally stupid. So stupid it almost made me laugh. What had I been thinking? I hadn't been thinking, that's the truth of that.

But the last couple of years had been hard. Not
bad
, just hard. And I'd just landed myself right back at the first stage because I was an idiot. I didn't take any time off work, that was something. Sure, people noticed something was up. Alisha, Ray, CeeCee, my mom, Lena, even little Rosa took to asking me, sometimes, why I looked sad. Jennifer noticed, too. She sat down with me in the lunch room one afternoon and put her arm around me.

"Listen, Nat," she said. "I know you're not a talker - and I'm not trying to get you to talk. But I just want you to know two things. The first thing is, I know how you feel. It sucks. It absolutely sucks. but it won't suck forever and you need to keep that in mind. And two, if you ever go crazy and do feel like talking, I'm here to listen. OK?"

"Thank you," I replied. "That helps. And you're right, it is difficult for me to talk about painful things. It's easier once I get a little distance from them, if that makes any sense? I mean, I know you know why I've been a little down lately but talking about it, I don't know, it just makes it seem even more real, you know?"

"Yeah," Jen nodded, "I know."

She was about to get up. "I slept with him!" I burst out, suddenly. "That day, when he came to the office - when his mom was in the hospital. I slept with him that night."

Jennifer froze in her tracks and turned around. "You slept with him?"

"Yeah," I replied, hanging my head.

"Well, so what?"

I looked up. Jen was eyeballing me. "So what, Nat? You think you're the first girl to fall back into her ex's bed in a moment of weakness or something? Why do I get the feeling that you're just torturing yourself over this stuff in silence, like it's this huge, shameful deal? It isn't. We've all done it. From the look on your face, I thought you were about to confess to murdering someone. So you slept with Kaden Barlow and now he's gone. Big whoop."

I couldn't help but laugh. Jen joined in and sat back down with me. "You're so secretive," she said, patting my leg. "You got your heart broken by this guy, and then you made a silly mistake because emotions were running high over the situation with his mother. If you ask me, he looked pretty heartbroken himself when he showed up here."

"That was because his mother-"

"Was it? I mean, obviously he was upset about it, I'm not denying that. But the way he looked at you, Tasha. I don't know, I'd be willing to bet you broke his heart just as badly as he broke yours."

"Really?" I asked, pathetically hopeful.

"Yeah, really. Didn't he try to see you again before he left? I thought you said he texted you and called you a few times."

"Yeah..."

"Well? What do you think that means? That it's just some casual thing to him? You realize that Kaden Barlow could be sleeping with a whole team of supermodels, right? So why's he texting you over and over if it's just for sex?"

"I told you," I said. "He was upset about his mom. They thought she was going to die for a little while, you know. And we know each other from high school. Middle school, actually. I actually feel guilty about not seeing him again but it was just impossible, you know? I would have slept with him again and made it even worse than it was. I was protecting myself."

"Yeah. You do that a lot."

Jennifer was right. "I know," I said. "It's just how I am. I don't know how to be any other way."

"Yeah, I get it. It's just, Tasha, I don't want to think you're trying to be Miss. Super Strong I Can Handle Anything all the time if you don't have to be. You have me, you have your other friends and your family. I just want you to know that we're here for you. If you need us."

I told her I appreciated it - because I did. But I wasn't sure I was ever going to be one of those people who could just accept help easily from others. And I probably would have spent more time brooding on it if I hadn't arrived home that night to Ray standing in the kitchen with a huge grin on his face. Everyone was there, too. Alisha, my mom, CeeCee, Rosa .

"What's going on?" I asked, smiling suspiciously. It wasn't my birthday. What were they up to?

"I don't know!" My mom said, throwing her hands in the air. "Your crazy brother demanded we all meet him here in the kitchen and wait for you."

I looked at Ray and raised my eyebrows.

"Yeah," he said. "Something's going on. But I wanted to wait until we were all here until I told you."

I looked at Alisha. Even she looked baffled.

"Did you win the lottery?" I asked.

"Nope," Ray grinned.

"What then?!"

Ray made me sit down with everyone else and then he stood up.

"We've been working really hard the past few years, haven't we? And mom-" he nodded at my mother - "you've worked hard your whole life. And it's been discouraging, hasn't it, that feeling that no matter how much we do we're still just treading water?"

I nodded, wondering what Ray was about to spring on us. By the look on his face, it promised to be something good. Was Alisha pregnant again? No. He wouldn't have announced it that way, with all the talk of hard work and struggle.

"Well, I went to see someone at the bank a couple of years ago - just after you graduated high school, actually, Tash. And no one needs to lose their damn mind because I haven't actually done anything yet, but we now have enough in the family savings account to buy this house, if we want."

For a few seconds, everybody just looked around at each other, not quite believing it.

"But," I said, not allowing myself to get too excited without all the details. "What about mom's credit? The medical bills? What about
your
credit?"

Ray beamed. "My credit is fine. I've been working on repairing it for years and the bank manager said if you, me and Alisha all co-sign, that with a down-payment we can get a mortgage that will cut our monthly payments in half."

"Really?!" Alisha squealed, jumping to her feet and throwing her arms around Ray. "We can buy this place? Oh my God!"

I looked over at my mother. Tears were streaming down her smiling face. A few seconds later, everyone else noticed, too.

Ray went to her and hugged her. "Mom," he said, kissing the top of her head. "This can be our house now. We can stop worrying about making rent every month, we can paint the walls yellow like you wanted to."

My mother took a labored breath and the oxygen tank hissed. Then she looked up, making a point to make eye contact with each one of us and whispered: "Thank you."

