His Pretend Baby

I’m pretty sure my dead ex-boyfriend’s brother is still scowling at me. I casually lean to the right, peeking past the shoulders of everyone standing in front of me, to where Go Gutierrez is standing with his three sisters, parents, and Sophia. They’re all receiving condolences from those who attended Marco’s funeral and then came back to his parents’ mini-mansion in Oak Park for a final gathering after the service. This is a sad day. Probably the saddest day ever for the family Marco left behind when he died in that car accident, but…

Yep, Go is still glaring at me over his heavy black beard, his eyes little more than slits behind his black frame glasses. And as if sensing his agitation, Sophia—Marco’s girlfriend at the time of his death—follows the direction of his gaze...

Oh crap. My former foster sister was sweet back when we lived together, and she’s even nicer now. She’s been almost unfailingly kind to me—even after what happened twelve years ago. But when she sees me standing in the receiving line, her eyes widen with frank alarm beneath the netting of her fashionable radiator hat.

And she gives me—her dead boyfriend’s ex—a look that very clearly asks, “What are you doing here?!?!”

Tough, tough, tough…I’m so tough. Everyone who’s ever met me knows that. If not because I refuse to let anyone—especially men—intimidate me, then definitely because I have enough silver hardware in my face and ears to let anyone passing by me know I’m not afraid of needles, and I don’t care what anyone thinks.

But Sophia’s shocked stare makes my insides all squirmy. She’s oh-so-appropriate in her black cap-sleeve dress and tasteful chignon. Fits right in with Marco’s family—such a pretty Catholic girl, you could have easily mistaken her for one of Marco’s sisters or even Go’s wife.

While I, the heavily pierced black girl with the dramatically long gray-with-black ombre weave shaved on one side, stick out like a sore thumb. Unlike Sophia, I’m not at all appropriately dressed for a cop’s funeral reception. Unless you call a pair of leather pants and a torn black sweater appropriate, which judging from the way Sophia and Go are eyeballing me, they don’t.

But I didn’t exactly plan to come to Marco’s funeral. It was more like a last minute decision, made after waking up late this morning and followed by a frantic search for clothes that were both clean and black. I’d rushed out the door after doing the best I could with the wardrobe I had, but my best hadn’t been good enough. I’d arrived at the huge cathedral where Marco’s funeral was being held twenty minutes late.

And even though I’d done my best to stand in the shadows at the back of the church, which was filled to capacity with family, friends, and officers in dress uniform, Go still managed to spot me coming in late from where he stood at the front of the church. Spot and scowl at me across the yards of pews and people.

Scowl at me then, just like he’s scowling at me now. Like I’m somehow tainting his parents’ stately living room, with my messy gray-and-black hair, and my punk rock clothes.

I fight back the urge to remove my nose ring and maybe a few eyebrow hoops before I reach his family. They’d never approved of me, and I know it probably brought them all kinds of relief when Marco dumped me last year and got with Sophia, a nice Latina girl with a normal job as a college office administrator soon after. The only extra jewelry Sophia’s wearing right now, beyond the two small studs in her ears, is a tasteful gold cross around her neck.

It seems like removing the face jewelry is the least I can do, considering. But I don’t want to give Go the satisfaction of scowling me into submission with his obvious disapproval. Tough girls don’t let themselves get intimidated, I remind myself while squaring my shoulders. Especially by geeks. Even handsome billionaire geeks who made the cover of magazines like Wired before reaching thirty.

Go might be a lot taller and richer than me, but I’d managed to get myself a lot farther than anyone who knew me when I got kicked out of Sophia’s house would have thought. I remember the vow I’d made back when I got my first piercings: two eyebrow rings that Sophia’s parents never would have approved of punched right into my thickened skin. I’d promised myself back then to never again let anyone else influence how I looked, thought, or acted.

I remind myself of that promise now, inwardly whispering, you don’t owe anyone anything, as I pretend not to notice Go and Sophia staring. But still, it’s excruciating.

And it feels like hours, not minutes, have passed when I finally make it to the family. I simply nod at Go, Sophia, and Marco’s sisters, before turning my attention to his parents, Maria and Antonio Gutierrez, who are at the very end of the receiving line.

To their credit, they both smile warmly at me.

“Nyla, it was so kind of you to come,” Maria says, pulling me into a hug.

And Antonio actually seems sincere when he says, “Marco would’ve been real touched you were here.”

They both still have strong working class Mexican accents which makes it seem a little like they don’t quite belong in the huge, opulent room where the gathering is taking place (even if it is technically their house). Just like me. I feel a little closer to them in the moment. Like we actually have something in common other than their dead son.

