Aarabelle shakes her head, and also her ass when the part of the song arrives. We hop at the same time, except she spins and faces me. In the dim moonlight streaming into the kitchen, the air changes. The anger I felt abates. Her soulful eyes search mine.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“I’m sorry, too. For bringing up getting paid to be my friend, too. That was harsh.”
I lean down and kiss her nose. This feels good. It feels productive and whole. Something worthy of my time and energy outside of my usual scope. “All is forgiven.” The horrendous song ends, and silence envelops us.
She nestles into my chest and clasps her hands around my back. We stay like that for several moments. I wonder if we’re both thinking about the looming deployment and how complicated the dynamic is going to be. There’s no going back from this, and no matter how many rules we make, I know there won’t be enough to keep this under the radar. One thing being friends with Chase has taught me over the years is that if you can’t change the rules, read between the lines and find the gray area. Find the fault in someone else’s logic. I was able to get my hands on an emailed copy of the mandate about integrating women into the SEAL Teams. It’s full of legal jargon. If I want this to work and if I don’t want Aarabelle taken down because of it, I need to find the loophole. I will find it.
“I have some grilled chicken in the fridge we can heat up,” I say.
She pulls away, and I can see her nipples are hard. No bra. She doesn’t say anything in reply, she merely hums the Macarena while retrieving the chicken and lettuce. Heating the chicken, she moves around my kitchen opening and shutting drawers and cabinets, familiarizing herself with where everything is. It gives me pause and also makes me hard. I show her the dining room on the other side of the house that I rarely go into. Typically, it’s used for holidays and special occasions. The long rectangular table seats fourteen. She picks a chair in the middle of one side and I sit next to her. We eat slowly, making a list of the songs we hate the most. We agree on some and not on others. Who doesn’t like Uncle Kracker? She’s so wrong there.
Chase’s ringtone cuts our dinner conversation off. I reach into my pocket to silence it, but something spurs me to take the call. He’s supposed to be pissed at me right now.
“What’s up?”
“You didn’t let me get to what I really came over to tell you.”
I swallow hard. “Okay, tell me now.”
Aarabelle pretends not to be listening to me. She pushes away from the table, taking her salad plate over to the window on the other side of the room to give me privacy. “It’s kind of the news you want to hear in person, but you’re possessed right now so I’ll just spit it out. Chantal is pregnant.” He coughs. “And it’s yours.”
“Bullshit,” I say, even as my heart hammers out of my chest. “I haven’t heard from her.”
She’s the kind of woman who would want to tell me this news herself. She wouldn’t send a messenger. Even still, I do the math. The last time we were together would have been about right. I used protection. I always use protection. Never once in all of my years of fucking have I forgone a condom.
“It’s impossible,” I say.
When my fork clanks on my plate, Aara looks over her shoulder.
“Chantal doesn’t want you to know. She plans to steamroll you. I heard it from the chick I fucked last night. She told her and now I know. There you go, my friend. Tell me how that’s going to work out for your little side project. She ready to be a stepmom?”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Closing my eyes, I pinch the bridge of my nose. Chantal put the condom on the last time we fucked. But that wasn’t out of the ordinary. She knew what she was doing. Was it purposeful? Was she trying to get pregnant? I’ve heard about desperate women like that, but she talked about a future, a career after the club scene. She didn’t want a family. Sure, she wanted a boyfriend, but that’s a far fucking cry from a newborn.
“Yeah, we’ll see about that. I’ll do some of my own research. Thanks for the heads up.” Even if I’m pissed at him, I can’t deny he did me a solid.
“She’s still pissed, dude. Careful,” Chase warns.
“What’s that supposed to mean? I’m not afraid of her.” In fact, I’m pissed. At the prospect of being tied to her for something that couldn’t have been my fault.
He clicks his tongue. “You should be. A woman scorn isn’t something to fuck with. I’ve had my fair share of close daddy encounters over the years and rarely do they end with both parties completely satisfied.”
What an odd way to describe his whoring. I know for a fact he’s not as careful as I am, though, so I take it at face value. Chase fucks up. I don’t.
“I get it.”
Aara left the dining room, her plate at the end of the table. She must have gone into the sitting room, or further over to the guest rooms and the movie theatre.
“Gotta go, man. Talk later.”
After he makes one more joke about me fucking a SEAL, I groan and hang up on him. I can hear my pulse pounding in my ears as the reality of telling Aarabelle the truth settles. I have to. Or do I? Could I have this taken care of, or better yet prove that it’s not my baby if there actually is one before she finds out a thing?
She’s sitting in a velvet chair, a book in her lap when I walk into the formal room. It has a fireplace that never gets used and more million-dollar views of the coast. “Hey. Sorry, I had to take that.”
She looks up. “Everything okay?”
No. “Of course. More Chase bullshit.”
