The hardest route, p.7
The Hardest Route, page 7
I laughed and held my breath as the wand slid down my abdomen and managed to somehow find a way to see what was inside of me.
“Welp,” she said, “don’t know if you two had any preferences, but it looks like you’re gonna need to start stocking up on bows and tutus. It’s a girl!”
Griff let out a whoop and dropped my hand before pumping his fist in the air. “Daddy’s little girl!”
His excitement was contagious, and even though I’d been convinced I was having a boy, I was excited at the thought of a little girl. Mel would have a field day putting her in dresses and the trendiest clothes, eagerly awaiting the time she could teach her how to do her makeup.
The technician finished the rest of her measurements, assuring us that baby girl was growing right on schedule and that everything looked good. All of the worry and anxiety I’d had before the appointment melted away with those simple words, and when Griff and I walked out of the office, another ribbon of ultrasound pictures in hand, this time in 4-D, we were both grinning from ear to ear.
In that moment, it didn’t matter that we were virtual strangers having a baby together. Our baby was a healthy little girl and suddenly, we couldn’t wait to meet her.
Eleven
Griff
A girl.
A fucking girl.
I was going to be the father to a daughter.
And I couldn’t wait.
I’d wanted a boy. If I was going to have a surprise baby, I figured I would have better luck raising a son, seeing as how we would have the same body parts and all. But the minute that ultrasound tech told us it was a girl, any desire for a boy vanished. I suddenly had visions of a little girl in a tutu and football helmet, running around the yard with me and my dogs. I didn’t have any dogs, but I mentally added that to the top of my to-do list. Right behind buying the baby whatever she wanted.
I couldn’t wait to call the guys to share my news. They’d all been really cool since I’d found out a couple of months ago. Even Shane and Trav, the two most immature guys I knew, had been checking in with me to see how things were going with the pregnancy and Brooke.
But before that, it was time that Brooke and I sat down and really talked about what we were going to do.
“Hey, uh, let’s go grab a bite to eat. I didn’t have a chance to get anything before my flight, and I’m starved. Plus, we need to celebrate.” I followed her to her car and pulled the door open for her. “Let’s go to your favorite restaurant. My treat.”
“Okay.” She slid in to the driver’s side seat, and I closed the door behind her before going around and climbing into the passenger side. “What time is your flight back?” she asked.
I checked my watch, noting that it was six thirty. I had to be at the airport in thirty minutes.
Fuck.
I wasn’t ready to hop back on another plane and head home. We had too much to discuss, and I was flying too high. “I’m going to have to miss my flight.”
“Why?” she asked, startling me.
I jerked my head over. “Shit, I didn’t realize I said that out loud. My flight leaves at eight fifteen. But I’m not ready to go. I’ll just catch a later flight.”
Brooke pressed her lips together and leaned her head back against the head rest. Her eyes were squeezed shut when she asked, “Is this what it’s going to be like?”
“What?”
She opened her eyes but didn’t look at me. “You flying in for appointments or to see the baby, being at the mercy of the airlines and having to leave as soon as you arrive?” Her voice was crestfallen, like she’d already accepted that what she’d just said was going to be fact, and she just stared through the windshield of her car.
I squeezed her shoulder. “No. It’s not. Before we got interrupted, I was telling you about this house I found.”
“I’m not moving to Chicago, Griffin.”
I shook my head. “Well, I can’t move here.”
She tipped her head to the side, her eyes sad. “I know.”
“So, what do we do?” I asked.
Her lower lip trembled. “I don’t know.”
“You have to move to Chicago,” I pleaded. “That’s the only way this can work.”
She laughed and threw her hands in the air. “This is home. I grew up in the same little town that I live in now. I’ve never even had an inkling to move. Travel and see the world? Sure. But live somewhere else? Not even a little bit.”
“It would be a small town that you were living in there too,” I assured her.
“Griffin, my job is here, my friends and family and Mel are here. My life is here. I can’t leave it all behind to move halfway across the country to be close to some guy whose kid I’m pregnant with.”
She didn’t mean to be cruel, I knew. It didn’t change the fact that she’d called me some guy and it had felt like I’d been kicked in the nuts. I was just some random guy who had gotten her pregnant, but didn’t I deserve to be a part of that child’s life?
“I can’t not be a part of that baby’s life!” I shouted, the frustration of this impossible situation bubbling up. “She can’t grow up without a father.”
“She’s not going to grow up without you!” Brooke yelled back. “I would never––”
“She can’t grow up like I did!” I interrupted, the words spilling out before I could stop them.
Her hand reached for my arm, but I pulled away. Her voice was even but not nearly as loud as it had been a moment ago. “We will make this work. But it’s not going to be me moving to Chicago.”
I pushed a hand through my hair and nodded. “Rules,” I murmured, ignoring the ache in my chest.
“I’m sorry?” It was a question.
I ignored the fire that burned in my chest, pushed the heartbreak out of my head, and repeated, “Rules. There’s gonna have to be some rules.”
