The Don's Baby: A Bad Boy Romance (11 page)

“Are you sure you can’t, or do you just not want to?”

“I can’t. I couldn’t. You want me to be eternally damned? How many ‘
Hail
Marys’
would I have to say to make up for something like that?”

“Come on. The last time you attended Mass was at your wedding, and the last time before that was when you were still too young to legally drink alcohol.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m not getting rid of it. That’s my final decision. It is not up for debate.”

Silence again.

“Sophia, don’t turn this child into a trap to keep Marcelo with you,” Elena told me quietly. In that moment, I felt something. What was it?
Insulted
. How dare she? I wasn’t trying to trap anyone, especially not Marcelo. Neither of us were willing parties in our wedding. What the hell was she thinking? Did she think I was going to use the baby to make Marcelo stay with me? That presupposed too many things about Marcelo that neither of us knew about him, the first thing being that he would even give a shit that I was pregnant. Maybe I’d tell him and he’d just nod and be on his merry way. He’d hire a doula to live with us and help me, and then he’d check back when the kid was born.

I wasn’t wrong to want my husband to stay with me. He was my husband, but lately, he had actually been
feeling
like a husband, whatever that was supposed to feel like. I didn’t have the reference of having been married before, but I knew what it was like to feel like another person cared about you and wanted you around. That was how I had been feeling about Marcelo and I hoped it was how he had at least begun feeling about me.

“Elena, I know our marriage is built on an arrangement between our fathers, but forgive me for hoping that we have more reasons than just that to stay together. With or without a child.”

“Do you hear yourself right now? Having a child will not change things between you. A baby isn’t a secret weapon or ingredient that you can add to a sham marriage to make it all better. Since your marriage, I thought your only hope was the fact that you and Marcelo could divorce somewhere along the line.”

“I thought that, too. With the child, it doesn’t matter if we do split up because we’ll be co-parenting, divorce or no divorce.”

“So, what are you saying? Do you want to
try
? You want to treat Marcelo like a real husband?”

It was my turn to be silent. Was that what I wanted? I didn’t want a divorce. I always comforted myself with the thought that I could always get one, but I didn’t want to be a divorcée. I didn’t want a failed marriage under my belt. There was no shame in leaving a marriage that was hurting the people in it or was abusive, but Marcelo and me, we were just new. We were just
new
. We hadn’t had a fair try—and that was not something I was going to let get the best of us. Once we had tried and then failed, then maybe, but not without a fight. With the baby, Marcelo was going to be part of my life whether I wanted him to be or not. He wasn’t a monster. I knew that firsthand. He could be gentle. He could be loving. Maybe a child would bring out the best in him. Just because the situation was fucked up, didn’t mean we could just continue not caring and let it get worse.

“Elena, the two weeks we spent away from home were the best two weeks of my life. He was attentive and sweet. We didn’t have to be drunk to have sex. I’ve seen what marriage to him can be like…and I liked it.”

“That was two weeks. This is forever.”

“I know that.”

“
Do
you
? That means you have to stop hating him.”

“I don’t
hate
him.”

“You don’t love him either, though. Do you? You have to try.”

“How am I supposed to learn to love my husband?”

“You said yourself. He isn’t terrible
all
the time. Focus on that. What do you like about him?”

I bit my lip, thinking.

“Well, he’s very handsome.”

“The entire female population of New York City thinks that. Try again.”

“He’s rich?” I attempted. Elena barked out a laugh.

“Lots of men are rich. That’s not a good enough reason to love him. Try harder.”

“The sex is good.”

“Again, the entire female population of New York City thinks that.”

I laughed at that. Marcelo was no virgin. That seemed like a pretty well-documented fact.

“He’s
protective
,” I said.

“Alright, what else?”

“He’s generous. He’s strong.”

“Good, good. Okay. There you are. You have a foundation to build upon. Focus on the things that you like about him. Draw them out of him.”

“Elena, do you think this is a bad idea?”

“It’s not what I would do personally, but it doesn’t matter what I would do. I’m not you. And I’m not the one married to Marcelo.”

“You hate him, don’t you?”

“Yes, but that’s beside the point. You don’t.”

I thought about her words. I didn’t hate Marcelo. I wouldn’t go all the way to the other extreme and say that I loved him, but I sure didn’t hate him. He was…or at least he could be…a good man. Our marriage thus far hadn’t been great, but it wasn’t as if it was all his fault. He wasn’t married to himself, he was married to
me
.

“I just want to try. I don’t want to call it a day and give up without letting there be a chance for something.”

Elena sighed.

“Well, it’s lucky you have a lot of the guesswork taken out of this. You’re
already
married. All you have to do now is date.”

I laughed and thanked her, hanging up the phone.