“I’m so sorry,” I tell them both. Out the corner of my eye, I can see Sophia and Marco’s sisters are back to receiving condolences from the people in line behind me, but I can practically feel Go scowling a hole into the side of my face.

This is going to be tougher than I thought it would be.

But it has to be done. As much as I hate this situation, it has to be dealt with.

Keeping my expression neutral, I say to Maria and Antonio, “I know this is a really hard time for you, but there’s something important I need to talk with you about. If not today, then tomorrow. I wouldn’t ask at a time like this, but it’s sensitive, and just …well… really important.”

I take it from the twin expressions of shock on their faces that this was not the kind of request they expected to receive today. Beside Maria, Daniella, Marco’s oldest sister, wraps an arm around her mother’s shoulder, her corporate lawyer eye’s slitting just like Go’s as she asks me, “What could you possibly need to talk to my parents about right now?”

“Um…” Before I can answer, a large hand wraps around my arm, and without warning, I find myself being dragged out of the line and away from Marco’s parents. By Go. Of course by Go.

My back prickles with the gazes of the other reception attendees as he takes me away. And as gracious as Sophia has been to me since getting together with Marco a year ago, I can almost hear her cursing me under her breath for creating a scene at her boyfriend’s funeral.

Go doesn’t seem much happier as he hauls me out of the grand room, up some stairs, and through a set of doors into a wood paneled study.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing trying to arrange a meeting with my parents at my brother’s funeral?” he demands, as soon as the door closes behind us.

I cringe, not feeling quite so tough as I answer, “I wish there’d been some other way to talk to your parents without coming here. But I didn’t have a number for them or even an email address, and this morning I realized this might be the only way to get in touch with them, so…”

I’m pretty tall, five-eight, and I’m really thin on top so I look even taller in my heeled boots. But still it feels like Go’s glaring down at me from an even greater height as he finishes, “So you made an impulse decision to disrupt my brother’s funeral?”

I cringe, wishing I could say it hadn’t been impulsive at all. But seeing as how it only occurred to me to try getting to his parents this way this very morning, I had to settle for… “It was the only way I could think of...”

His eyes sweep to the side, as if processing my words. Then he reminds me, “You have Daniella’s contact information.”

“Yeah, yeah, I guess I do,” I say, fidgeting with the frayed cuff of my black sweater.

“Did you lose her number?”

That would have been the perfect excuse, but I don’t lie, so…

“No. No, I didn’t. But I didn’t want to go through her to get in touch with them. It’s a personal matter—”

“What kind of personal matter?” he demands.

And my heavily silvered eyebrow raises as I shift and tense my body to stand my ground. “The kind of matter that’s personal and none of your business. Because. It’s. Personal.” I answer, not bothering to keep the snark out of my voice.

He scowls down at me for a long moment before saying, “At least you don’t smell like weed today.”

“Okay,” I say with an exasperated reset of my usual tough girl expression. “Why don’t you just give me your parents’ contact info? That way I can get in touch with them at a later, more appropriate time, okay?”

He actually seems to think about my request, before coming back with, “No, not okay. You talking with my parents isn’t part of their recovery plan, so that’s not an option,” he says, like we’re sitting across from each other at a conference table. “Whatever it is you want to say to them, tell me first, and I’ll decide if it’s really something they need to hear.”

“Are you kidding me?” I can almost feel all my silver quivering with my barely contained irritation. “They’re grown adults! They’re the ones who should decide whether they want to hear me out or not.”

“Yes, they’re grown adults who just lost their son,” he answers, his voice so dispassionate, it’s verging on monotone. His gaze rakes up and down my outfit. “And now you’re here in your post-apocalyptic outfit, requesting a private audience. I’m failing to see why you’re surprised I’d insist on a pre-screen before giving you access to them.”

“And you’re acting like I’m some kind of rando who just showed up out of the blue. You know who I am. I’m not a total stranger,” I remind him, crossing my arms over my thin chest. “I mean, I may dress a little weird, but I manage a women’s abuse shelter for God’s sake! It’s not like I’ve ever done anything to make you think I can’t be trusted to talk with your parents alone.”

Another up and down gaze from Go. Then: “No, I suppose you haven’t.” However, his lack of things to hold against me seems to annoy him rather than give him the peace of mind it should.

“I just don’t like you showing up here and disrupting the reception,” he says, scowling down at me.

“Okay, well…” I answer with a shake of my head. “I came here to tell your parents this thing. This private thing. And I can’t leave here until I either do that or get a meeting to talk with them on the books. So where does that leave us?”

Go’s scowl deepens. “You talk to me and then maybe you can talk to them. Take it or leave it, Nyla. I am not a man who appreciates a disruption—especially at my brothers funeral.”

