But he beat me to it.
“Not for too long though, yeh?” he asked me, or Mo, or maybe both of us.
Since I was the only one who could answer, he was lucky I nodded.
Fortunately, the buccal swabs didn’t take long at all, and even more luckily, Mo didn’t fuss. She was too busy pulling on my hair, and I was too busy telling her “No, no, no” to pay that much attention either.
Jonah stood right at my elbow the whole time, a physical eclipse of muscle blocking the overhead lights, as he’d burned a hole into the technician helping us.
“This won’t hurt her, will it?” the kinda-new dad had asked, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans.
The woman gave him a knowing smile. “Not at all.”
Then we were out of there with promises that we would be contacted with the results. The formal results at least. I was positive that the Fucker trusted I wasn’t lying about him being the father.
It wasn’t until we were walking down the hall to head out of the building that my stomach grumbled, and literally a split second later, I heard his grumble too. I remembered that from back in France. We’d had that in common—we were both always hungry.
This was the rest of my life.
And I wasn’t going to fucking ruin an hour of it, even if he did deserve a twenty-four-hour case of the shits.
Fuck it.
“I haven’t had any lunch,” I told him, even though I didn’t want to. But I knew I had to practice being decent to him. Not nice, just… okay. “You?”
He held the door open for us. “I had second brekkie about ten.”
Second breakfast had been my favorite thing back when I’d been trying to compete in a higher weight class. I missed those days of eating even more than I usually did and knowing it was for a good cause. “Want to go get some? I can probably drop you off at your hotel afterward if it isn’t too far. I need to get back to the gym.” I really didn’t, but he didn’t need to know that.
I could hear him directly behind me as we approached my car. “I’d love to. The hotel isn’t too far of a drive from here, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“All right.” I was doing this for Mo. I was doing this for Mo.
After we were all buckled in, I took my phone off airplane mode and found three voice mails from Grandpa Gus. Turning on the engine, I made sure the car’s Bluetooth didn’t pick it up and blast him over the speaker, and then called him back. He picked up immediately.
“Where are you?” he answered before I could make a sarcastic comment about being a stalker.
“We just got done at the lab….” I trailed off, hoping he wasn’t going to go on another rant about Jonah.
Grandpa mumbled something under his breath before asking in a stilted voice, “Can you take your time coming back?”
I frowned down at the steering wheel. Take my time going back to the gym? “Why?”
There was another pause, then, “Because.”
Because? Uh. “No promises?” I offered him as my brain took his tone and his question and ran with it. What the fuck was going on that he didn’t want me to see?
“Okay,” he replied before hanging up again.
What the hell was that about? Of course now I was going to drop by. He couldn’t say something like that and expect my red flags not to go up. What the hell was happening? I wondered as I put the car into reverse and said, “I have to run by the gym for a second. We can eat afterward, and I’ll drive you back to your hotel then.” Or I’d call him an Uber. Whatever. We could see what happened. If he got on my nerves, he could walk.
“Sure,” he agreed as I set the car into drive.
I wondered what the hell was going on with Grandpa Gus, and I kept on wondering as I drove us out of the parking lot with a quiet Jonah and a quietly babbling Mo in the car talking to her imaginary friend. She was such a talker; I loved it.
“Everything all right?” he asked after a little while.
It wasn’t until I started trying to extend my fingers from around the steering wheel that I realized I was gripping on to it really tight. “My grandfather just asked me not to stop by the gym, and I don’t know why,” I explained, unable to hide the instinct that said something was wrong.
He “hmmed” his response, at least initially. “He’s a bit aggro I’m with you. Maybe that’s it?”
“Aggro? Aggravated?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him nod.
So I shook mine right back, focusing on the road. “I mean, yeah, but that’s not it. He’s petty, but he would have said that if that were the case.”
He “hmmed” again before, “So you manage the gym now?”
“Yes.”
“You were only working there part of the time before,” he stated for some reason, like he wanted me to know he’d listened… at least sometimes.
I pressed my lips together for a second. “Yes.”
“When did you start?”
“Six weeks after I had Mo.” I thought about leaving it at that but changed my mind. “Daycare facilities here are really expensive. It was Grandpa Gus’s idea that I take over managing it, and that he would stay home with her instead. It made the most sense.” I had always known it was inevitable. I was pretty sure I had told him that too at some point.
But back then I had thought it was going to be years before the day came.
I flexed my fingers around the steering wheel and kept explaining so that way I wouldn’t have to bring this up later. “The good thing is, those two love and adore each other. I told you, he takes her to daycare once or twice a week in the morning for a few hours, so that she can get used to being around other kids. Sometimes, my best friend’s father-in-law watches her if Grandpa has something to do. She comes to see me and hang out in the office too pretty often.”
He looked at me, but I didn’t return his gaze.
“I’ll write it down for you, so you know where she’s at all the time. I know you aren’t… working while you’re here.” He was on vacation. On holiday. On his off-season, I reminded myself again. Not permanent. “I’m sure I can talk Grandpa into splitting babysitting duties with you so you can take advantage of your time while you’re here, if you want.” I had no idea what the fuck he was doing during the day, and I wasn’t going to ask because it wasn’t my business, and I didn’t care. “But he might end up making you pay a rental fee or something for him to give up Mo,” I told him, with a snicker even though I didn’t mean to.
“A rental fee?” he asked with a familiar-sounding soft laugh that irritated me. “It wouldn’t be babysitting though, would it? More like… parenting, no?”
I swung my head to look at him again. Not babysitting. Parenting.
Asshole.
The small smile he sent me when he caught me looking at him had me wondering for a split second if he didn’t know exactly what he was doing; saying all the right things that I wanted to hear to trust him again. Hadn’t he said that? That he wanted to regain my trust?
Fucker.
“Yeah,” I replied after a second, facing forward again. “It’s not babysitting if she’s yours. And she is. And luckily Grandpa Gus thinks Mo is his. Peter thinks the same. She’s our community baby.”