The Tycoon's Baby

When I got home from the beach, Jason still wasn’t there. I cleaned up the apartment some as I let my talk with Alex run through my mind and then went online to do another job search. I applied for a few positions in the city and even a few that were far out in the county. The trouble I was having was that before anyone was willing to let you into their multi-million dollar estate as a service person, they wanted to do an extensive background. If that were done in my case, they would easily find out about Alex and the baby and the court battle. That would make anyone hesitant to let me into their home and their lives and I wouldn’t blame them. I applied anyways. I wasn’t really qualified for anything else yet. I’d taken the semester off of school to see what happened with the baby. It was likely that I wouldn’t be able to go back for more than one. The baby would need me and I would have to work. I clicked off the internet and sighed. I wasn’t quite sure how I got myself into these messes.

I made myself a cup of decaffeinated tea and took it out on the balcony of the apartment. I sat there trying to sort out my feelings for Alex. There was no denying that I did have feelings for him. Someone from the outside looking in might be prone to tell me that I’m crazy… he never cared about me at all. He’s turning his back on both me and his child. But when I look into his eyes I see something real there. I see something that for whatever reason, he’s afraid to admit… he’s afraid to feel. But he was back with his wife, so what could ever come of it? Nothing. I could accept that, I suppose, but I didn’t want all of this animosity between us nevertheless. I was already tired of fighting. It wasn’t my nature.

I felt a raindrop fall against my skin, and then another and another. I sat there, unmoving, not wanting to go back into the apartment and wait for Jason to decide to come home and admit that this is my life. I finally moved my chair back so that the rain didn’t hit me directly and I sat there and watched it fall. The moon hung full in the hazy Los Angeles sky and underneath the cloud cover I could almost glimpse an eclipse of blazing stars trying to force their way out and be seen. That’s what I felt like most of the time. I knew that I had it in me to shine. I knew that I had it in me to succeed. But somehow I kept allowing the clouds to get in the way. I needed to start making some changes in my life and when I heard Jason come in the front door I told myself that right now was as good of a time to start as any.

I stood and went into the house. He looked at me curiously and said, “Why are you sitting in the rain?”

I shrugged. “Just thinking,” I said. “How was the barbeque?”

“It was fun,” he said sitting down on the couch. “What did you do today?” I sat down in the chair across from him.

“I saw Liz. She fixed my mess of a hair for me.” He looked at my hair, but he didn’t offer a response, I guess a simple compliment was too much to ask for these days. I didn’t wait for it. I knew it wasn’t coming. I went on and said, “I had lunch with my mother.” He rolled his eyes and smirked at that. My mother and the fact that I’d continued to have a relationship with her had been the source of more than one of our arguments over the years. He thought I should be ashamed of her and cut her off completely. I thought that she’s still my mother in spite of her character flaws. I would probably never completely cut her off. I really believed that in spite of it all, she did her best. I went on and said, “Then I went to the beach for a while and took a walk on the pier.”

“Hmm,” he said, completely disinterested. Sometimes I wasn’t sure why he asked or why I bothered. “Do you see the lawyers tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Are things progressing?”

I shrugged. “I wanted to talk to you about that. I saw Alexander today.” That got his attention.

He sat up off the couch and with his eyebrows pulled together he said, “Why? Didn’t the attorneys tell you to stay away from him?”

“They did and I have been. I just ran into him and he wanted to talk.”

Jason snorted and said, “I hope you told him where to go.”

“No, I sat and talked to him for a while,” I said. He looked annoyed, but I went on quickly before he could interrupt me. “He says that he never wanted any of this. He was confused like I was. Before he even had time to think it all through, his lawyers took it out of his hands. His legal counsel is driving this lawsuit…”

“Of course he said that, Vicki. This is exactly why you weren’t supposed to see him. He’s going to try and make you think he’s the good guy here. You’re too naïve to deal with this.”

The naïve comment bothered me, but I let it go, for now. “He’s not a bad guy, Jason. This is just an odd situation. I don’t think either of us meant to put ourselves here.” I know that I didn’t want to be here and I’m sure from his reaction he didn’t either.

