‘Louis is the product of a very short-term relationship,’ I say to the ceiling, skirting the line between truth and lies. It wasn’t a one-night stand, and I don’t feel it’s necessarily the right thing to say we’d holed up in a hotel for a weekend fuck-fest. ‘I didn’t know she was pregnant. I didn’t know I had a son.’
For almost four years, I’ve carried on as normal, pining for Fin while fucking indiscriminately. Though yes, lately, I’ve fucked a lot of blondes, but maybe that’s a reaction to the realisation that I’d lost my chance with her for a second time. Meanwhile, as I was living the life of Riley—nights out, holidays, and women—Louis actually existed somewhere. How can it be that I didn’t know?
‘She died recently. A car crash. I suppose I should be grateful she named me on his birth certificate, ’cause it could’ve gone so much worse for him. I may fuckin’ suck at the parenting thing, but at least he hadn’t gone into the system.’ The thought still scares me.
‘You don’t suck,’ she says softly, hugging the glass to her chest. ‘Sucking is the opposite of stepping up to the responsibilities thrust on you.’
‘That’s kind of you to say so.’ I lift my head and peer over at her. ‘But you’ve only been here five minutes, and the boy’s taken to you instantly.’ And why wouldn’t he, I think, allowing my gaze to roam freely for a minute. She’s so fucking . . . luscious. That’s the word for her. Inviting, that’s another. Totally fuckable. And off limits. I lower my gaze to my glass, ignoring the rise of her chest and the flush in her cheeks. Off fucking limits, my mind repeats. Jesus wept, this is going to be tough.
‘You said his mother had a roommate?’
‘Aye.’
‘I’m guessing she lived with a woman.’
I chuckle at that. I can’t for one minute imagine her as a lesbian. Not after that weekend. And then I feel uneasy about thinking in those terms. She’s dead, and I’m remembering how she sucked my cock? And if she preferred girls, so what? But then my mind slips to the things her roommate had to say, and the things she didn’t say that hurt anyway.
‘I didn’t mean to imply—’ Ella begins haltingly. ‘What I meant to say was Louis has probably been used to a household of women. That he hasn’t had much exposure to men.’
‘No, but his mother had.’ I screw my eyes tight and drop my head. I hadn’t meant to say that, and the way I’ve phrased it? Unfair to her and perhaps unflattering to me. Because it would be easy to make her sound like an evil whore who didn’t try to find me.
‘Well, my assumption stands.’
‘That’s wrong of me.’ The words sound as though dragged through broken glass. ‘She was a good mum, not a whore.’ Just a stripper, it seems. According to her roomie, she’d given up on modelling in favour of working evenings at a high-end gentleman’s club. She gave up on her dream to look after our child—after seeking me out, by all accounts. Seeking me out yet not approaching me. ‘I’m just angry, and it makes no sense.’ My eyes lift to hers because I don’t know how to say what I feel—how to make sense of this twisting feeling that I failed us all.
‘That has to be normal,’ she says with empathetic fervency. ‘You just had your world turned upside down, and your anger isn’t misplaced. You probably feel cheated that you’ve missed out on so much.’
I nod because she’s right. She didn’t tell me, and I lost out on so many memories—Louis’s first smile, his first steps, and the first word he ever said. ‘But it feels odd. As if I experience these feelings with a sense that I must be faking them, because how can I become a dad in the space of five minutes? How am I expected to love something I’ve had no connection to?’ The guilt I feel as I realise I’ve said rather than thought these words is immense. It weighs on my shoulders and on my head.
‘Love doesn’t always happen in an instant. I’ve known mothers of newborns say they felt like they were going through the motions for the sake of appearances, or because they felt they had no choice. Yet they all fell in love with their own child at some point.’
‘It’s not that I don’t love him.’ I take a swallow of my whisky, relishing the delicate burn.
‘You don’t have to convince me. You’ve taken him in,’ she says, raising her hand and gesturing to the room. ‘You made him a home. What more could you have done?’
More? I could’ve been available for the mother of my child. Not in love with someone’s spectre. I’m not a man given to strong emotions, but when her roommate told me she’d sought me out shortly after Louis’s birth, I was angry and confused. I hadn’t met her or even saw her, yet she’d returned home, held our child in her arms, and told her friend I was still in love with someone else. How could she have known?