Sometimes I got jealous of Elena. She had it easy, or at least it certainly seemed that way. She always said that dating women was exhausting, but at least she had the luxury of also being a woman. That was at least half the guesswork taken out of the deal. When girls were mad, they let you know, whether it was directly or by being passive aggressive and bitchy. When men were mad, they started wars.

She was right.

I didn’t want to give up on Marcelo, not when we had the option of trying to make it work. I had dreams for my life, but I had to make new ones now. I had wanted to be the next Lidia Bastianich, but now that would have to wait. I was no longer in it alone, and I couldn’t act as if I was. If I wanted him, I had to show him that I did.

What did wives do for their husbands? Take care of them. I could do that. I could go to the cellar and open up a nice wine for us… or for him since I couldn’t drink anymore. I could cook something for dinner and we could sit at the dining table and we could talk about it, like married adults. Like a date, but in the house. Perfect.

There were loads of things I could do. I could be more appreciative when he got me gifts. I could ask him more questions. I could suck his dick more often. Loads of things. The sit-down dinner idea was pretty good. It was exciting. We ate together sometimes, but a lot of the time we didn’t. I made him breakfast most days, but I had usually had a plate or some coffee by the time he was coming downstairs so it wasn’t a couple activity. He was always out of the house for lunch, and dinner was the same, I had sometimes eaten already when he came home, or—especially in the early days—I would sit at the table with him, but I wouldn’t say anything besides maybe asking him whether he liked the food or how his day was. Nothing.

That was then. The weeks away had changed things between us. We ordered room service a lot, but we also went down to the restaurants sometimes to eat. We had been nice to each other. We had talked and enjoyed each other’s company.

With my fatigue was appetite loss. I just wasn’t hungry, and though the more relaxed, friendly atmosphere had stayed with us, we hadn’t been doing a lot of sit-down dinners.

But we would tonight.

Marcelo was a chef’s dream because not only did he eat and enjoy a large variety of foods and flavors, he wasn’t picky. He didn’t eat only
boiled
food or
red
food, or reject anything because he didn’t like the taste of it. The one thing he disliked, surprisingly, was oatmeal, but that wasn’t on the menu tonight.

I was a chef because I loved cooking and loved food, but I couldn’t deny that one of the perks of being able to cook was it was a fantastic manipulation tool. Maybe manipulation was a strong word, but people needed to eat and people liked you when you could feed them. Everyone was happy when their bellies were full, and in all my years interacting with food, there was not a single problem I had encountered that comfort food couldn’t fix. He never said no to anything I prepared, but he would love the baked rigatoni with cream sauce. If that didn’t get him, the walnut and coffee cake would.

He had sounded surprised when I called him. Pleasantly surprised. At least that was how I had interpreted it. Ideally, I would have wanted the dinner to be a surprise, but I could risk him having eaten already by the time he got home. His baby was taking it out of me, and I had slaved over a hot stove for him. The least he could do was bring his appetite home with him tonight.

I also made the effort to dress up a little. Not really
dress
up,
but at least change out of the sweater and shorts I had been wearing all day. He would be wearing a suit as he was usually, so I wanted to at least match him in terms of attire. He got me so much stuff. I knew he liked seeing me in the things. The names
Givenchy
and
Zanotti
meant a lot more to him than they did to me, but I could at the very least wear them. A nice cocktail dress and some heels weren’t too much to ask. A little lipstick and blush weren’t too much to ask either.

He let himself in as I walked down the stairs. I found him in the kitchen, staring at the set table as if he didn’t know what was going on.

“Marcelo,” I said brightly. He looked up at me and then did a double take.

“Sophie, you look nice. Are you going somewhere?”

“No, just coming down to join you. I hope you’re hungry.”

“I am, did Daniella do all this?”

“Nope. I gave her the afternoon off. You don’t mind, do you?”

“
You
made this?”

“Mm-hmm. Don’t look so shocked Marcelo…I
was
a chef before I became your wife.”

“When you called I thought you didn’t want me to eat out so we could go out to eat somewhere. I thought we had reservations.”

“Would you rather go out?”

He paused as if he was thinking about it.

“What did you make?”

“Baked rigatoni with cream sauce. I dug some wine out of the cellar, and there’s cake.”

The look on his face was enough. He didn’t want to go out.

***

I sliced the cake and drizzled cream over the slices before bringing them to the table. Marcelo smiled at me.

“Did you buy this?”

“Nope. It’s walnut and coffee. Do you like it?”

He would never give me a straight answer when I asked him that. He would just grunt noncommittally or say it was ‘okay’ or ‘alright.’ Sometimes he even used the word ‘decent,’ which was completely insulting.

“It is,” he said. “I love it.”

I smiled, satisfied. I wasn’t hungry. I could barely eat even a few bites of both the main course and the dessert. He had asked during the meal whether I was okay, and I had given the tired ‘Oh, I tasted it lots while cooking, so I’m not really hungry anymore’ excuse.