One to Tell the Grandkids (9 page)

That weekend after the first doctor’s appointment, Taryn was back at Slate’s apartment. The sonogram was the first thing he asked for. He’d been dying to see it.

“I think your uterus has bad reception, dude.”

Taryn rolled her eyes, but she smiled. He had the sweetest, goofiest grin as he turned the ultrasound photo over and over in his hands, examining it from every angle. He looked as awed as she’d felt when she’d heard the whir of the baby’s fast heartbeat.

Slate looked up at her, and the air around them grew heavier. It wasn’t a negative heaviness but a stressed importance. She had tangible proof a tiny life was growing inside her, and this man, this relative stranger, was part of her forever.

However this story ended, as she looked at Slate, his nervous but happy expression, she realized she was sanguine with the fact she would share a child with this man. It had been daunting in the beginning, when all she could think about was the unknown other half of her baby. Despite her moments of nagging pessimism, when she was with Slate, she felt sure he would be a loving father.

That was all she wanted. If he was going to insist on being part of her life, the baby’s life, all Taryn could ask was that he love Patch.

Slowly, Slate reached out, his eyes on her, waiting for her to stop him. She didn’t, though she wasn’t sure what he was going to do.
She wasn’t at all sure what she
wanted
him to do. The air had that kind of flavor to it. She wouldn’t have been at all surprised if he kissed her. If he did, Taryn wasn’t sure she would stop him, but she also wasn’t sure it was what she wanted. It was strange to share something so profound with a man she didn’t love, but she was elated he seemed to understand her headspace. She was shaken to her core, terrified, and yet so excited her body vibrated with elation.

Slate held her gaze for another moment before he looked down, and the heaviness of the moment passed. He held the sonogram up to her stomach, fitting it there. “It’s like X-ray vision.”

Taryn ruffled his hair in an instinctively affectionate gesture.

“You seem to be having a baby kidney bean.” He pulled back and sat down on his couch. “Actually, I’ve been looking up things online. You’re about ten weeks, right?”

“Yeah, according to pregnancy math.”

“Patch looks really freaky.” He tapped the picture. “Kind of like a sea creature, you know? Like those fish you find only in the deepest parts of the ocean floor?”

“Real nice.” Taryn sat down next to him, leaving a healthy amount of space.

“No worries. She’ll grow out of it. I’m really sorry I couldn’t be there. Was Caleb okay?”

“Caleb was great.”

He had been, too. As he’d promised, he held her hand. More than once in the couple of days that had passed she found herself harkening back to the few moments they’d shared. The way his eyes sparked and his lips curled up, his smile full of the same wonder she felt when the baby first appeared on the ultrasound screen. His fingers had tightened around hers, his thumb sweeping her knuckles. For such a small gesture, it had felt intimate somehow.

Or maybe it was the way the world had seemed to dwindle. The doctor had been narrating what they were seeing, but Taryn really had no memory of what she’d said. She had been staring at Caleb and him back at her.

Then, after she’d managed to get through the blood draw without fainting, she had vague memories of walking down the hallway on wobbling legs. Her vision blurred, her thoughts swam, and she broke out in a cold sweat. After that, she remembered nothing except the warmth that had enveloped her, putting the solid earth back under her feet. In his arms, for the first time since this whole mess had begun, Taryn had felt safe.

What any of it was supposed to mean, she didn’t know. Nothing, she supposed. They were just random moments in time that stuck out to her.

“I’m glad,” Slate said.

“Thank you for calling him, but you shouldn’t bug him. I could have gone on my own.”

“Ah.” Slate waved his hand, sitting back on the couch. “Caleb doesn’t have enough to do.”

“You keep saying that.” Taryn shifted toward him, curious. “How did he end up owning a bar in Los Angeles when he lives most of the time in the OC?”