I want to remain tough. I want to keep standing up for myself. But his last statement gets to me. He’s right. It is his brother’s funeral, and I don’t want to cause his parents more grief…

As annoying as I find his insistence that I go through him to get to Marco’s parents, even I can see he has their best interest at heart. Hell, if my parents hadn’t died in a house fire when I was twelve, I’d probably feel the same about them. I can understand him wanting to keep his lovely parents safe from a freak like me…

So for all those reasons and a few more, I take a deep breath and finally confess…

“I’m pregnant. I’m pregnant with Marco’s baby.”

Hindsight being 20/20, I probably shouldn’t have smoked weed the morning before Marco took me to Thanksgiving at his parents’ house.

But I was nervous and it was an impulse decision. Followed quickly by an outfit change and full on Febreeze of both my apartment and clothes. I’m almost 90% sure Marco didn’t smell it on me.

But still, it wasn’t a great way to start the day, because by the time he picked me up from my apartment, I was already feeling dumber than one would want to feel before she met her boyfriend’s family. First of all, Marco was a cop—a really cool cop with adorable dimples and a way of making everyone he encountered from the homeless on the street to the women at our shelter feel completely at ease—but a cop nonetheless. And I knew there was a chance he and/or his close-knit family would smell it on me, no matter how much air freshener I sprayed over the situation.

Second of all, I couldn’t help but feel like I was sabotaging myself. Again. Like purposefully setting myself up for another relationship fail. This thing between Marco and me was still fairly young—we’d only been dating for about six months. But it had been going pretty well. And meeting a guy’s parents is definitely a conversation starter about the future.

If things went well that night, I imagined we’d be having all sorts of discussions I’d never had before with anyone. About where we were now. About where we could be in the future. Lately, I’d even been feeling not so weird about the fact that his last girlfriend was my current boss. Sam had left Marco a little broken when she’d not only dumped him, but married a Russian hockey player a few weeks later. However she’d given us her full blessing.

There was seriously nothing standing in the way of us taking our relationship to the next level.

Nothing except the spliff I smoked just an hour before Marco was due to pick me up.

And as we drove toward his parents’ house, bad thoughts started twisting around in my head. Marco liked me. I knew he liked me well enough—mostly because Marco liked everyone. He was just that kind of affable guy. But I’d had a feeling from the beginning that he was using me to rebel against the part of him that wanted to settle down with a nice, traditionally pretty girl like Sam.

And when he invited me to his parents’ home for Thanksgiving to meet his family, I had a gut feeling—an instinct you might call it—that this wasn’t going to end well.

I thought the weed would help. Get me nice and relaxed, but instead it made me even more convinced our relationship was on the verge of falling apart, even though we were technically on the verge of completing a significant milestone.

In fact, I had a lovely job with a boss I adored straight out of college. A cute and funny boyfriend who was taking me to meet his family for Thanksgiving. But my former foster kid pessimism just wouldn’t let me go.

They’re going to try to be nice, but they’ll end up hating me, I couldn’t help thinking as Marco came around to my side of the car to open the door. Just like the Perezes did.

But wasn’t it a little racist to think Marco’s family would reject me? It wasn’t like all Hispanic families were the same. And from what I’d gleaned, Marco’s family wasn’t anything like the Perezes. The Gutierrezes weren’t pretending to be a happy family, they really were happy. They’d raised five wonderful kids, one who was a pillar of the community. And Marco’s sister, Daniella, still continued to provide Ruth’s House with occasional pro bono legal services, even after Sam and Marco broke up.

There was no reason for the pool of dread in my stomach, making it so I barely spoke on the way to Irvington. His family won’t hate me. They won’t make Marco hate me, I chanted inside my head. All the way until we pulled up to the curb in front of his parents’ modest red brick two-story. We parked right behind a Tesla, which looked very out of place among the economy cars lining the block.

“Did Daniella trade in her Prius?” I asked Marco.

Marco grinned. “Nope, looks like Berger decided to rent one for his visit. That’s what he drives in Portland.”

“Oh, your brother owns a Tesla?” I said by way of small talk. I knew Berger was some kind of engineer, but I hadn’t known he made enough to not only afford a top of the line Tesla, but rent one everywhere he goes.

“Yeah,” Marco mumbled. “Leave it to him to find a place that rents Teslas in Indiana.”

Except it wasn’t a rental. Marco’s youngest sister, Cat, answered the door, practically jumping up and down. “Did you see the car Berger got me for my birthday?” she demanded, before Marco could so much as introduce me. “I love being nouveau riche!” she cheered.

