“Whoa, whoa,” I said, backing up a little.
“Dad, no,” Atticus told him, keeping hold of my hand.
“Do you want to end up like Liam and Malachi? Watching other men play part-time daddy to your kid?” Sarah asked.
“No, of course not, but two wrongs don’t make a right. Hazel and I barely know one another.”
“Well, get comfortable with each other because you’re in this for life. You might as well just marry at this point,” Sarah added.
The prospect of marrying Atticus, although someone I was insanely attracted to and seemingly compatible with, was too daunting an idea. We’d just met! “We might give the baby up for adoption,” I blurted out, hoping to shift the direction of the conversation.
All of Atticus’s family looked at me like they just noticed me.
“Now, this makes sense,” Sarah said, a look of relief on her face.
“Wait,” Atticus said, facing me, “we said we’d talk about this.”
“I know and we will, but I’m more than certain we’re going to be giving this baby up, Atticus.”
He looked at his feet and shook his head. “I can’t have this conversation in front of my family.”
“Of course,” I agreed, wishing I hadn’t said anything.
Etta chose this time to text me, so I stepped aside for a second.
What the hell, Hazel?
shit, sorry. I’m at Atticus’s telling the parentals
Oh damn. that shit is so awkward I don’t even want to b on text with you
thanks, punk ass
love you
love you too
good luck, she threw in.
thanks
“…and it’s none of your fucking business, Liam!” Atticus shouted as he barreled toward me.
My eyes shot wide. “What’s going on?”
Atticus shook his head. “Nothing, let’s go,” he said, grabbing my hand.
“You’ll see!” Liam yelled back.
“Just come back for a second,” Sarah pleaded.
Atticus shook his head as he led me back to his car and opened my door for me.
“Listen to us!” Casey threw out.
Atticus slid across the hood of his car and piled into the driver’s seat, starting the engine, effectively drowning out his family’s pleas, and pulled out onto the street.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Somewhere we can think,” he simply answered.
The entire ride he was quiet. I didn’t dare interrupt his thoughts, as he looked too engrossed, like he was trying to remember something. We wound through city streets quickly until we hooked a left on Lemmon. I discovered where he was going.
“The fourth painting,” I whispered.
“Yes,” he answered.
We pulled into the lot next to my painting and parked. My hand went for the handle again.
“Hazel,” he said, “please let me get the door for you.”
I nodded.
He let me out of the car and we walked toward the side of the building with my painting.
“Tell me about this one,” he said, a tinge of desperation in his tone.
Instead of answering him, I grabbed his hand and placed it palm up on top of mine. I took an index finger and traced the lines in his hand. “Describe it to me,” I told him.
He stayed silent for a moment while I ran my finger over the skin of his hand then answered, “It’s a woman. She’s so realistic I almost find her unbelievable. Isn’t that strange?” I smiled at this. “She’s wearing a soft pink gown, plush, looks to be late 1700s.” He turned toward me. “She’s wearing a crown. Is that Marie Antoinette?”
I nodded in confirmation. “Tell me more,” I said, still tracing his hand.
“She’s falling from somewhere high, but she’s reaching for something, a giant diamond necklace.”
“Yes,” I told him.
“It’s The Affair of the Diamond Necklace,” he discerned, leaving me impressed. “You’ve painted an idea.”
My hand stopped. “Yes. Which one, though?”
His eyes narrowed as if he was thinking very hard about what it might be.
“You’ve painted disillusionment.”
My palm flattened on his. “That’s right,” I said, astonished.
“The story says that King Louis XVI commissioned the necklace for one of his mistresses—Madame du Barry—but died before it was completed, which prompted the jewelers to plot to have Marie pick up the tab after failing to sell it outside France. But when she refused, after a much publicized scandal and trial of the real culprits and even though she wasn’t involved at all, it was implied that Marie had tried to defraud them, which, unbeknownst to Marie, was the first nail in her coffin as the French used it to confirm their growing disillusionment with the monarchy that eventually led to the French Revolution and poor Marie met the guillotine.
“They had already been slipping from her fingers but that was the first fall, the one that tarnished her irreparably, and the dominos began to topple. She was a scapegoat.”
“Let them eat cake,” he said.
“Indeed,” I answered. I looked at him. “How are you feeling?”
He stared at me. “I’m amazed and a little overwhelmed by your talent right now, why?”
“I meant about our meeting with your parents today.”
He offered a small smile. “I know, Hazel.”
“Tell me then.”
“Can we strike a deal?” he hedged.
“Depends on what it is.”
“Let’s put the adoption thing on a shelf, just for the time being. Give me three months, give us three months. Let’s get to know one another, see what happens.”
“I don’t know, Atticus.”
“Just three months, Hazel, and if you still feel as strongly as you do right now, then I’ll support you one hundred percent.”
I thought about it for a moment then agreed. “Fine, I guess.”
His face lit up like the Fourth. “Yes!” he said, throwing me in his arms and swinging me around. He kissed my neck as he set me back down. “Thank you, Hazel.”
