Beautiful Mistakes

Sighing a little, he said, "That makes two of us. What are you confused about?"

The phone started to ring, and Aaron started to stand up when Julie grabbed his arm urgently and said, "Don't answer it!"

"Okay," he said, sitting back down. "Why am I not answering my own phone?"

She didn't answer, she just sat there and waited for the machine to pick up, then they both heard Matt sigh and say, "Julie, answer the phone. I know you're there." He paused, giving her time to come to the phone. "Julie? Answer the phone." He waited again, then he gave up and sighed tiredly, and then it disconnected.

Aaron grimaced then and closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose as if he had a headache. "It's about him. I should have guessed as much." Sighing, Aaron let go of the bridge of his nose and opened his eyes, saying, "I don't know what the problem is and I don't really want to hear it, so I'm just going to give you a word of advice that you're going to ignore anyway, and then I'm probably going to go to bed. I don't know what he did or why you're crying," he began mechanically, as if playing a record, "but he isn't worth your time. If you were smart, you would just leave him alone. I realize you're having his kid, but honestly, it's not worth it. Cut your losses and get out while you can."

With that, he started to stand up, but Julie spoke up. "It's not that," she said. "It's not… relationship drama or anything like you're thinking. I'm just… so confused, because I don't even know what to believe anymore."

"About what, specifically?" Aaron asked, his patience growing visibly thin.

"Remember when I went to lunch with Emma?" she asked.

Frowning slightly

, he nodded.

Then she finally gave him an overview of what had happened at lunch that day, the offer Emma had made to adopt her child and the payout she had offered in return.

When Julie finished, Aaron was still frowning. "Really?"

Julie nodded.

"She wants to adopt the baby?" he reiterated.

"That's what she said."

Pausing to mull it over for a second, Aaron finally said, "If you do that, you better make sure—well, wait. Are you… even considering that?"

Shaking her head, Julie said, "Not anymore. My first reaction was a no, but then I started to think about it… and then I thought maybe it wasn't… as bad as I initially thought it was."

"What changed your mind?" he asked, mildly curious.

Glancing down at her hands, she tried to figure out how to ask. Then she figured the direct approach would be the best, so she looked up at him through tear-dampened lashes and said, "Matt was Shannon's boss, wasn't he?"

She expected to see pain flash across his features, but she saw only hesitation, then he finally nodded. "You figured that out, huh?"

Nodding, Julie wasn't going to give up her real source. "Are you positive that she was pregnant?"

At that, he frowned. "Yeah. Why would you ask that?"

Sighing, she leaned back into the couch and said, "I went to his apartment today, I took a box with the earrings and some other stuff he had bought me and I gave it back to him, told him that… they weren't adopting my kid and I wasn't Shannon, I couldn't be bought."

"And he said…?" Aaron prompted gently.

"He denied the whole thing," she said simply. "He told me he never touched Shannon, that she had made it up, she came onto him and he turned her down because he couldn’t do that to you, that… she wasn't even really pregnant."

"Did he expand on that?" Aaron asked, and there was a tense look about him that she didn't understand.

"No, I didn't give him a chance. I told him I wasn't going to play games and… he turned it around completely. He told me it was a lie and he got this disappointed look on his face and told me he thought I knew him better than that…"

"What a piece of shit," Aaron remarked, shaking his head.

"He kind of made me feel bad," she admitted quietly.

"He was lying to you, Julie. You have no reason to feel bad about that—he's lying. He did sleep with her, she did get pregnant, they were both intentionally hurting me, and when everything else fell through she took the abortion offer that you told him to shove up his ass." Then he paused briefly and said, "Actually, I'm thinking she sold her stock too soon—apparently if she would have refused, they would have started offering more to adopt."