18. Ollie

CHAPTER 18

Ollie

“It’s been three days,” I lamented as my mom tsked.

“You need to learn patience, Son. After what you put that poor girl through, it’s the least you can do.”

“I understand that, but I’m missing her whole pregnancy.”

“Whose fault is that?” My mom snapped.

“Sorry. You’re right.”

She huffed and then sat beside me on her floral print couch that she hated six months after she bought it. She kept the thing out of sheer stubbornness because she didn’t want to hear Dad tell her “told you so” about the tiresome pattern.

“We all mess up. I even understand the reason you messed up in a weird way. The problem is, that reason you thought you had to go there, in itself was a slap in the face of the woman who married you for love and helped to raise your son. I don’t want you to lose hope, but I also don’t want you to live with false hope, Oliver. What you did to that woman…” Mom shook her head and held her hand over her heart. “I don’t know how she’s surviving it, especially knowing that she is having the baby of a man who only planned to use her as a nanny for his son.”

“Mom, I swear, when I first thought about the plan, it didn’t sound that bad.”

“Yeah?” She asked, and seemed genuine in her question.

“Yeah. I thought everything would be okay.”

“If you truly believed that, you would have been upfront with your plan from the very beginning. You would have sought out a woman who would agree to give your son the family atmosphere you craved for him, but without all the messy trappings of a real love match.”

“I wouldn’t want the type of woman who would agree to that to be in Den’s life,” I snapped.

“Yeah, and the type of woman you did want meant that you had to deceive them from the beginning. So, you knew what you were doing was wrong. Knew it would hurt that person if it ever got out. And it did. Not only did you hurt Steph, who absolutely did not deserve what you’ve put her through, but you hurt your son, that baby, our whole family and probably hers too. Her mother wouldn’t even speak to me when she was here. Granted, she’s always been a bit jealous of my maternal relationship with her daughter, but still… None of them even told me she was in the hospital or how she was doing.”

My mom was in tears by the time she was done explaining herself to me. I hadn’t realized just how many people had truly been affected by my actions until that moment. She was right. It hadn’t been only me and Steph living with the fallout. It was my son, both sets of our parents, her brother, our friends. Sure, we were the two most directly affected, but it didn’t end there. Our new child, when it was born, would also live with the ramifications of my dumbass decision.

“I don’t know how to fix it,” I admitted.

“Some things can’t be fixed. Sometimes, you just have to figure out how to live with the future you inadvertently created.”

That wasn’t the advice I wanted from my mom. I knew it was the truth, but it still sucked to hear. My phone lit up with an incoming call and I almost ignored it, since it was an unknown number, but my mom stared down at it. “You might want to answer that. Never know who it might be.” She patted me on the leg and then got up and walked away as I debated answering. Considering Steph had been admitted to the hospital once already in her pregnancy, I decided not to test fate and answered the call just before it stopped ringing.

“Hello?”

There was only silence on the other line for a minute, but I could hear someone breathing. I almost hung up, thinking it was Jia trying to call me again from jail, but that couldn’t be because it always came through as a collect call when she did.

“Hello?” I called out again.

“Ollie,” her voice sounded like heaven to me. “It’s Steph.”

“Got that from your voice, sweetheart.” I nearly fucked up and called her precious. That was a habit I would have to break because even though the meaning of it had changed over time for me, I knew she now understood what it had once meant. To say it had a tainted meaning now was an understatement.

“Did you get the gifts?”

“Yes, thank you. It was all perfect.” Silence grew thick and heavy on the other end of the line. I didn’t want to spook her or give my wife a reason to hang up on me, so I remained silent and exercised some of that patience my mom had been telling me I needed earlier.

Eventually, Steph spoke again. “I have an appointment on Thursday at eleven. Do you think you can make it?”

“I will be there, as soon as you tell me where to go.”

“It’s not until Thursday,” she reiterated.

“Right.”

“Okay. I’ll text you the information.”

“Steph?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you,” I told her. She was silent again for a minute or two.

“See you on Thursday, Ollie.”

“See you Thursday…” Before I could finish, the line went dead.

“Who are you seeing Thursday?” Mom asked when she came back into the room. Obviously, she hadn’t gone very far.

“Stephanie. She invited me to her next appointment.”