"No, mama," I said, getting up and hugging her from the other side, because Ray still hadn't let go. "Thank you. You held us together. When Daddy left, when you made sure we always had food on the table even if meant you went without. When we all could have scattered in different directions, you held us together. You did that. And now it's our turn to look after you."

A week later Ray, Alisha and I were in a stuffy office at the local bank branch, signing papers.

"So you all just had a joint account that you paid into?" The bank employee asked, clearly a little confused by two women and one man signing a mortgage agreement. "You're all siblings? And this is for your mother's house?"

"He's my brother," I said, "but those two are married. And it's for our family house."

"Huh, must get crowded in there!"

He wasn't being rude, he was just one of those people who found it strange that grown children would choose to stay in the family home rather than fly the nest - and possibly the state - to build a new life.

"Sometimes it does," Alisha piped up. "But none of us would have it any other way."

I left the bank - we all left the bank - near bursting with a feeling of pride and accomplishment. Ceecee was watching Rosa, who was running around on a grassy area near where we parked.

"Did you do it?" She asked.

"Yes we did," Ray told her, a huge grin spreading across his face. "And now we have two places to go - the hardware store to get that yellow paint and Manzino's for a we-finally-got-the-damn-house lunch."

So that's what we did, heading first to the paint store and then to Manzino's with three cans of sunshine yellow paint in the trunk. I felt lighter as I walked, bouncier, as if gravity had suddenly become slightly less powerful. And looking at the others I could see they felt it, too. A weight was gone, one that had been sitting on our family's collective shoulders for a long time.

"This weekend, then?" Alisha asked after we'd taken out seats and ordered lunch. "Tash, you can take your mother to her doctor's appointments and then keep her out of the house for a few hours. We can't have her breathing paint fumes when it's fresh."

"Yeah," I replied, shifting in my seat as an oddly unpleasant smell wafted over from the next table over. "It's warm, anyway, so we can just leave all the windows open during the day and mom's open at night. I'll dig out an extra blanket."

I glanced over to the table beside ours, curious as to the source of the smell. Alisha must have seen me wrinkling my nose. "What is it, Tash? Ray are you farting?"

Ray made an offended face and shook his head. "Nope, not me. Must be Rosa."

"Sure, blame it on the innocent child," Alisha laughed as a waitress showed up with our food. When my plate was set down in front of me it seemed to be giving off that same sickly smell I thought was coming from somewhere else.

"Ugh," I said, after she was gone. "Do you guys smell that?"

"What?" CeeCee asked. "I can't smell anything."

I passed her my plate and she sniffed it. "It smells delicious!"

I'd been hungry at the bank, looking forward to lunch. But my appetite was unexpectedly and suddenly gone. I didn't even want the plate in front of me. "Urgh," I said, pushing it away. "Sorry, but that's making me feel sick."

It was unusual for me to turn down food, especially at Manzino's. Ray looked at me, concerned. "You were just saying how hungry you were, Tash. Are you OK? Did you eat breakfast this morning?"

"Yes," I replied. "Cornflakes."

"Was the milk off?"

"No, I would have noticed."

"Well, we can just get this doggy-bagged and you can take it home for later."

But I didn't want it doggy-bagged. I didn't want to eat that sandwich, with its weird smell, at any point. It wouldn't go away, either, that smell. A few minutes later I felt my stomach lurch and stood up quickly, my hand over my mouth. Alisha, mother to a young child and more than familiar with puke, immediately leaped to her feet and guided me to the bathroom.

"OK," she said. "Ok, Tash. Are you going to throw-up?"

Alisha bustled me into the restroom and stood beside me, rubbing my back gently, while I braced myself against the sink, trying to will the awful, sour taste in my mouth away. I tried to slow my breathing but I could feel sweat breaking out on my forehead.

"I hate getting sick," I whispered, wincing at another lurch in my belly. "Couldn't you smell that sandwich? It was like the meat was off or something."

Alisha narrowed her eyes at me for a second, and was about to say something when I felt it coming and dashed into a stall. When it was over I stood up, legs trembling, and wiped my mouth against the back of my wrist.

"Here," Alisha handed me a kleenex from her purse as I looked at my sweaty face in the mirror. "Wipe your mouth, sweetie."

I wiped my mouth as instructed and sighed with relief as the extreme nausea of a few minutes ago dissolved into a kind of blessed relief. Then I caught her eye and grinned.

"Ha, sorry about that. You've got those mom-instincts down, though."

Alisha was giving me that look again. "You said you had Cornflakes for breakfast, Tash?"

"Yeah, why? Were they out of date?"

"No, they weren't. I'm just - uh, I don't want you to freak out, OK?"

"Oh my God," I said. "What? Now you are freaking me out! The milk was fine!"

"You spent the night with Kaden Barlow, didn't you? When he was back in town when his mom got into that accident?"

"Yes," I said, stupidly not seeing where she was going. "I told you I saw him. And I also told you why it was a bad idea."

Alisha was nodding, "Yeah, yeah, I know that Tash. But you - you were with him, right? You slept with him? And you refused to take the condoms I offered you. Did he have any?"

My mouth dropped open and I felt my eyes widening as I stared at Alisha. "Yes," I said, very quietly. "I did sleep with him. And Alisha? We didn't use protection. It only happened once. Literally once. I - oh my God, Alisha, oh my God!"

My voice was rising into a wail but Alisha grabbed me by the shoulders and gave me a little shake. "Don't start panicking yet, Tash. It's entirely possible it's something else. Maybe you're just a little worked up about the mortgage signing today?"