Marco just smiled, his dimples flashing as he called over her shoulder. “Already spreading the wealth around, Little Bro?”

Before “Little Bro” could answer, Maria shoved her daughter aside to squeal in Spanish, “And he bought us a house in Oak Park. Oak Park! Us, the Gutierrezes, in that nice neighborhood where I used to clean house. Right down the street from Sam and that hockey player. Can you believe it?” She covered her mouth with both hands and shook her head frantically, obviously in a state of complete shock.

I would have been completely confused if the sea of family members hadn’t parted at that moment to reveal a man even I recognized as Go Gutierrez, the robotics wunderkind. He’d recently made the covers of several tech magazines. Not only because of what still shone through as solidly good looks underneath a huge black beard and hipsteriffic glasses, but also because his company, GoBotics, had just been acquired by a huge multinational technology outfit, which had pretty much made him a billionaire overnight.

I stood there staring in a state of shock, as somewhere in the distance, Marco introduced me to all of his family members. Go was by far the tallest member of his family, leaner than Marco, but not skinny, and dressed in a simple grey hoodie that he wore like a suit.

He stared right back down at me, though he seemed to be speaking to Marco, when he said, “You didn’t say you would be bringing a girl with you.”

“No, I didn’t,” Marco answered, his tone even friendlier than usual. It was the same tone I’d heard him use with some of the angry guys who showed up at the shelter, the ones who just might be convinced—by the right cop, of course—to walk away without the need for any paperwork or physical “assistance. “Sorry, I should have mentioned it when you sent around the Thanksgiving plan.”

“There’s plenty of food for everyone,” their mother Maria assured all of us in some other part of the room.

“We’ll have to speak in English for her comfort,” Go pointed out.

“I speak a little Spanish,” I told him, wondering why I was finding it so hard to look away. “You don’t have to speak English if you don’t want to.”

“It’s fine, Nyla,” Daniella assured me. “Berger stop. Let’s just get dinner on the table please.”

“She smells like weed,” Go said, as if his sister hadn’t even spoken. He finally broke from our stare off to look over at Marco. “You’re a police officer. Why are you dating someone who smells like weed?”

“Okay, okay,” their father said into the uncomfortable silence that followed. “Dinner will be on the table in a few minutes. Marco why don’t you show Nyla your old room?”

“Why didn’t you tell me your brother was Go Gutierrez?” I demanded on a hiss, as soon as Marco and I were upstairs in his room and out of earshot.

Marco shrugged and flashed those adorable dimples of his. “He’s still just my little brother, Berger, to me.”

Then he kissed me, sweet and warm and nice. Reminding me of how lucky I was, because maybe I did smell like weed, but Marco acted like he didn’t care.

“Do me a favor, okay?” he asked, fingering my turtleneck after he was finished kissing me. “Just humor Berger for the rest of dinner, and maybe keep this turtleneck on. My parents aren’t huge fans of tattoos and they’re already dealing with… all of this.”

He indicated my face with a wave of his hand, and I wasn’t quite sure how to take that. While I know he’s right about it probably being off-putting to his more conservative parents, I didn’t love the look that flashed across his face as he said it. And I can’t help but wonder if one of the conversations we’ll be having in the months to come will include a follow-up to a casual question he’d asked a few weeks back about whether or not I’d ever thought about “taking all that out.”

But before I could respond, his little sister, Cat, called up the stairs. “Dinner’s ready, Marco! You better not be up there doing anything with your girlfriend. We’re a nice, Catholic family!”

They are a nice Catholic family. That much is made immediately clear to me over dinner. Despite their insane income jump, the Gutierrezes seemed like any other down-to-earth family on Thanksgiving. Sitting around their modest dining room table, they all appeared to have great fun telling me stories about Marco’s pre-cop adventures in high school and college. Generally going out of their way to help me know him and make me feel welcome.

Well, at least his sisters and parents tried to make me feel welcome. I could feel Go’s eyes on me throughout the entire of the meal. Coolly analyzing me in a way that made me feel…weird. Wrong. Like his icy gaze was burning me up from the inside. To the point that I had to take off my turtleneck in what felt like a fit of fever.

I knew I’d made a mistake as soon Marco’s hand settled on the back of my neck, reminding me with the seeming caress that he’d asked me to keep the tattoo on my neck covered. Oops.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. “I’m a little hot. Must be the wine.”

Marco just smiled tightly. Only to freeze when his mother squinted and asked, “What’s that on your shirt, dear?”

And that was when I remembered not only did I have the mascot for my favorite band tattooed on the back of my neck, I also happened to be wearing one of their concert tees under my sweater.

