remember to ask the doctor about that.
“Are you okay?” Alicia asked, reaching out to brush some of my hair off my face. I hadn’t realized that I probably looked a mess, having lazed around my hotel room listlessly since breaking things off with Caleb the day before.
I forced a tiny smile and propped myself up on my elbow to face her. “Sure. I’m just tired. Why?”
Alicia sat on the corner of the bed, smoothing her pale blue sundress. She smelled like flowers and sunscreen. I would’ve thought the smell would trigger the nausea, but it didn’t. It reminded me too much of our childhood to nauseate me.
Despite her relaxed appearance, I knew she’d been working her ass off. Probably sitting with her two laptops, phone, and tablet out by the pool with Jared while he lounged after practice. I also knew that Jared was frightfully protective about and selfish with the alone time they got, particularly on tour, so she had to be here for a reason.
Her blue eyes met mine, a deep sadness in them combining with a lot of confusion. “Jared and Caleb had a talk after practice today. He told me Caleb said you’d broken it off with him. That you wanted to end things on a high note. I don’t understand what’s going on. Did you tell him about the baby?”
“No.”
“Why not? What happened? The last I heard, you were going over to talk to him.” Her brows drew together from worry. She folded her hands in her lap, looking at me quizzically.
“I did. I went to talk to him, but before I could tell him, he told me that he would make a terrible father and that he didn’t want kids for a long, long time.” I felt the same dread I’d felt when he’d said the words filtering through me.
“Kids? How did you get on to that topic without you telling him about the baby?” Tears jumped to my eyes. The last thing I wanted to do was to recount everything that’d happened between Caleb and me that day, but I had to.
I made Alicia some tea, grabbed my glass of water from the nightstand, and went to sit with her at the small seating area. Then I told her everything he’d told me about his visit with Elizabeth, all the way to the end of our conversation when I’d shut the door on my relationship with my baby’s father.
Alicia gaped at me. “Of course he’s going to say that. He’d just seen his ex for god’s sake. She was the one talking to him about hypothetically having kids with her. You don’t know the context of their conversation, or what she said to make him say the things he was saying to you. She left him and cheated on him with his best friend. He hasn’t seen her for years. Do you really think he was in the right frame of mind for you to be taking cues about your baby from him after the visit he’d just had?”
“You didn’t see him. He was so sure. He doesn’t want to be a father right now, Alicia. I’m not forcing that on him.” I sat up despite the wave of nausea that rolled over me at the movement. “I’m not forcing him on my child or my child on him.”
She paused, snapping a hair tie from around her wrist and pulling her hair back as if she was preparing for battle. “It’s not just your child, though. It’s his too. Surely, he should have some kind of say about whether he wants to be in the child’s life. You can’t just decide for him that you’d be forcing this on him.”
“He doesn’t want kids. He doesn’t want to be a father.” I’d heard of mood swings during pregnancy, but it was as if Alicia had flipped a switch in me. I’d gone from calm and complacent to annoyed, angry, and borderline teary in the space of a few minutes.
Alicia scoffed and scooted her chair closer to me, defiance in her eyes. “Caleb doesn’t know what it means to be a father. A lot of people are scared of kids until they have them. Whatever that women said to him must’ve scared the crap out of him. It doesn’t mean he’s not going to want to be a dad to his kid.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You’re not pregnant. I know Jared’s all up in the clouds with you right now, but what would