“Maybe that’s what progress looks like.” I grinned at my mom. “Now, don’t screw it up!” She threw a pillow at my head and wandered back out of the living room humming a tune I couldn’t place. Nerves kicked in the minute I was left alone with my thoughts. It felt like going on a first date, standing up to say “I do” at a wedding, and a million other important moments all rolled into one.

Steph had texted me the place, time, and date. I was twenty minutes early because being late wasn’t an option and I hoped to see my wife in the parking lot and be able to walk into the appointment together. I stood there, waiting on her to show and wondered if she’d want to be seen with me. If I were her, I’d probably be embarrassed.

Of all the worst case scenarios in the world, Jia just had to be a semi-famous actress who had spilled all of our dirty laundry all over the front pages of every major and minor publication for weeks on end. Most of it had been lies, but there were dabs of truth inserted into the mix.

Everyone in our town, and most of the rest of the country, knew exactly who we were. More importantly, they knew that I’d cheated on my wife. I hadn’t really thought about how embarrassing that must have been for her. Not that she was the reason at all, but I knew how people thought. They’d wonder what she did wrong to make me step out the way I had.

“Ollie?” I turned and watched as Steph walked around the backside of my car. She had apparently parked somewhere behind me and I’d been staring off in the wrong direction.

“Hey, Steph. Sorry, I was lost in thought and didn’t hear you.”

“Okay.” Her answer was just that crisply spoken word, and she gave it while staring down at the ground in front of her feet. “Are you ready to head in?”

“Yeah. Of course, I am. Are you sure you want me there?”

Her head finally tipped up and our eyes met. “I invited you.”

“I know, but I was standing here thinking about how I’ve been a complete embarrassment to you. I would understand if you didn’t want to be seen with me.”

Steph rolled her eyes and waved me off. “Whatever. My nurse told me about her ex-boyfriend who she caught balls-deep in her cousin a couple weeks ago.”

“People really tell you that stuff?”

“Yep. And her cousin’s name was Mark.”

“Ouch.”

“At least she could always say she must not have had the equipment necessary to please him.”

“You never did anything wrong,” I was quick to tell her.

“I know that. Your cheating, and everything else, was a reflection on your personality, not mine.”

“You’re right.” She was, but I was shocked to hear her say that. Everyone kept telling me how she probably felt like there was something wrong with her. That didn’t seem to be the case.

“Come on, they’re usually pretty quick about getting people in, even when they’re early.”

She reached out without thinking and I took advantage and grasped her hand. “Lead the way,” I suggested as my fingers tightened around hers.

Steph walked a pace or two ahead and it hit me that in my excitement to finally see her after all this time, I hadn’t made it past looking at her face. Her walk held a slight waddle to it as she navigated the growing weight in her belly. She had popped and my fingers itched to touch it. I wanted to feel our child moving around inside her.

There were so many things I wanted, but they all had to be pushed aside for her comfort. Once we were inside, it did not take long for someone to call Steph back. When I didn’t immediately follow behind her, she held her hand out to me again. It felt like everyone else in the waiting room held their breath to see what would happen next. That might have been just me, but it seemed like it was everyone else too. With my hand in hers, we walked into the back area of the doctor’s office where a nurse weighed my wife, asked her if she had been feeling okay and then gave her a cup to pee in. While we waited on Steph to finish the nurse eyed me up.

“I can’t believe she forgave you,” the woman said.

“She didn’t.”

“I don’t think you’d be here if she didn’t.” The woman had a lot of gall to talk about such things.

“Steph is a good person and we’re having a baby together. She doesn’t have to forgive me to allow me to be a part of our child’s life, even before he or she is born.”

“Whatever you say.”

“No matter who I bring with me, it isn’t your job to be rude to them.” Steph had apparently caught some of our interaction because when she came out of the bathroom it was with those words being thrown at the woman who had just been shitty to me.

“Sorry, I didn’t realize you actually took him back.”

“That’s not your business to know,” Steph informed her. “Considering this is the only place we have been seen together, I’d think twice about spreading that information as well. HIPAA laws apply here.”

While I wanted to cheer my wife on for standing up to the woman who appeared to be calling her out, there was a twinge of something rooted deep in my belly that wondered if she fought so hard to make sure the woman kept her theories to herself because she was embarrassed of what others might say. If that was the case, then I didn’t see how I’d ever convince her to be with me again. It already seemed like an uphill battle to convince her that I was in love with her.

“Is there a problem here?” A middle-aged man asked as he passed by our stalemate in the cramped hallway.