Antonio actually tilted his head all the way to the side to squint right along with Maria at my t-shirt.

“Is she some kind of Buddhist?” he asked Marco in Spanish.

“No, Dad…” Marco began, only to trail off, seemingly at a loss for a decent explanation of why I had a laughing Buddha with blood dripping out of his mouth on my shirt.

“That’s Death Buddha, Mom,” a voice explained from the other end of the table. “One of my favorite bands.”

I blinked in surprise and looked over to see that yes, indeed, it was Go talking. His gaze was still sharp on my face, but a little softer now.

“Mine, too,” I answered carefully, feeling exactly about this conversation the way a deep sea diver might feel about treading into shark infested waters. Fascinated but understandably wary. “I actually followed them around for a year after I finished college.”

He looked off to the side, then right back at me in a way that put me in mind of a robot having to stop to make some computations before speaking again. “You followed them around,” he repeated. “Why?”

“Why? Because they’re my favorite band,” I answered with a laugh. Also, my pierced up boyfriend at the time had invited me to go along with him. But that didn’t feel like an appropriate addendum for the Thanksgiving-dinner-with-my-boyfriend’s-parents table. Especially since we’d broken up less than three months into the year I spent following them around.

“Death Buddha, oh I remember that horrible band now. What a terrible name they have,” Maria said. “I used to say that to Go when he was home for break from Carnegie Mellon and would blast that awful music in his room. Didn’t I used to say that? Thank goodness none of my other children like that metal music.”

I frowned then, and cut my gaze to Marco who’d asked me out on our first date with a pair of tickets to see Death Buddha—a band he claimed to love.

As if reading my thoughts, Marco said, “They aren’t so bad, Mami. There aren’t many metal bands with Hispanic drummers out there. We should all be supporting them.”

Daniella harrumphed. “Whatever, that’s not what you said to Berger when he—”

Before Daniella could finish the sentence, Marco said, “So yeah, Nyla followed them around for a year, but then she came to her senses and decided to go back to school. Now she’s got a degree in Child Psychology and a good job and a great boyfriend…”

Everyone laughed at Marco’s joke. Everyone but Go.

“Why Child Psychology?” he asked me from his end of the table.

His question was so direct, it felt like an interrogation.

“Because I like kids,” I answered carefully, that shark-infested water feeling coming over me again.

“And?”

“And what?”

“You tell me,” he answered. “Women are fond of upspeak, I know, but that didn’t feel like a finished statement. I heard an ‘and.’”

I thought about his words and asked, “Are you trying to ask me why else I decided to get a masters in Child Psychology?”

“Yes, I’m asking why you took out substantial loans to get this degree of yours, only to take a five figure job at a domestic abuse shelter where you deal mostly with women and only occasionally with children. From the outside looking in, it doesn’t seem like a good plan.”

At the word “plan,” the entire table groaned.

“Leave her alone, Berger,” Phoebe, the second oldest sister, said.

“Yeah,” Marco agreed, his face not quite so affable now. “Not everyone has a plan.”

“And our community is lucky to have a progressive shelter like Ruth’s House. In fact I’ve done quite a bit of pro bono work for them,” Daniella pointed out.

“That’s because you plan to become the governor of Indiana one day,” Go shot back. “Nyla, on the other hand, followed a band around for a year before settling into a not very promising career.”

“Hey,” I snapped back, tired of being spoken about like I wasn’t even at the table. “I might not have a plan, but I care deeply about the good work Sam is doing at Ruth’s House, and I’m glad to be of service to the many children of the women who come to the shelter. A number of those kids are going through the worst fucking time of their lives, and Ruth’s House provides them with counseling, tutoring, and a variety of progressive services like yoga and meditation classes.”

“Nyla, language…” Marco said, giving the back of my neck a squeeze. His smile was barely hanging on by a thread at that point.

“Sorry,” I said, shooting an apologetic look to Maria. “I’m just saying they get a lot more than I had growing up in the foster system, so…”

But before Maria could answer, Go said, “You’re applying your degree to a low paying job because something bad happened that put you in the foster care system when you were a child. I’m assuming death or some type of abuse. And this Sam helps not only women, but also children who are suffering. So instead of coming up with a plan for your own life, you’ve decided to go along with hers. That makes sense.”

“Jesus Christ, Berger!” Marco said, finally losing his cool.

“I will not have that kind of language in my house,” their mother said.

“Seriously, Mami, he’s the one interrogating Nyla, the former foster kid, about her life plan over freaking Thanksgiving dinner, and you’re coming after me?!” Marco asked.

“He’s got a point, Mom,” Daniella said. “I know he bought you and Dad a house, but we really shouldn’t let him treat poor Nyla like that.”

