Troy's stubbled jaw ticked like a bomb. “Leave it alone!”
I craned to see inside his damn inner man-cave but what begrudgingly stared back I didn’t like.
I threw up my hands and stormed off, “Fine!”
That got Jack’s attention, but he lifted an eyebrow, not a finger, making no effort to glue what was falling apart.
Jack has a policy: never work harder than someone else is willing to when it comes to partnerships.
It’s why he has so many employees instead.
It’s up to me.
As Troy sets the last suitcase near our couch, and Jack shuffles mail Bobby left on the kitchen island, I slam the front door. “Enough!”
They pause, Troy straightening and Jack with one letter suspended above his held stack.
Troy starts to speak, “Marion…”
"We need to talk.” I point down. “Now!”
He crosses his arms.
Jack sets the mail back where he found it, adjusting the corners to be symmetrical as he prepares for whatever is to come.
“Look you two, we’ve all covered the obvious: none of us expected this. But let me talk in a way you businessmen can understand. You know what I never expected? Breach of contract.”
Troy inhales sharply, crossed arms tightening.
Jack leans on the counter, elbows bending to grab it. I normally love it when he stands like this, but today his looking delicious is not helping!
Engaging them both, I explain, “Things only have to change if we make them change. I don’t want that. I really don’t.” I hold up my palms, imploring them to see, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could just ride this out, get me to a doctor and make sure I have a healthy baby. Isn’t that the most important thing?” Rolling my eyes I mutter, “I can’t believe I just said that. But it’s true, isn’t it? If I’m going to be a mom, and you’re going to be fathers, then let’s put the little thing first!”
Troy’s eyebrows furrow. “Doesn’t work for me.”
I glance to Jack and see him silently watching, so I ask Troy a frustrated, “What part?”
“Fathers.”
Speechless, I take a step closer. “You were fine with ‘boyfriends.’”
“Being a boyfriend with no responsibility and a father with lots of them, that’s two very different things.”
“So wait…it’s that you don’t want the responsibilities?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“You just did.”
“No, that’s not what I said.”
“Well good, because with two fathers you have half the hardship!”
“That’s not how I see it.”
I scream and dive shaking fingers into my hair, pulling it away from my freaked-out face as I walk to the window. “This is crazy!”
“No it isn’t,” Jack says.
Aghast, I flip around. Troy looks at him for the first time since we returned home.
That’s the special thing about saying little, people listen when you speak.
Rubbing his thoughts into his palms with slow thumbs, head down a little, Jack explains, “Troy wants something of his own, and if this baby isn’t his he feels small. No man wants to feel small.”
I blink back to Troy and see his anger soften.
There is true desperation in my voice. “This is just ego!”
Uncrossing his arms, my Viking locks onto me. “Mar, imagine if you were in a throuple with Samantha Cocker.”
I snort, “That would never happen!”
“Just imagine it,” he says, voice quieting as he walks to me. “You fell in love with one man and he said he wanted you both, that only that would make him happy. So you went against the plans you had for yourself — what you assumed would happen in your future — because you loved him that much you were more interested in making him happy than anything else in the world.”
My lips part.
Nothing comes out.
Troy drops the final bomb, “And then he gets her pregnant first. She starts growing his child in her belly while you watch.”
There is both a sudden ache in my heart and a roaring fire in my soul that makes me growl, “No fucking way.”
“See?”
“But that’s not how you feel about Jack!”
“It’s not?” He pauses, raking his long hair back as he thinks about it. "Okay, you’re right. It wasn’t. Because unlike you and Samantha I admired him more than myself. He was my role model. It even seemed like dumb luck that I would share a woman with someone I respected so much. It was an honor. For a while.”
Glancing to Jack whose somber expression says none of this is news to him, I suddenly understand what Troy is saying, what he’s going through, and how this really has changed everything for him.
In the perfection of this parallel example he’s hit home.
And it deflates me.
Waves of nausea make my legs buckle, but Troy gathers me up before I hit the floor. I throw my arms around him, holding tightly. “I don’t want to lose you!”
“You don’t have to. Just take the paternity test.”
“But what if it’s not yours!!”
“Marion,” he whispers, “I have to know.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
MARION
“This is a surprise,” my mother says, slender eyebrows hiked. She steps back and widens the door for me, body rounder than last I saw it, skin as flawless as the fresh diamond on her left ring-finger. “I’m surprised you remember where I live; you’ve never visited.”
With curiosity and hesitation I walk inside the pretty apartment Mom shares with the man she left my father for. “Is your boy toy home?”
The door shuts quietly. “He’s my husband now. You’re going to have to stop calling him that someday.”
“Yes, I got the text.” I snort while taking in furniture and art unfamiliar to me. I’m not even aware that I’m searching for something I remember from my childhood home until I find a small blue bowl displayed on the shelf and walk to it. My grandmother owned this and it was Mom‘s favorite thing because it’s her favorite color.
Setting it down I sigh, “I’m not sure why I came here.”
“Would you like something to drink?” Mom hopefully asks. “I’ve got pink lemonade in the fridge.”
One more small yet familiar reminder of childhood. There’s little else here to recognize the woman who raised me. Even her clothes are different. More relaxed, I guess. Not trying to impress anybody like she used to aim for. She looks good though, happy.
I nod and lift a frame with the two of them on their wedding day. Touching the glass as if I can feel the texture of Mom’s off-white dress through it, I frown.
The sounds of rapidly clinking glassware in the kitchen and a refrigerator shut in a snap, makes me realize she’s rushing to avoid my escape.
But I came all this way for a reason. It may have been a fool’s errand, but I won’t bail out. Couch looks comfortable at least, might as well sit down and try to rein in my temper.
Mom walks in with the drink that reminds me of summertime and water-fights.