We both start laughing. And when I look over at her, she’s blushing bright pink.
“Don’t worry, I only told…” I pause to think. “Mmm. About three dozen friends.”
“You did not.”
“You’re right, I didn’t. I wanted to, but you ghosted me. Which wasn’t even a word back then. And I was kinda upset about that.”
“What? Why?”
“I woke up, saw you were gone, figured, Well, that’s how all one-nighters go. But then I was like… I got her number. So I was cool with you leaving. And then,” I say—she tsks her tongue—“then I realized you broke into my phone and deleted your number.”
“I had regrets,” she says.
“I guess you did. And then?”
“And then? Then what?”
“How long before you knew you were pregnant?”
She sucks in a deep breath. And for a moment I’m positive she will shut me down. But then she says, “Like immediately. It was weird. I knew. And a couple weeks later, I was throwing up.”
“OK, I’m not gonna make a big deal about this. And no matter what you say, I’m not going to get mad. I just want to know. Why, Daisy? Why didn’t you come tell me?”
She looks over at me with an expression of disbelief. “Really?”
“Yeah. Serious question.”
“You’re… you.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’re… Vic Vaughn. And Vic Vaughn is vicious. In fact, I’m pretty sure your face was on a magazine cover with those exact words on them.”
“Yeah, but is that a capital V for vicious? Or lowercase?”
“Lower.”
“See, what the fuck? I’m not really a fighter. Well, OK, maybe back in the day. And there were all those times I threw with Spencer, but he was dating my fucking sister, right? I was supposed to fight him. And yeah, me and the twins got into it a few times. But they were a tag team, I had to put in full effort to win. So the jail time for that doesn’t count.”
“So other than all that”—she laughs—“you’re a completely reasonable, mellow dude.”
“Exactly.”
“Vic.”
“OK. Fine. I’m Vicious Vaughn. So you figured… what? I would get angry at you? Ghost you? Deny, deny, deny?”
“Yes, yes, and yes.”
“So you took it into your own hands and just… did your thing?”
“Yeah. That’s a good way to look at it.”
“What did your parents think? Did they hate me?”
“They didn’t know it was you. I never told them.”
I think about that for a moment too, unsure if I’m more upset that they never knew about me before they died, or that they died thinking Vivian’s father was a deadbeat asshole.
Finally, I let out a long breath. “OK. That’s all I really wanted to know.”
“That’s it?”
“I mean, I wanna see all the pics and shit too. All Vivi’s little milestones. I know about this stuff. I have nieces and that one nephew. Veronica has been talking babies non-stop for almost fifteen years.”
“But be honest with me now, if I had come to you seven years ago and said, ‘Vic, I’m pregnant,’ what would you have done?”
“Daisy.”
“What?”
“You used my dick as a microphone to sing I’m Too Sexy—”
She guffaws again. “Stop it! I didn’t do that!”
“You did. I was… what is the word for it? Enthralled. I was… captivated. I was all fucking in. Are you kidding me? This sweet little college girl called Daisy walks into my life wearing a milkmaid costume, bragging about her jugs, then comes home with me and rocks my fucking world—”
“Shut up! And you did not know my name was Daisy. You were calling me Peeps the whole night.”
“I totally knew your name. I just messing with you. And then after that I’m Too Sexy performance—”
“I didn’t do that!”
“You did. But after that I was like, Damn. This girl is a little animal. And so the long and short answer to your question about how I would’ve reacted to your news is this: I would’ve played it cool. On the outside. But on the inside—especially after you deleted your number from my phone—I would’ve been pretty fucking stoked to have trapped you into being my baby mama.”
She looks away and shakes her head just as I pull the truck over on the side of the road.
“Welp. Here we are.”
Daisy looks over her shoulder. “Here we are where? There’s nothing out here.”
“I beg to differ. You see those trees? That’s a riverbed. It’s dry, because this is fucking Colorado and that’s pretty much all we have here unless you’re in the mountains. But it’s still a riverbed. Which means trees grow by it. And that makes this a nice little piece of land. The perfect place to build a farmhouse. I’ve been looking at this two-hundred-acre lot for about three years now and I think I’m gonna pull the trigger.”
Daisy takes it all in. It’s mostly long grass, but on the other side of the riverbed there’s a large outcropping of rocks and on the other side of that there’s a hidden gully. It’s not good land for serious farming. But it’s nice for all kinds of other things.