My gaze cut to Go then, not loving how they made me sound like some tragic head case who couldn’t handle a few questions from their younger brother. He was obviously agitated, rocking slightly and gripping his fork so tight, I could see the whites of his knuckles.

“Classic Berger,” Phoebe muttered.

“Seriously not cool, Berger,” Cat agreed. “Not everyone can make a plan for their life that turns them into billionaires.”

“Not everyone even wants that,” Marco pointed out.

And Antonio said, “I apologize for our son’s behavior, Nyla. I think you owe her an apology, Rodrigo.”

Something shuttered in Go’s eyes, and I guess you can take the billionaire out of Irvington, but you couldn’t make him not listen to his father, because he muttered, “Sorry,” before turning his eyes down to his plate of untouched food.

I should have left it at that. For a long time afterward I’d think about how I should have just accepted the apology and changed the subject. I know for a fact that was what my wonderful and beautiful boss, Sam, would have done.

But there was something about the way he was looking down at his plate. It gave me the strangest feeling…the opposite of everyone else at the table: that he wasn’t trying to insult me, he was trying to understand me.

Also, there was a question knocking around at the back of my mind. A bad one that I kind of didn’t want the answer to, but nonetheless found myself asking.

“If your name’s Rodrigo and your nickname’s Go, why’s everyone calling you Berger?”

Go looked back up then, and the table went super quiet. Which confirmed the answer without anyone having to say a word.

I pushed Marco’s hand off the back of my neck and asked his brother, “Are you, in fact, on the spectrum? Do you have Asperger’s?”

Go looked to the side. Once. Twice—as if my question was taking extra computational power on his part.

“It’s a very long answer,” he finally said. “But the short answer is maybe no. From what a team of professionals was able to assess a couple of years ago, I’m just an asshole with poor social skills and some sensory processing issues.”

“Rodrigo!” Maria admonished.

“Sorry,” Go said to her before he continued, “But as you most likely know, the line is thin. Especially when people my age get assessed.”

Now it was my turn to process the information he’d just given me. And I came to same conclusion I would have either way. “They really need to stop calling you Berger. I mean, there’s not even a ‘b’ in that word.”

A small smile flitted across Go’s lips. “Yes, I’ve tried to tell them that as well, but they don’t care about the misspelling. And I don’t…” He looked down at his plate. Then back up at me again. “I don’t care what they call me. My family loves me, and they’re good people. The best people. They loved me before my money. When I was a kid and at my worst. They loved me.”

“Okay,” I answered with a shrug. “Now they have the chance to be even better people and stop fucking calling you that.”

For once, the language card didn’t get thrown out. I think because everyone but Go was staring at me in horror.

Go, however, just studied me for a moment or two, his gaze almost a blank of feeling, before saying, “I don’t need defending, Nyla. Not from my family.”

Then without giving me a chance to answer, he shifted his gaze to Cat and said, “I’ll take you for a test drive in your new Tesla after dinner. But there are a few things we should go over first…”

Soon after, Marco made a joke about the time Phoebe backed their dad’s car into a pole during her very first driving lesson, and the table was off and laughing once more. No one called him Berger again, I noted. But no one really spoke to me again either.

A little while later when I was coming out of the bathroom, I heard Go saying to Marco, “Why did you bring her here? I’m sure you knew she wouldn’t fit in. I don’t understand your plan with her.”

“Not everyone has a plan,” I heard Marco say. Only to stop when he spotted me standing there.

So yes, best Thanksgiving ever.

Not even.

I so shouldn’t have smoked. I can control my mouth when I don’t smoke. Paste a blank look on my face when I don’t agree and look thoughtful. Thank God I was due at Ruth’s House to help Sam with our annual Thanksgiving dinner. It was the perfect excuse for Marco to get me out shortly after his brief conversation with Go.

We drove back to my apartment in silence, exchanging good-byes without any kisses. So it came as exactly zero surprise when Marco invited me to lunch at a busy café near Ruth’s House the Monday after the disastrous Thanksgiving dinner.

“Let me make this easy for you,” I said, without bothering to take off my coat as I sat down across from him at the circular metal table. “We’ve got to break up because I just don’t love Death Buddha nearly as much as you do.”

“I don’t hate them…” Marco said, wincing at the white lie he’d told to get me to go out with him.

“But you don’t love them either,” I said, voice quiet.

And we looked across the table at each other, both knowing we were no longer talking about my favorite band, but about feelings that just weren’t going to happen on either of our parts. Not on his, because I was too much of a freak. Not on mine, because I’d zipped up my heart in the toughest leather a long time ago.