“He lives here in LA. Family stuff came up, and that’s why he stays at his mother’s house in your neck of the woods during the week. It sucks because his whole life is here. His friends. His bar.” Taryn could see this was, to Slate, a great injustice. He looked angry and sad on his friend’s behalf. “It’s like he’s been on pause for the last two years. I get why he thinks he has to do it. I really do. But it just sucks.”

Chapter Nine

“S
top fidgeting.” Caleb cast a look at Slate in his peripheral vision, not taking his eyes off the road. “You’ve already met Robin. Melanie can’t be too horrible.”

Slate grumbled and put his feet up on the dash even though he knew Caleb didn’t like that. “I met Robin, but I don’t really know him. That whole day was a blur of . . .” He waved his hands emphatically. “You know? It doesn’t count. It shouldn’t count. First impressions made under extreme circumstances shouldn’t be allowed to count.” He huffed and crossed his arms.

“Count toward what? What are you worried about?”

“Man, what am I not worried about?” Slate slumped down farther in his seat. “I think things are cool between me and Taryn right now, but I don’t know. I don’t know how anything is going to turn out.”

“That’s life,” Caleb said.

“Yeah, that’s life, and usually that’s cool with me. Lately, though, it’s been driving me nine kinds of crazy. The whole just letting life happen thing? It’s not okay anymore. It’s not good enough. Everything feels life or death important, and it’s making me nuts that I can’t be sure about anything.”

“Kids will do that to you. They make you want to make the world into something it’s not. I can see why you’d be concerned about Taryn, but what does it matter if her friends like you?”

“It’s never going to be just the two of us, is it?” He shifted in his seat to look at Caleb. “Friends are important. Maybe more important than parents in some ways. Like take you and me. When she wasn’t calling me back, you said she just needed time. I saw in your face, though, you were thinking the worst. That threw me. I wanted to believe her, but if you didn’t, then I was ready to be mad at her. I’m Patch’s daddy, and she can’t do anything about that, but that doesn’t mean she has to make it easy for me.

“It’s important to me that you like Taryn, so I have to figure it’s important for her friends to like me.”

Caleb reached out to clap his friend on the arm. “They’re going to like you.” He put his hand back on the wheel, looking out at the road. “There are things you can control and things you can’t. You’re a good guy. If they don’t want to see that, well, you’ve got me. We’ll figure it out. We always do.”

Slate put his feet back on the floor of the car. “Thanks, man.” He was quiet for a minute. “You like Taryn, don’t you? I mean, if everything went bad, you don’t think she’d give me trouble? Custody battles sound horrible.”

A bitter taste twisted Caleb’s tongue, and he couldn’t answer until he’d swallowed around the tightness in his throat. “At least you’ll have a fighting chance.” He gave his head a hard shake. “And yes, to answer your question, I like Taryn. I don’t think she’d give you trouble, but I haven’t been the best judge of character in that regard, have I?”

A few minutes later, they were in front of Taryn’s place. Before they could knock on the door, it opened. A statuesque woman stood there, taking up the entire door frame with her presence alone. Her eyes glided right over Caleb to assess Slate, looking him over from head to toe. Just as Caleb was about to ask if she had a problem, she grinned and called over her shoulder, “You were right, Rob. Grade A breeding stock.”

Caleb narrowed his eyes in distaste, but before he could speak, a groan came from inside the house. Taryn appeared behind the woman, dragging her back. “That’s gross, Mel. Cut it out and be nice.”

“I am being nice,” Melanie said, hands on her hips as she looked Slate over again. “Between you and Tare, that’s going to be one good-looking baby.” She turned back to Taryn. “That’s the important part, the part you can’t change. If he’s a jerk to either you or my baby, I can chop him into pieces and bury him in the desert. Problem solved.” She offered her hand to Slate. “I’m Melanie Devonshire.”

“Slayton McKenzie.”

Melanie’s lips tugged downward. “Maybe you should make sure you get to name the kid,” she said to Taryn.

“And you’re done,” Robin said, stepping in front of Melanie. He offered his hand and a welcoming smile to Slate. “I’m Robin.”