“That’s not the point. He was the smart one here. He should have known better than to dip his wick…”

“Excuse me? He was the smart one?” First I’m naïve and now I’m stupid.

“You know what I mean. He’s the owner of a multi-billion dollar corporation. You’re the maid.”

I stood up, getting aggravated and beginning to feel angry. “Jeez Jason, why not just slug me in the face. It would hurt less.” He was being as disparaging as Alex’s lawyers had been.

“I’m not trying to hurt you,” he said, simply. He didn’t apologize for it though, or take back what he said. I think he truly believed I was too naïve to handle my own life… or stupid.

“I don’t think you’re ever trying to hurt me, Jason. I’m beginning to believe that you’re just really that oblivious to my feelings that you don’t care either way. It’s like this lawsuit. It’s all you ever ask me about. I went to the doctor yesterday; did you even bother to ask me about that? Did you know that I had an ultrasound and found out the sex of my baby?”

He looked at me long and hard and then he asked, “What is it?”

“It is a baby, Jason. It is a child. It is a little boy and I’m his mother and I love him. I’m tired and I don’t want to do this lawsuit any longer. I don’t want to fight any more for things that I don’t even really want or need.”

He sighed like he was growing weary of indulging me and then he said, “You don’t want or need millions of dollars? Wow, you’re a bigger person than most of us,” he said, sarcastically. I didn’t care for his tone and again, it made me angrier. “Listen to me, Vicki. I am thinking of you and the baby even if you don’t believe me. How are you going to support it?”

“Him Jason! Him! Stop calling my baby an it!”

“Okay,” he said with his palms up. “Jeez, calm down. You’re missing the point…”

“No, I get it, I do. You are worried I might ask you to support “it” if I don’t have millions that I won in some stupid lawsuit that I don’t want to be a part of. I get it.”

“I wasn’t worried about you asking me to support… him, Vic. But you and he deserve more than to just be ignored by the man who started all of this, don’t you think? Especially when a few hundred thousand a month wouldn’t even faze the man”

“You know what, Jason? I do believe that he and I deserve more. I just don’t believe that a lawsuit is the way to get what we deserve. I also believe that in time, Alex will come around and understand that I was never trying to trap him.”

“You’re going to drop this suit, aren’t you?” He wasn’t annoyed any longer. He was pissed. It suddenly set in that he didn’t care if I got any money or not. It was about what he might get out of all of this. The slime ball.

“Yes, I think I am,” I told him. I wanted to smile. He looked deflated and then the anger kicked back in.

He stood up and put his large frame in front of me. It was an imposing stance and I actually think it was meant to intimidate. All it did was make me angrier. Who did he think he was trying to push me into continuing a lawsuit I wanted no part of? A lawsuit that he had pushed me into in the first place for his own personal gain while he tried to act like he was being supportive of me.

“You’re a fool,” he yelled at me. “How many times in your life will you be handed this kind of opportunity?”

I actually laughed when he said that. He’s right. I have been a fool, but what made me one had been trusting him, not dropping this lawsuit. “You call this an opportunity as if it’s a job or winning the lottery. It’s taking money away from a man who worked for it. I don’t need millions to raise my baby. All I need is a good job, desire and love. I’ve got all of that.”

“I can’t believe what an idiot you are and I can’t believe that I’ve wasted all of this time on you.”

In spite of the fact that I realized he was the one in the wrong here and what he thought of me really didn’t matter, the realization that he was only with me because of what he thought he would gain in the end, hurt. “I agree with you. Again, I’m a fool and maybe an idiot as well for trusting you. I’m finished with that. I’m dropping this lawsuit.”

“Good luck supporting yourself and that brat you’re carrying!”

I smiled at him. “Thanks. I’ll do fine and we’ll be fine. I’ll have my things out of here tomorrow and I’ll leave the key,” I said, taking my purse and heading for the door.

“Good riddance!” he yelled, as I went out and closed the door behind me. Good riddance is right. Good riddance to fake relationships and silly lawsuits. Hello to my new life. I rubbed my swollen belly. Our new life.


VICTORIA