“Dr. Peterson,” Steph greeted. “I was just explaining that my relationship status wasn’t anyone’s business and that HIPAA laws exist.” She pointedly turned from the man to the nurse who still stood there scowling at me, like I was responsible for getting her in trouble.

“I see.” Dr. Peterson turned to the woman. “Gabby go wait in my office and send Misty to aid me today with my patients.”

“Sir,” the woman started to argue.

“Gabby, my office,” the doctor repeated in a stern voice. Gabby snapped to it and took off for the office while he escorted us to the open room for her examination. “I apologize, you are right, unless something at home is pertinent to your health, it is no one’s business. We’re only going to do a quick check of the heartbeat and take some measurements today, so you only need to remove your pants and use the drape to cover up, we can just scoot your shirt out of the way. Go ahead and get ready while I go get a different nurse to assist.”

“Thank you.” Steph smiled at the man and then grabbed my hand and pulled me into the room. She pointed to a chair beside the table and told me to wait there as she grabbed what looked like a miniature sheet and took it behind a screen. When she came back out, she was in her socked feet, bare legs, and had the oddly-sized sheet – which I assumed was the drape – wrapped around her lower half.

My wife awkwardly hopped up onto the table and made herself comfortable despite the crinkly paper beneath her butt.

I laughed and glanced down looking at the end of the table. “I thought these things all had the little foot holders.”

“Stirrups?” She asked.

“I guess that’s what they’re called.”

“They do, Ollie. The doctor would fold them out if he needed to. There’s also a flat table extender if he needs me to lie down while being examined.” She shrugged her shoulders as if that was all common knowledge.

“I wouldn’t know.”

She sat up then and stared at me with a puzzled look on her face. “You already have Denmark, I assumed you went to all the doctor appointments.”

I shook my head. “I only went to one before he was born.”

“How is that possible?”

“I took her to the appointments, but with exception of the one where her pregnancy was confirmed, I was always asked to remain in the waiting room.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“For some reason, I thought you were there for everything with her pregnancy.”

“No. I wanted to be, but it was hard enough to convince her to go through with it in the beginning. I didn’t want her to back out because I pushed too hard on things.”

“That’s awful, Ollie.” Steph shook her head. “I don’t understand how you could have been waiting around for her to be a better person, or want to be a mom, when that’s what it was like.”

“It’s hard to explain. I grew up with Monica and Tom as my parents. They were both so involved in my life that I’d always pictured having the same dynamic with the person I brought a child into the world with. The minute Julia told me she was pregnant, I had all these hopes and dreams for my son. Even before I knew he was a boy, there were all these daydreams of what life was going to be like for us.

“When she hinted that she didn’t want to have the baby because it would ruin her body, I had my first freak out and did everything in my control to change her mind. She liked the attention I gave her while she was pregnant, but I think part of her plan to keep it on her was to keep me in the dark about whether she would change her mind. She didn’t want me to get too excited, too close, in case something happened. That was always the excuse.”

I reached over and caught a tear that dripped from Steph’s cheek just as there was an abrupt knock on the door. “Come in,” Steph called out.

“Are we ready to check on your little one?”

“So ready,” Steph informed him. The new nurse glanced at me curiously before offering a shy smile, but after that she shifted her focus to the doctor.

“Any cramping or bleeding?” I sat straight up and grabbed hold of Steph’s hand when the doctor asked that question. As my wife shook her head, the doctor offered me a quick smile. “These are standard questions we need to ask, especially since Stephanie had an episode with bleeding before.”

“Okay,” I muttered.

My wife squeezed my hand, as if to reassure me. I didn’t deserve to be reassured of anything. The doctor helped Steph roll her shirt up and tuck it above her stomach, then he pulled out what looked like a seamstress’s measuring tape and started to measure from as low as he could possibly go on her belly without touching her pussy to all the way to the top of where her belly started to swell out.

I was mesmerized as he moved the measuring tape and did the same from side-to-side. Each time he called out numbers to the nurse who plugged the information into her tablet. Then he reached over and grabbed something that looked like a tiny microphone attached to a speaker and moved it around her belly until a racing, pulse of a noise beat out through the speaker. Looks like the little one is sitting at 148 beats per minute,” Dr. Peterson called out. The nurse jotted that down on her tablet as well.

“Wait, is that the baby’s heartbeat?”

“Sure is. Nice and strong, too.”