The following Tuesday, the doctor Atticus’s brother recommended agreed to see me before work. Atticus asked if he could pick me up and I said yes. I rushed to the door that morning after I heard him knock, eager to see him. When I swung the door open, he practically tackled me in a hug and kissed my neck, making me giggle. He handed me a bag of something and I peeked inside.
It was a bagel with cream cheese. At first I was excited but after catching a whiff of the cream cheese, I held the bag far from my face, dropping it at my feet and promptly finding the nearest trash bin to catch my vomit.
“Shit, Hazel, I’m sorry,” Atticus offered when I returned from brushing my teeth for the fourth time that morning.
“I’m sorry, babe. It was so nice, I promise. I just didn’t realize I had an aversion to cream cheese until that moment.”
His brows furrowed as he fought a smile. “What did you call me?” he asked.
“Atticus?”
“No, you called me babe.”
My face heated up. “I did?”
“Yes, you called me babe.”
“I’m sorry. Is that not okay?”
He reached out for me and wrapped his arm around my waist. “It’s more than okay, Hazel. I liked it.”
“Good,” I said, placing the palms of my hands on his cheeks. I brought his face down so I could kiss his lips but pulled away quickly, afraid we’d lose track of time if I let it deepen.
Atticus moaned in complaint, making me laugh. “Can’t we just stay here all day?” he asked, then kissed below an ear. “I’ll make it worth it,” he teased.
I laughed. “We can’t, Atticus. The whole reason I even have to see a doctor this morning is because of promises like that.”
“Fine,” he groaned.
I locked up my apartment and he drove me to my appointment. He held the door open for me and a
fter I checked in, we sat in a waiting room with four other women all in various stages of pregnancy, which weirded me the hell out, let me tell you.
“Fool, I cannot do this,” I whispered over my shoulder.
Atticus looked equally freaked. “It’ll be okay,” he lied. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.
I stared at him. “You are joking, right?” I gestured to the woman in the room who looked the furthest along and therefore the one who looked the most uncomfortable. “She has her own gravitational pull. If we get too close, we’re likely to get sucked in. She is the black hole of pregnancies.”
Atticus fought a laugh. “Hazel, come on, man.”
“Come on, man? Come on, man?” I asked, getting more and more freaked out by the second.
“Hazel Stone,” a nurse announced. I stood quickly, ready to bounce the place like a bad habit. “The doctor will see you now.”
Atticus stood beside me and took my hand, leading me toward the door. “Don’t make me do this, Atticus.”
“You have to, Hazel.”
“Why? Why do I have to do this? I think this doctor thing is a little overrated. I mean, it’s just a giant racket, if you ask me. What did women do before gynos, huh?”
“They died, Hazel. Now, come on,” he said, practically dragging me toward the back.
The nurse watched me like I was a rabid dog. I plastered a fake smile on my face and bucked up.
“Can I get your weight?” she asked.
“Oh my God, why?” I asked, turning toward Atticus.
The nurse laughed. “We just need to monitor your weight gain as you progress, honey. It’s no big deal.”
“Turn around,” I ordered Atticus, and he obeyed.
I dropped my bag on the floor and stepped on the scale.
“One twenty-five,” the nurse announced to the whole gosh-damn world. Atticus’s shoulders began to shake.
Come on, lady! I screamed in my head.
She took my temperature then handed me a plastic specimen cup and two alcohol wipes. “Follow the directions on the packet, sweetheart, and catch a clean specimen mid-stream, slide it into that little door in the room then meet me back here.”
I took it all into the bathroom with me and did as she asked. When I was done, I left the bathroom, meeting Atticus and the nurse outside again. She led me into the room with the dreaded table and handed me a paper gown. “Dress down to nothing, please, and put this on for us. The doctor will be in in just a minute.”
“Thank you,” I told her as she left the room, though I didn’t really mean it.
Atticus watched me. “Well?” he asked as I stood there waiting for him to turn around.
“What do you mean well?”
“Do your stuff. Let me see that sweet—” he began, but I cut him off.
“Atticus.”
He laughed. “What?”
I tried not to laugh. “Face the wall.”
“What? Why? It’s not like I haven’t already seen—”
“Oh my God, Atticus, please.”
He huffed like he was put out but turned around. I quickly took off my clothes, bra, and panties and threw them over his shoulder. I chucked my shoes to the side and slipped on the paper gown, sitting on the table. Atticus lifted my bra and panties as he turned around toward me again. He shifted his brows up and down suggestively.
“Oh my God,” I said, snatching them from his hands and folding them in my clothing. I handed them over again and ordered he set them on the table by the only other chair in the room beside the doctor’s rolling stool.
“This isn’t how I imagined your getting naked in front of me again.”
I snorted. “Please.”
“Exactly,” he flirted.
I coughed into a hand. “You’re impossible,” I told him.
It was freezing on the table, and I began to shiver. Atticus followed the movement. “You’re cold,” he stated.
“Yeah, these things don’t give you much coverage, and they keep these rooms just above freezing.”
“Sadists,” he said just as the doctor came in the room.
I didn’t let him explain himself and spoke to the doctor right away.
“Dr. Kagan?”
“Yes,” he said, eyeing tattoo-covered Atticus briefly before offering his hand to me and smiling. “Hazel Stone?”