“This is good,” he’d said, giving me one of those cute dimpled smiles of his. “It will free us both up for other people. I want you to be happy, Nyla.”

Maybe if Marco hadn’t met Sophia shortly afterwards while representing the Indianapolis police force at a gala the college was throwing, that might have been the end of our story. If he’d decided to get into a relationship with anyone but my foster sister, we might have actually continued to be friends. Friends just like him and Sam who treated each other in the utmost professional manner whenever he responded to a call at Ruth’s House. After all, this wasn’t my first rodeo. I’d been dumped plenty of times. By families and by boys, and I’d wisely kept my heart out of our relationship. There was no reason the break-up with Marco should have been bitter.

But I received a gentle call from Sophia on my work phone just a few weeks after our break-up.

“I didn’t want to upset you,” she said after contacting me out of the blue “to check in” as she called it.

Go hadn’t been wrong about there being an unspoken reason behind my degree in psychology. I’d mostly pursued the subject out of true interest, but there been more to it than that. And it was deeply connected to my need to try and understand what had gone wrong with Sophia and her family. The Perezes, who’d accepted me with loving arms and had even started adoption proceedings, only to turn on me that fateful night.

But I’d learned a lot over the course of getting a degree. What happened hadn’t been my fault. Or Sophia’s. We’d both been children, and she, like Sam, had grown into a wonderful woman. One who put others before herself and worked tirelessly as a Financial Aid Coordinator so girls with backgrounds like mine could receive degrees in Child Psychology.

So even when she introduced the subject of her and Marco dating, I didn’t think I was angry. Or bitter that she’d be getting the guy and his almost perfect family.

“My dad’s dead now, and I want to keep the past in the past,” she’d told me. “Plus, Marco’s a really nice guy. I like him so much, but if you don’t want us to date…”

I’d given her my blessing to date my ex-boyfriend, just like Sam had given me hers. I’d wished her and Marco well, and really meant it.

At least, I thought I had. But then Marco had shown up at the Halloween fundraiser Sam and her husband Nikolai threw for Ruth’s House at their stately mansion, which was located in the same neighborhood where Marco’s parents now lived. He’d decided to come dressed as a robber, in black jeans and a black skull cap paired with a tight black and white long-sleeved tee that showed off his muscles to perfection. Which was both ironic and funny—not just because he was a cop in real life, but because I’d also come dressed as a robber, in a black and white bodycon dress paired with a black skull cap and tights.

“We match,” he’d said with a chuckle when we ran into each other at the open bar. The champagne had been flowing. And I remembered how he’d made me laugh with his perfectly timed jokes. He’d offered to walk me out and when I told him to give my best to Sophia, he’d mentioned they were on a break. Something about her wanting to settle down and him being not quite ready yet...

“Also, she kind of looks like she could be one of your sisters,” I pointed out with an unkind snort.

“Ew! Why would you put that image in my head?” he’d demanded. Only to say a moment later, “But my parents do kinda love her more than any other girlfriend I’ve ever had….”

We’d laughed together, burping champagne…

Then we’d woken up the next day in my bed.

The only person who regretted it more than me was Marco.

“Oh God, oh God, why did I do this?” he kept repeating. “This wasn’t in the plan.”

I remember thinking he sounded just like his brother as he pulled his costume back on, mumbling, “The plan was to stay with Sophia. Eventually marry her…”

He broke off with an apologetic grimace as if just now remembering I was still there. “You’re a nice girl, Nyla, but I really do love her. And I was hurting because she told me to commit or get off the toilet. But committing was always the plan. To be with her. Not you. I just needed time…”

I wasn’t that nice. The fact that I’d slept with him proved that, but I really tried in that moment. Tried to be a better person than I’d been the night before.

“Plus, we were both really, really drunk,” I told him and myself, trying to reconcile what we’d done.

But Marco was the perfect gentleman as he finished putting on his clothes and beat the hastiest of exits. He never once made me feel like our one night stand was in any way my fault, even though when he was sober, he obviously preferred Sophia. The pretty do-gooder. Not black and twisty me with a punk-rock wardrobe, a ton of face jewelry, and a job that while honorable, didn’t exactly make for light conversation at the dinner table.

Of course he wanted Sophia, not me. Sophia’s the kind of girl boys bring home to announce their engagement. I’m the kind of girl boys bring home because they want to piss off their parents. Which was why I’d been surprised that Marco, an upstanding police officer with an excellent reputation and a close-knit Hispanic family, had asked me out in the first place.

Plus, after everything she’d been through, Sophia deserved to be happy. Happy with a guy like Marco.