“Isn’t that high?”

“Not for the little ones. If it was at a human adult level, we’d be worried. Your little one is right on track.”

Dr. Peterson handed the wand thing back to the nurse who tucked it away in a cabinet and then he patted Steph on the leg. “Unless you have any questions, we’ll see you again in four weeks. I’ll probably do another ultrasound at that appointment just to check on things, since you did have a scare earlier on in your pregnancy. From what we saw today, everything seems to be going well.”

The minute the doctor left, I reached over and touched Steph’s belly. Her hands came down on top of mine. “I’m sorry that I’ve denied you this. It wasn’t right.”

I shook my head as I marveled at the beautiful sight. “You have nothing to apologize for, Steph. My own actions caused you to not be comfortable having me around. I understand that. Thank you for allowing this today.”

“Ollie,” she sighed my name and I shifted my attention from her still-exposed belly up to her eyes. “You’re making it very hard to remain aloof.” Her stomach let out an awful growling noise then and we both chuckled as I helped her pull the shirt back down and then assisted as she got down off the table.

“Would you let me take you to lunch?”

“I can’t very well lie and say I’m not hungry.”

“If you don’t want to be seen with me, we can pick something up and go…” Where the fuck could we go? I lived with my parents for the time being and Steph didn’t want me to know where she lived, even though I did.

“How about, for the sake of not having our meal interrupted by random strangers who think they deserve more of our story, we grab something and go back to my house.”

“Perfect,” I announced as she moved behind the screen to get her pants and shoes back on. I wanted to do a fucking celebratory dance that she would allow me to come to her house. It was a huge step forward for us. I was under no delusions, like last time with Julia. I knew that Steph granted me access for our child’s sake. Not mine. Not because she wanted to get back together. It was purely because she wasn’t a selfish person that she asked me to come to her appointment and then her house.

After Steph got her next appointment card, she took a picture of it and then handed it over to me. “I can come again?”

“Yes. I think you should be there for the rest of the appointments.”

“What about when you go into labor?”

“You should also be there to meet your son or daughter when they’re born,” she agreed on a bit of a sigh.

“If you’re not comfortable with that, I don’t have to be there.”

“It’s fine, Ollie.”

“No.” I stopped Steph outside of my car. “I mean it. If you aren’t comfortable, then I don’t have to be there. As much as I want to, it will be a hard day for you, no matter what. I don’t want to add to your stress.”

Steph smiled up at me and I realized it was probably the first smile I’d seen on her face in months. Maybe even since the night she got pregnant, considering it was only days after the last time we slept together that I screwed everything up.

“Thank you for taking my feelings into account, but I want you to be there.”

“You hate me, though.”

“I don’t hate you, Ollie. I hate what you did. I hate how stupid I was from the beginning, but I don’t hate you.”

“You weren’t stupid, Steph. That was all on me, too.”

Her stomach growled again and I grinned at her. “Why don’t you hop in?” I asked. She shook her head. “Okay, how about I ride with you then?”

“What about your car?”

I shrugged. “I can come back for it later or have someone get it back to my parents’ house.”

“Is that where you’re staying?”

“You seriously didn’t know?”

She shook her head. “I figured you were staying with Caleb all this time.”

“I was, but his extracurricular activities kept trying to spill over into my bedroom.” Steph sucked in a shocked gasp. “I never did anything with anyone, but after the third time, when one of the women he brought back accidentally made her way to my room, I decided it wasn’t worth the headache to stay there.”

“I bet it isn’t easy living with Tom and Monica again either,” Steph teased.

“Not at all. I caught Mom trying to dig through my laundry the other day for my whites.”

Steph scrunched her nose up. “Yeah, my mom tried to wash all my laundry when she stayed here for a while too. I was kind of glad when my dad called and ordered her home because he was lonely.”

“I think maybe Jason knew you were at your wit’s end and ordered her home for your sanity.”

She chuckled. “That’s possible too.”

“Oh wow, that sounds good.” Steph glanced over at the marquee offering up the Prime Rib special of the day. I didn’t bother to mention it was the same restaurant I had taken her to for our first date.

“It doesn’t look too busy. Would you mind if we went in and ordered something to go?”

“I don’t mind. Whatever you want.”

“You know we’re not on a points system or anything, right?” Steph snickered as she said that. “It’s okay to disagree with me.”

“Even if we were still happily together, I would defer to the pregnant lady when it came to food.”