“Yes, nice to meet you.” Dr. Kagan’s eyes swung to Atticus. “Excuse me, how rude, this is my baby daddy,” I told Dr. Kagan as Atticus held out his hand. Atticus choked on nothing.
Dr. Kagan smiled, unsure of what to make of us, it seemed, then took Atticus’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you as well,” Atticus replied before giving me a death glare and making me laugh.
“So you believe you’re pregnant?” the doctor asked.
“Yes, I believe that is my current predicament.”
“What kind of symptoms are you having?” he asked.
“Let’s see, I believe I first noticed when I started ralphing fifteen times a day. That was a pretty good indicator, but that coupled with the fact that I missed the inclination to buy fifteen pounds of chocolate and inhaling it all while drunk dialing men listed as Justin Bieber in the phone book was the clincher.”
“So you haven’t taken a test?” he asked.
“Yes, I took a test.”
“And it was positive? Iffy?” he asked, marking a chart.
“It was, like, positive with a capital P.”
He nodded and rolled his stool toward a box of gloves set in a wire shelf on the wall. He took two out and started to put them on.
“Okay, lie back for me?” he asked.
I obeyed but snapped my fingers for Atticus to come meet me at my head. He jumped up and met my side, taking my hand. Dr. Kagan pulled out the stirrups and placed my heels inside.
He flipped on an exam lamp and brought it closer to his head. “Scoot all the way to the edge for me?” I slid my body toward him. He grabbed a bottle of gel in a warming tray and squirted some on his glove. “Just relax for me,” he said, which is the exact opposite thing a body wants to do in that situation. Why do doctors always ask you to relax, like that’s even an option?
He felt around in there, which was uber-uncomfortable, then slid his hand out and tossed his gloves. “Well, congratulations, you two,” he said kindly. “You’re pregnant.”
Atticus’s hand squeezed mine and I squeezed back. “I’m going to write you a couple of prescriptions for some vitamins. You can get dressed here in a minute and the both of you can come into my office and I’ll go over birthing procedures and what you can expect during your pregnancy, and I’ll answer any questions you have.” He rolled his chair toward his sink, stood, and began to wash his hands. “Does that sound good?” he asked.
I swallowed, still reeling from the fact that he confirmed I was indeed pregnant. It wasn’t as if I didn’t know, but to hear it from a doctor’s mouth felt surreal for some reason.
“That’s great,” Atticus answered for me.
Dr. Kagan turned around after he dried his hands and smiled. “All right, once you’re done, come meet me in my office. It’s right next door.” Dr. Kagan didn’t wait for a response and left the room.
“Too bad they don’t have a currently knocked up option on social media,” I teased Atticus.
Atticus fell into the armchair, gathered all my clothing, and handed them to me. I pulled on my underwear and jeans underneath my gown as Atticus stared into space. I turned my back toward him, put my bra on, as well as pulled on my shirt. I straightened it all out and stood in front of him.
“My womb is definitely ocupado,” I stated, hoping to alleviate some of the tension.
Atticus looked up into my face. “No vacancy.”
I smiled at him. “My egg is so taken Liam Neeson will be starring in the film version.”
Atticus laughed, the shock in his eyes dissipating a little. “A high-occupancy vehicle.”
This gave me an idea. “Does this mean I can drive in the HOV lane now?” I asked.
Atticus shook his head. “I think it only applies to individuals breathing air.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Should we go to his office?” he asked.
I swallowed the nervous butterflies desperate to escape. “Yeah,” I breathed.
Inside, we sat and listened to twenty minutes of information I definitely didn’t remember being taught in sex ed. All I kept thinking while he spouted fact after fact after procedure after procedure after process after process was the fact that if he had taught my sex ed, I wouldn’t have been in his office that very moment.
When he was all done scaring the shit out of me, we stood and walked toward reception, both of us looking shell shocked. We stood at the desk then sat silently when the receptionist indicated for us to sit.
“You there, honey?” the receptionist asked, tapping the top of her desk.
I shook my head to clear my thoughts. “Yes, I’m sorry.”
“I said, is next month at the same time okay?”
I took a deep breath. “What day?”
“The twenty-second at seven a.m.?” she asked.
I thought for a moment. “Uh, yeah, that’s fine.”
She took a card from a little tray and wrote my appointment time on it then handed it to me. I stuffed it in my bag and I meandered my way through the waiting room, out the doors, into the morning sun. Atticus met my side and we stared into the parking lot.
“I can’t believe I have to go to work right now,” I barely eked out.
Atticus turned toward me. “Can you call in?”
I sighed. “It would be a bad idea. Tim is kind of a tyrant.”
“I’ve never met the guy and yet I want to kick his ass.”
I laughed then sighed. “It’s the thought.”
“Come on,” he said, grabbing my hand and leading me to his car.
He let me inside and shut the door after me. We rode in silence, not even music on his stereo, all the way to my work. I waited for him to open my door for me; this time he didn’t have to prompt me. He leaned in to grab my hand and I went to kiss his cheek as I stood. He turned his face toward mine quickly and caught my mouth with his.
“I’m going to walk you to the door,” he spoke against my lips.