“Have sex with?”
He flinched at the bite in my tone. “No! More than that. I just don’t know how to explain what Anna means to me.”
Oh, jeez. He was in love with her!
It was sweet yet incredibly tragic since I knew without a doubt that Anna would never feel the same.
“Joey?”
“Yeah?”
“If it’s meant to be, it will be.” Jeez, that was lame but what else could I say?
He nodded and studied his feet. I expected him to argue or to launch into one of his many crazy schemes he came up with to make Anna love him, but instead, he turned with shoulders low and walked back into the building.
I stared at the door and considered going after him but what good would it do? Lying to him wouldn’t help him either.
“And the award for World’s Biggest Asshole goes to Mian Ross,” I mumbled.
*
“ This is the Ross residence.” Hearing my aunt’s nasal voice made me consider hanging up, but then, my baby boy cooed and wriggled against me with his adoring and trusting eyes staring up at me. He didn’t deserve to suffer because of my pride, so I took a deep breath.
“Aunt Gretchen, how are you?”
“Who is speaking?” The temperature drop in her tone told me she knew exactly who was speaking.
“It’s Mian.”
“Mian. Hmmm. I hope you’re well,” she answered. I could almost hear her derisive snort. “Why are you calling?”
“I—we… need your help.”
“Mian, really—”
“Please, Aunt Gretchen. I lost my job, and I’m out of money. If not for me then could you consider your great nephew?”
“I’m sorry, Mian. We gave you a chance but you chose to be just like your father. You chose to sin over God, so now you have to pay your penance. Please don’t call us again.” The line died. The only family I had left and the only way for my son or me to eat tonight had tossed me away like trash for the second time.
When I discovered I was pregnant, I was devastated and afraid. I managed to hide my pregnancy for five months. Despite my aunt’s religious beliefs and how far along I was, she demanded that I get an abortion.
“You’re to get an abortion and do it quietly.”
“Aunt Gretchen, I can’t. How could you ask me to? I thought—”
“You are not going to shame me in front of the church. Cleanse yourself of this sin or get out of my house.”
I’d been on my own ever since.
Counting out the change I had left, I realized I had enough to make one more phone call. I had to make it count.
I picked up the receiver and hoped my memory didn’t fail me now. I’d dialed it so many times in the past only to hang up that I knew it wouldn’t.
“Hello?”
“It’s Mian.” I decided to cut to the chase. My own aunt didn’t offer me the courtesy of recognition. I had no reason to believe he would.
He exhaled heavily into the phone while I held my own breath. “What do you want?”
“I’m sure you know what I want, or I wouldn’t be calling. Believe me when I say, I want nothing else from you.”
“So you think you’d just pin a baby on me to get paid?”
“You and I both know that’s not what this is about. I lost everything because of you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You raped me. Or don’t you remember? You should. I was the one drugged out of my mind while you had all the fun.”
“What are you going on about?” He’d snapped. Indifference was replaced with anger, and for the first time since I told him about Caylen, he reacted. “You know what? It doesn’t matter. Because no one would believe you.”
“Are you sure about that? Caylen—that’s his name by the way–is your son. Whether you want to believe that or not, all it will take is a simple DNA test to prove.”
“Yeah? And how do you think you could get me to do that? Tell the police? My father will bury you.”
“You underestimate the way the justice system works these days. It’s no longer politicians who rule the world. It’s social media. It’s drama. It’s scandal. All I have to do is point, and you lose.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“That’s where you’ve got it twisted. I’m a mother trying to feed her child—a child that you wronged the moment you stuck your dick in me without my permission .”
“You’re bluffing.”
“Am I?”
“Even if you aren’t, you’d have a tough time proving the son of a senator raped you.” I imagined his face twisting with disgust as if I were the one drugging and raping.
“Maybe not. And it may be that the age of consent in Illinois is seventeen… but we both know the twenty-one-year-old son of a senator impregnating an underage nobody, whose father is in prison for murder, and who also accuses him of rape, will destroy your father’s career when this goes public. And it will go public, Aaron.”
Silence.
It stretched on for so long that I thought maybe I had finally won.
But I was wrong.