Her smile turned to a frown. “We were never really happy together.”

“Yes, we were. Don’t rewrite all our good moments together because you learned why I wanted to marry you in the beginning.”

“That’s just it, Ollie. That is the most unforgivable part of everything that has happened. You stole all my good memories and turned them into some twisted version of events. Knowing you didn’t want to be a part of those memories, that I was just some cookie cutter replacement version of what you truly wanted made every single moment I thought I was happy turn to dust. It was all like a dream, and when sleep rolled away into wakefulness, I was left with that warm feeling for a minute only to have it replaced by a reality where my husband had never been in love with me.”

“I was in love with you, Steph. I know you felt it the same way I did.” I reached over and put my hand on her belly to indicate the exact time I thought she got pregnant because we had made love that day in a way that I had never done with another person.

“I thought something felt different then, but let’s be real, Ollie. It wasn’t that long after that you were with her. I know because that was the last time you bothered to touch me. It was when you pulled away, stopped coming home, stopped living the lie and started to live the happily ever after you really wanted.”

“It was never that, Steph. You and Denmark were my happily ever after.”

“We’re here,” She stated as if she couldn’t stand to hear me say that and needed to change the subject.

I let my hand slide free of her belly. “Do you want me to go in and order?”

My beautiful wife shook her head. “I think it might help if I go look at the menu. Sometimes, my mind changes at the last minute because of a smell or the way food looks.” She offered a sheepish grin as her cheeks took on a pink hue.

“Nothing to be embarrassed about, my love.” Her eyes watered a bit, and Steph quickly undid her seatbelt and awkwardly got out of the car. I followed suit. As much as I wanted to keep hammering home the fact that I loved her, she wasn’t ready to hear it. She damn sure wasn’t ready to believe it.

We were directed to wait at the bar when we placed the order, and I helped Steph onto a bar stool. The place was oddly empty for midday. I glanced around and noticed anther couple sitting awkwardly at the table we had shared for our first date all those years ago.

“You think their date is going as rough as ours started out?”

It took Steph a minute, but when she saw the couple sitting in that spot she smiled and then turned back to me. “I really was about to ditch you that day.” She laughed then. “God, you were awful. I don’t know what possessed me to stay.” She shook her head and then her smile slipped a little. “No, I do remember. I thought, here is a man who is botching an entire date because his son is home sick and he wants to be there. I wanted to get to know the man who would do anything to be there for his child.”

We both sat silently thinking of that day before Steph took my hand in hers. “I get it. It took me a long time to not think of you as a monster for using me the way you did.” I tried to interrupt her, but she wasn’t having it. “No, it’s your turn to listen. The signs were always there. My brother pointed them out early on in our relationship. You don’t get to shoulder all the blame. It seems we were each living in our own deluded worlds. For a time, it worked. Let’s face it though, it was a house of cards all along waiting to crumble in on us because we got into that relationship for all the wrong reasons.”

“No, you got into it for the right reason. I was the idiot who couldn’t see past my plan.” It was my turn to laugh at myself. “You should have left me there that day. I almost left the restaurant when I got up to go to the bathroom. Not because of my son, either.”

“Then why?” Steph asked after I was quiet too long.

“I knew. That day, watching you get fed up with my bullshit, you were mesmerizing even then. I knew it would be difficult not to fall for you Steph. You think I fooled only you with our relationship, but that isn’t true. I was fooling myself the whole time, until that night,” I tipped my head toward her belly. “That was the first time I allowed myself to acknowledge that you didn’t just crawl under my skin and make a home there. I invited you in at some point. It was the fear of what would happen if you found out that I hadn’t always felt that way that made me respond to the text Julia sent me. It was my fear of destroying our relationship with the truth that caused me to go and destroy it anyway.”

“This is what I have a problem with,” Steph stated as she swirled her finger around indicating my face. “It looks like you’re being real with me right now, but I’m having trouble trusting my instincts.”

“I promise that I am being genuine. I knew from the beginning that it would be hard to not fall in love with you. I’m no longer sure why I felt the need to build those boundaries around our relationship. It was the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.”

Our order was placed on the bar then, so I grabbed it and stood up with my opposite hand out to help Steph from her bar stool.

“Let’s get this back to your place, so you can eat it before the craving changes.”

She laughed at me and it felt like I was floating on a cloud as the beautiful sound wrapped around my heart and squeezed tight.