Tori scolded me. “The baby has nothing to do with your inability to admit there’s something going on between you and Kai. You swore blind you weren’t going to have sex with him that night and low and behold, you’re incubating his spawn.”
“Do you have to put it like that?”
“Yes.”
“Great.”
“Stop fighting,” Holley interjected. “Yes, we all know Ivy has an issue with speaking the truth and being totally blind to what’s in front of her, but I don’t want to stress her out. Or make her cry. That happens way too easily now.”
Yeah. She was here when I was dubbed the Volcano for my instant vomit response to coffee.
I was a bit of a crier anyway, so now it was like, whoosh. Waterfalls. Over a butter commercial.
I wish I were joking.
“But she’s right,” Holley continued. “If she truly believes there’s nothing going on between her and Kai, then I believe her.”
“You’re so full of shit even dung beetles aren’t interested.” Tori finished her margarita.
Well, I wasn’t going to disagree with that, either.
A customer at the other end of the bar motioned for my attention and I walked over to take their order.
The truth was that I didn’t know what was going on between me and Kai. The more I thought about it, the more confused I got. All I knew was that he didn’t treat me like a friend, but he treated me as more than just someone who was carrying his baby.
That was a giant gray area where a thousand edges all muddled together, and it was just too much for me to deal with right now.
So I was going to be a grown up and ignore it until I really, really had to deal with it.
CHAPTER TEN – KAI
“Whoa,” Josh said, potting the yellow striped ball. “It’s true, then.”
“You’re insane,” Colton replied, chalking the top of his pool cue.
We were hanging out in the basement of Josh’s newly purchased house. He’d instantly turned it into a man cave, complete with a homemade pallet bar that desperately needed painting, a sixty-inch TV on the wall, and a pool table.
And a sign that said no women were allowed.
Never mind that he was still finding his cutlery out of the boxes in his kitchen—as long as this was sorted, it was all good in his eyes.
We usually spent Friday nights in a bar, but we knew that Ivy, Tori, Holley, Saylor, and Colton’s sister Kinsley were hanging out in town again tonight.
Last I knew, Ivy was not happy she’d been defaulted to the designated driver.
I sipped from my beer bottle and shrugged. “Yeah, well, it happened.”
“What are you doing about Ivy?” Colton asked as Josh missed his next shot.
“What do you mean, what am I doing? I’m hardly leaving her to fend for herself.”
“No, are you dating?” Josh leaned against the pallet bar and grabbed his beer. “Because the gossip grapevine says you’re getting married.”
I sighed and explained the whole situation. “Now we’re stuck in this fuckin’ weird carousel where nothing moves forward and nothing moves back.”
“Have you considered telling her you actually like her?” Colton questioned, potting his ball and flipping Josh the bird. “That might get you somewhere.”
“I casually mentioned us dating earlier and she brushed it off.”
“Ouch,” he muttered.
Yeah, no fucking kidding.
“She was in a bad mood,” I said. “I might have told her grandmother we got married yesterday morning.”
Both of my best friends burst out laughing. “Fucking hell,” Josh said. “Why did you do that?”
“It slipped out.”
“Maybe you should have tried that a few weeks ago.”
Colton hit him with the pool cue. “You’re welcome, man,” he said to me. “What are you doing now? You two?”
“Winging it, I think. Mrs. V came over yesterday when we were fighting and dropped off a cake that was a cross between a wedding cake and a baby shower cake. Ivy got distracted, ate a shit ton of cake, then took a nap before work,” I explained. “I haven’t seen her since she left for work last night.”
“I don’t get why you don’t just tell her,” Josh said, like he wasn’t harboring a crush on his best friend’s little sister.
One that Colton knew nothing about, for what it was worth, and I wasn’t going to be the one who told him about it, either.
“Because she’s gone fucking crazy,” Colton answered, potting the final ball of the game. “She’s pregnant, Josh. You don’t tell pregnant women anything. You feed them, pet their hair, and let them sleep.”
That sounded pretty accurate.
“What do you