She scoffed, “What? Like I’m-five-and-have-to-ask-permission-before-I get-a-snack-type rules?”
“If that’s how you want to look at it, then yeah. You’re gonna have to ask permission before you get a snack.”
“You’re being a dick,” she snapped. “That’s not who you are. So, stop.”
I was being a dick. And an asshole. And a douchebag. Her calling me on it didn’t stop me though. It only pissed me off further. “How do you know that’s not who I am? You don’t know anything about me. Just like I don’t know a fucking thing about you. Except that you don’t eat meat and you refuse to compromise on important things like me being able to see my own goddamn child!”
Her eyes welled with tears and angrily, she swiped at them. “Then tell me about you, Griffin Rockwell. Tell me why it is that I have to move to another state and bend to your will and follow your fucking rules? Tell me why I can’t be the one to make the rules? Tell me why even though it’s me who’s carrying the baby you’re so insistent on living next to, I don’t have a say in the matter?”
“Because I grew up without a father, and it fucking sucked, that’s why! Because my father abandoned me when I was a kid, and I’ve spent my entire life thinking it was my fault, and I’ll be goddamned if my daughter is going to think that she wasn’t good enough for my love!” I hadn’t even realized that I’d been carrying that fear around with me, but there it was, out in the open, the words hanging in the air between us.
For a long moment, we just stared at each other, my chest heaving as though I’d just run a sprint, Brooke’s eyes filled with tears that threatened to spill over at any moment.
I cleared my throat and swallowed what was left of my pride. “I think maybe we should skip dinner. Can you give me a ride back to the airport?”
She nodded and licked her lips. “Griff, I––”
I shook my head. Whatever she was going to say, I wasn’t ready to hear it. “Let’s just shelve this for today. I’ve got to get back to Chicago, and it’s obvious we aren’t going to make any major decisions in the parking lot of your doctor’s office.”
“Okay then,” she agreed before shifting her body in the seat and starting the ignition.
I cranked the air up, angling the vents to blow on me, and hoped she wouldn’t try to make small talk on the drive through the city.
Somehow, I’d gone from being on top of the world, excited to know that I was having a daughter and that she was healthy, thinking that we were going to be our own version of a family to being so low that I’d managed to make a complete ass of myself and confessing something to her that I’d never told anyone. Not even my mother, who had essentially been my everything for my entire life, knew the depths of what my father’s abandonment had done.
The drive to the airport was thankfully a quiet one, and when we pulled up to the drop-off line, I debated what to say.
But Brooke beat me to the punch. “Rule number one.”
I arched a brow. “Rule number one?”
She nodded. “When we disagree about something, we can yell. We can cuss. But we cannot be cruel. That’s rule number one.”
“Agreed.”
She offered a small smile, and I returned it before reaching for the handle. I was almost through the door when Brooke confessed from behind me, “My father was an angry man. I don’t think I ever saw him smile. He was always screaming about something. The thing that set him off the most was me. Everything I did was wrong. I don’t know why, but I was always the target of his cruelty. You spent your childhood without a dad.” I looked back over my shoulder to see her shrug. “So did I.”
Her confession took courage, I knew. I didn’t know everything about Brooke Spires, not even close. But in the span of thirty seconds, I’d learned that she was brave, and the admiration that I had for her continued to grow as she said, “Rule number two: after we’re done yelling and cussing, we agree to talk calmly about the issue. We don’t ignore or avoid it.”
“Agreed. Again.” I smiled.
She looked at the clock on her dash. “Don’t miss your flight. We still have plenty of time to talk about all of this.”
I climbed out of the car and closed the door behind me, then had another thought and bent over and tapped the window. She rolled the glass down, and I stuck my head back in the car. “You were right earlier.”
“About what?”
“I was being a dick. And that isn’t me. Rule number three: apologize when you’re a dick. So, I’m sorry.”
“Apology accepted. Now go!” She waved me away as her phone began to ring. She grabbed it and looked at the display and then glanced back to me. “It’s Mel. Let me know when you land.”
I slapped the window frame once. “Will do.”
I stepped away from the car and watched as she pulled away from the curb and continued to stare after her car until it disappeared into the sea of cars leaving the airport.
With a heavy sigh, I turned and trudged into the terminal.
I’d felt less overwhelmed studying the playbook during Rookie Camp than I did right now trying to figure out how I was going to help raise a baby that lived seven hundred miles away.
All I could do was trust that Brooke was right, and that somehow, we’d figure it out.
Twelve
Brooke
“He wants you to do what?” Mel shouted, her eyes nearly bugging out of her head.
I wasn’t going to tell her about the fight that Griff and I had. I’d known this would be her reaction, and more so, I wasn’t ready to rehash it yet. I was exhausted and mentally drained from the entire day. It had been the most exhilarating high I’d ever experienced, seeing my baby moving in my womb and finding out that the little bean was a girl. But the crash after, the argument I’d had with Griff and his emotional confession had left me spent.