If not for the period that never came, I’m sure Marco would have gone down in my heart as just another relationship that hadn’t worked out, followed by a really ill-advised one night stand. But my period didn’t come. And it being the holiday season, a notoriously hectic time for domestic abuse shelters, I’d been too busy to notice the missing period until I’d finally gotten around to cleaning up my apartment a few days after Christmas and noticed the super-sized box of tampons I’d bought at Sam’s Club while shopping for the shelter’s annual Thanksgiving celebration. A box I still hadn’t used, though I remembered thinking at the time that I had to buy them because my period would be coming any day now…

Stress, I told myself. It was probably stress.

But it wasn’t stress.

A hastily bought drugstore test and a visit to my OB/gyn confirmed that.

A lot of other women in my position might have optioned out of becoming a mother at the age of twenty-seven to her ex-boyfriend’s baby. And I won’t say I didn’t think about it. But I didn’t think about it for very long.

A lot of other women would have terminated the pregnancy or considered other options, but a lot of other women still had living parents or siblings or at least one person in this world who loved them. I had nothing. And as tough as I’d been trying to be since the incident with the Perezes, I couldn’t fathom giving up this child. Almost as soon as I found out I had a baby on the way, I knew I’d be keeping it.

Plus, I had a few resources. Not many. But some. I knew Sam, my wonderful boss, would help me in any way she could. And I was smart. I could figure out how to raise a baby alone, even if Marco decided he didn’t want anything to do with it. Still, my heart was beating like a drum when I walked into the station and asked Marco if he had a minute to talk.

“Thank you,” he said after I told him in the station’s relatively quiet break room. “This is a hell of a thing to find out after getting back together with Sophia, but I really appreciate you telling me. It can’t have been easy.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I know things are going really well between you two now, and that night...”

“Was a mistake. A big mistake.” He ran a hand through his shiny black hair. “Sorry, Nyla, but I never should have gone off-plan.”

“It’s okay,” I answered, because he was right. That night was such a colossal mistake. Now that we’d shed our matching costumes, anyone who saw us standing there awkwardly in the break room would have easily seen we weren’t a match and had no business hooking up on Halloween.

He rubbed the back of his neck, looking much older than his thirty-five years. “So I guess my little brother would tell me to ask you about your plan…”

“I don’t really have one,” I admitted. “Other than keeping it. I know I’m keeping it.”

He nodded. “Okay…okay…” he said. “I guess that means we have a few things to figure out. But first…”

He released a weary breath and looked down as if deciding something. “I need to talk to Sophia.”

“Of course,” I said, nodding.

“We’ve been together a year. I was going to propose to her on Christmas…”

It takes two to tango, but I felt like the scum of the earth.

“Oh Marco. Take your time,” I told him.

“This is going to cause so many problems,” he said with a heavy sigh. “But I’ll talk to Sophia and then call you first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Whenever. Seriously, take your time,” I said. “I should get back to work, though...”

He nodded, looking as if he was in a complete daze. “Yeah, yeah, let me talk to Sophia. Then I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?” he said again.

“Okay,” I agreed, not bothering to point out he was repeating himself as I headed toward the break room door. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. And the truth was, I really wasn’t looking forward to talking to him the next day.

But tomorrow never came.

Instead, when I woke up the next morning, it was to the news that Marco had been killed in the early hours of the morning by a drunk driver going the wrong way on the highway. I spent a good chunk of the day reading the many news reports about the death of one of Indiana’s finest and the brother of a tech superstar. Several news outlets honed in on one detail, the ring he’d had in his pocket—which he’d never been able to give to his girlfriend.

It was horrific news and over a week later, I was still wrapping my head around the fact that Marco never even got the chance to talk to Sophia. That our conversation had been one of his last.

And now here I am, in the study of a mansion his brother bought for their parents, telling him his dead brother left something behind. Something pretty big.

My announcement resonates through the room, leaving an echo of shock in its wake.

Go blinks, his eyes going to the side. Then he strokes his beard and says, “You slept with my brother before his death.”

“Yes,” I answer, though I’m not sure if he’s actually asking a question.

“When?”

“On Halloween.”

“On Halloween. Even though he was in a relationship with Sophia?”

“They were on a break. A really small break that ended with our one-night-stand. But still I—I’m not proud that it happened…”

For what feels like a full minute, Go stares at me. His face a hard blank. It’s like he’s buffering, using all of his processing power to compute what I’ve just told him.

Then he blinks again and says, “Okay, we need a plan.”

“A plan, yes,” I agree, feeling not a little relieved. “I wasn’t quite sure how to break this news to your parents. But if you have some ideas...”

“Not some ideas, Nyla. A plan. You’ll marry me, and I’ll raise this baby as my own.”