“I remember.”

“Caleb, by the way,” Caleb said, raising an eyebrow at Melanie.

“Ooh, can I call you Cale?”

“No.”

She threw her head back and laughed, as unperturbed by his bluntness as she had been by her friends’ admonishments. She grabbed Slate by the hand. “Why are we just standing here in the doorway? Come in here. I have a bone to pick with you.”

“Already?”

“There’s something suspicious about a guy who doesn’t have Facebook.”

“What, do you want to Facebook stalk me? See how many pictures there are out there of me drunk off my ass or in a compromising position?”

“Oh, please. I have too many of those kinds of pictures of my own to be looking to judge yours. No. The problem here is we have no picture of you at all so we couldn’t do this.”

They’d reached the kitchen by that point, and she turned a large laptop around to show him the screen. The page she had pulled up was a site where you could put two people’s pictures in the mix and see what a child of theirs might look like.

Melanie had by then pulled Slate over to a mostly blank wall, and Robin had his cell phone out, ready to take a picture.

“Could you guys, I don’t know, ask him first?” At that point, Taryn had given up looking exasperated and looked instead adoringly amused. There was a connectedness about them that made Caleb glad for her. It didn’t seem as though her family of origin was being as supportive as they could have been, but she wasn’t as alone as he’d feared.

“I’m cool with it,” Slate said. His grin at the camera was a lot shier than the one Caleb was used to.

“You know these things aren’t the slightest bit accurate. It doesn’t take into account any of the rest of the family.”

Robin snorted as he snapped the picture. “Thank you, Captain Obvious. I mingled myself with Johnny Depp earlier. The baby came out with a goatee. I’m going to laugh my ass off if your baby comes out with your neck tattoo,” he said to Slate.

Slate smiled at the idea and then looked to Taryn. “Not until Patch is eighteen. I promise. Then I’ll do it myself. If they want it. You know.”

Caleb nearly slapped his forehead with his palm. Discussing their child’s possible tattoos before it was even born was so Slate.

“Yeah, you’re not getting near my child with a needle ever,” Taryn said, but her look was teasing.

As it turned out, the program did blend in Slate’s neck tattoo. It looked like a giant birthmark.

“Hey, that’s okay,” said Slate. He stroked the pad of his finger over the amalgamation of a child, his eyes wide as though with wonder. “It wouldn’t matter to me. Patch is going to be beautiful.”

“I’m with you,” Melanie said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Beautiful baby. That’s just a given. As long as they don’t inherit Mike’s attitude, Patch will be perfect.”

Taryn sighed and pushed herself off the wall she’d been leaning against. “Mike isn’t that bad, you know.”

“Uh, yeah. He really is. He’s been terrible to you about this whole thing.”

“He’s only telling the truth.”

“I’m sorry,” Caleb said. “I know it’s probably not my place, especially given that I’ve never met the guy, but I don’t think it can be said enough. There is no justification for the nasty names he called you or that he isn’t standing behind you.”

“This guy, I like,” Melanie said. “But let’s forget about worthless siblings before I get myself all worked up again.”

“Ah yes.” Robin clapped his hands together. “Back to the plan.”

“The plan?” Taryn quirked an eyebrow, but Caleb couldn’t help but notice the quiet misery that had spread over her features a moment before when she was talking about her brother hadn’t quite smoothed out.

“Yes.” Robin looped his arm around Slate’s shoulder. “Baby Daddy is going to come with us, and by
us
, I mean me and Mel, to pick up dinner.”

Taryn narrowed her eyes. “Why?”

“Because we don’t know what he wants yet. We don’t know his tastes, obviously.”

“And why am I not going?”

“Because you’re too busy gestating right now.”

“Uh-huh, and why is Caleb not going?”

“Because it’s unchivalrous to leave a gestating person alone.”

“I’m alone all the time.”

“Shhh.” Robin put his finger to Taryn’s lips.