Never Have A Baller's Baby

or talk to him again, which seems to be all I’ve been saying to him every time I see him and talk to him. It’s ridiculous. Anyway, I left. He decided that he was going to show up at the design firm, and he did, and we went into the kitchen to talk privately.” Naomi remembered every moment of it as she shared it with Eva.

“He told me that he had this one night stand with this woman at a party. He said he didn’t even want to sleep with her, but he got drunk, as in really drunk, and she begged a ride home with him. He had a limo that night, and so they were in the back of it and…” Naomi couldn’t say it. It made bile rise up in the back of her throat.

“…and now she’s pregnant. Well, he said that he was seeing me by then… if you can call sleeping with him in his house seeing him. He won’t date me. He doesn’t want anyone to know about me. Anyway, we had just started, and he was all wrapped up in me, and she called him out of the blue and told him that she was pregnant.

He said he was kind of trapped by then, because by then he wanted me, and he didn’t want anything to do with her, but she’s having his kid. So there’s that.” Naomi scowled and sipped her ice water, and Eva glared.

“That snake. What a lying bastard. He found out that she was pregnant after he started seeing you and he never said one word about it to you? He just kept it all hush-hush?” Eva asked, already knowing the answer.

“Yeah… he did. Just like he keeps our affair all hush-hush. He doesn’t want anyone to know he’s sleeping with me… or was. He doesn’t want anyone to know that he got me pregnant. No one can think that the great Scott Thompson of the Los Angeles Waves could be with anyone who wasn’t a megastar. So you told me that he was seeing Jennifer Jones, the singer, right? Well, I thought that he was, and I confronted him about it, and he told me that they aren’t seeing each other, that it’s just a front.” Naomi shook her head with a sigh.

“He’s lying,” Eva said in a low voice.

“That’s what I thought, too. Then Jennifer was over at his house and she saw the decorating job that I did over there, and she loved it and asked him who his decorator was and he told her that it was me. So I get this call at the office and I didn’t know who it was… all I had was a huge estate address in Beverly Hills, and a first name, Jen, and so I go rushing over there because we need the job. I went in and bam… it’s her.

It’s Jennifer Jones right there. I just about died. I nearly got sick on her floor when I saw her.” Naomi thought back to it and was surprised at how much she had disliked Jen when she got there, and how much she had grown to like her in the short time that they had spent together.

“You should have,” Eva interjected.

“Well… she and I spent some time together that day, and we talked about a lot of things, and it turns out that she is actually a really amazing woman. I really like her.” Naomi couldn’t help but smile, and Eva’s mouth fell open.

“You must be kidding me!” she insisted, leaning forward and slapping her hand down on the table top.

Naomi shook her head. “No, I’m not. She’s a really great lady. Anyway, I asked her if she was seeing Scott, and she told me that they were just friends. She said that they were never together and that they never could be. The media just paints them as a couple, and neither of them ever bothers to correct the media. So it turned out that Scott wasn’t lying to me; he was telling me the truth, but I wasn’t about to hear it from him because I was too jealous, and I was mad that he refuses to date me in public. I feel like I’m being used.”

“You are being used, and he’s a bastard for using you,” Eva grumbled, lifting her coffee to her lips as the man at the next table over scribbled furiously in his notebook.

“So when I found out about Scott getting this other woman pregnant… this blonde that he met at the party and went home in the limo with… I walked out on him again. Well, he came down to the office as I said, and he told me all about her and how she doesn’t mean anything to him. He also said that Harold, his agent, wants me to get a paternity test to prove that the baby I’m carrying is his. Can you believe that?” she scoffed.

Eva gasped. “Now I know you’re pulling my leg. He did not say that, did he? What a total jackass! How could he do that? He’s the one who has been running around sleeping with other women and causing trouble everywhere, and now he wants you to get a paternity test? My god. What kind of man is he?” She was horrified, and it couldn’t have been more obvious.

“That’s kind of how I feel about it, but he said that Harold is suspicious about the women that Scott has been sleeping with and he wants to make sure that it’s Scott’s kid before he starts paying for everything and taking care of his responsibility. I know it’s Scott’s; I haven’t been with anyone else, but he said he’ll pay for the test.

So, we’re going to go together, I’ll take the test, Harold will get the results, and then Scott won’t have any problem stepping up to his obligations as the father to this baby.” Naomi thought that it sounded much simpler when she said it all out loud. It had felt much more complicated when it was rattling around in her heart and in her head.

Eva shook her head and whistled low. “That man is too much trouble, honey. I don’t know why you’re even still talking to him. You ought to just walk away from him and let him go. We’ll all help you raise that baby, and you know that. What in the world do you need a man like that for?”

Naomi frowned and looked earnestly at Eva. “You know, I thought exactly the same thing so many times, but then… every time I’ve thought that he was so horrible, it turns out that it was just a misunderstanding, and this is his kid and he deserves at least a chance to try to do right by the baby, and to try to do right by me, at least in taking care of us both. And…” she sighed heavily, “I love him. I do. There, I said it. He’s a huge pain in my ass, but I love him.”

Eva groaned. “Oh no… you do love him. Look at your face. Well honey, there’s no getting out of that. It’s too late now. I guess you go on and get that paternity test and prove to Harold Whatshisname that you’re carrying Scott Thompson’s baby, and then we’ll see how well things go after that. I’ll tell you right now, I’m not going to hold my breath, and if I ever meet him, he’s going to get a big piece of my mind. No one treats you the way that he has and gets away with it.”

Naomi smiled and chuckled a little. “That’s why I love you, Eva; you don’t put up with anything from anyone. You’re a good woman.”

“So are you, Naomi, and you deserve a good man,” Eva told her sternly.

Naomi hoped that she was right.

They finished their coffee, and neither of them noticed that the man at the table next to them didn’t leave until they both did, and Naomi didn’t notice that he followed her car when she drove away, just as he had been doing since the first time he had overheard them in the coffee shop.

Naomi was sitting in her office the next morning, sipping her coffee, when Keisha burst in and came rushing to her, waving a newspaper in her hand. Malaika walked in the door just behind her, and looked over at Keisha in surprise as she saw the younger woman excitedly talking to Naomi.

“Oh, my gawd. You are not going to believe this! I wouldn’t have believed it, except that it’s in the Times… look at this! Did you see this? Did you know about this? How on earth did this happen? Is it true? Oh please… tell me it isn’t true…” Keisha pushed the newspaper onto Naomi’s desktop and sank down into one of the chairs set before Naomi’s desk.

Malaika followed her, and sat down in the other chair beside Keisha, as she looked onto the desktop at the newspaper. Both Malaika and Naomi had not seen it, and neither one of them knew what Keisha was talking about.

There in the celebrity section, was a photograph of Naomi. It was clear to her that it had been taken the day before. She was wearing the light pink silk blouse and cream-colored skirt that she had been wearing on the prior day, and she was seated at what she knew to be the café table where she and Eva had been talking, although Eva wasn’t in the photograph.

Next to the photograph was a full article about everything that they had talked about. From her affair with Scott Thompson, to her pregnancy, to him requesting a paternity test from her, and even the one night stand with the other woman, and her pregnancy. Everything that they had said was in the article. Naomi gasped and held her hand to her mouth as her wide eyes took in every word again and again, wishing and hoping that what she was seeing wasn’t true, and knowing as she read it all over and over, that it was true, and it was there for the whole world to see.