My heart had twisted in my chest when he’d revealed his childhood without his father and suddenly, I was beginning to second-guess my adamant refusal to even consider moving to Chicago.
I understood his pain. Our childhoods might have been different on the surface, but inside, we had both suffered from the same misfortune.
I couldn’t leave my home though. No matter how badly I wanted my daughter to have her father right down the road, that was not the hand that we had been dealt. And so, it was up to us to figure out how to turn that shitty hand into a winning combination.
But because she was my best friend, and maybe just a little bit psychic, she’d picked up on my mood, and I hadn’t been able to keep it from her.
“Don’t freak out.” I took Mel’s hand in mine. “I promise you, I am not moving.” I cut my eyes away and looked to the floor. “You didn’t hear the agony in his voice though. Am I being selfish? This is his baby too.”
She slid her hand from mine and pushed to her feet, crossing the space of my living room, and glanced out the front window. “Do you remember when we had that snowstorm a couple years ago?”
I pushed the blanket from my lap, suddenly hot, and nodded.
Mel laughed. “Do you remember calling me in tears because you’d slid in to a ditch on the way home from work?”
“Yeah. Some guy in a big truck came by and pulled me out, but I was too scared to drive home after that. I sat in my car for two hours waiting for you to come get me.”
My heart squeezed as I remembered that Mel had shown up with a bottle of vodka and made me take a shot of it before she drove us home. It had taken another hour and a half to get home, but she’d told me ridiculous stories about all the shit she got into in high school, and I’d laughed the whole way, my fears about running off the road vanishing.
She turned away from the window. “If you move to Chicago, who’s going to get you drunk during all the snowstorms?”
“That’s still me being selfish,” I told her.
“Sometimes in life you have to be selfish. Griff’s a professional football player. He doesn’t have a nine-to-five job. He isn’t going to come through the door after work every night and take over baby duties. He isn’t going to be able to call in to work when she’s sick and you’ve got a meeting at work. What are you going to do up there with no one except a man who spends eight months a year in a stadium?”
I didn’t have an answer. “Why are you always right?”
She grinned. “It’s a God-given talent.” She settled next to me on the couch and said, “At least here you have support. It’ll be hard, but I know that you and Griff can make it work long distance.”
I eyed her. “I think you’re being a little bit selfish too.”
“Guilty as charged.” She put her hand on my belly and rubbed. “But I’m going to be Auntie Mel. And little bean can’t grow up without me.”
Her hand was still resting on my belly when I felt a pang of gas roll through my abdomen. Quickly, she jerked her hand away and then looked to me, wide eyed. “What was that?”
My brows knit. “You felt that?”
She nodded.
“Oh my God, I think that was her moving!” I squealed, the feeling passing through me again. I grabbed Mel’s hand and put it back on my stomach. “There, I felt it again. Do you feel it?”
She shook her head and put her other hand on my stomach and concentrated. After a few moments passed and there was no more movement, she pulled away. “That was so cool!”
We were still grinning at each other when my phone pinged with an incoming text.
Griff: Back in Chicago.
Me: Flight went okay?
Griff: Smooth sailing.
Me: Good.
I wondered if it would ever be less awkward between the two of us. For everyone’s sake, I hoped so. I held the phone in my hand a moment longer, but there was no reply, so I set the phone down. “Mel, I’m starved.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re always starved these days. Want me to make you a grilled cheese?”
I nodded, my phone chiming at the same time. As she hurried away to make my sandwich, I told her, “If you needed to make sure to convince me not to move, just remind me that I can’t cook and you can!”
I smiled at her sharp burst of laughter and picked my phone up.
Griff: We didn’t get to talk about it earlier, but I mentioned that my mom was anxious to meet you. Can we schedule a visit soon?
Meeting each other’s families hadn’t ever really occurred to me. It was probably because I didn’t really have any family of my own to introduce him to in the first place. My father had left when I was in high school, and I hadn’t heard from him since. My mother died when I was in college, and the only other relatives I had, I wasn’t close to.
Of course, his mother would want to meet me and be a part of this child’s life.
I groaned and shouted at Mel, “His mom wants to meet me.”
Mel poked her head around the corner of the kitchen and made a face. “Meeting the parents and not even sleeping with him. That sounds terrible.”
It was terrible.
Me: Sure, that will be great. Where does she live?
Griff: Fort Lauderdale. After I went away to college, she couldn’t stand the empty house, so she moved there to be close to my aunt.
I’d been there on a spring break trip when I was in college. It was another one of Mel’s spur-of-the-moment trips. I hadn’t come back pregnant that time, but I had returned with a hangover that lasted a week and a tattoo of a daisy on my ass. I was beginning to see a pattern.
Me: Well, I still have those airline miles. I could fly down for a long weekend. Do you have a break any time soon?
Griff’s response was immediate.
Griff: No. You shouldn’t be flying in your condition.
I scoffed.
Me: My condition? I’m not dying, you know. According to my doctor, it’s fine to fly up to 37 weeks!
Griff: Well, I would rather you not take that risk, no matter what your doctor says.
