“I thought there was someone else,” James said, shaking his head softly. “I just didn’t know it would sting so badly when I found out.”
Viola felt tears stinging her eyes, and she wiped them away with her fingertips as they spilled over her bottom eyelid and began to run down her cheeks.
“Really, it’s not the other guy.”
James just nodded. “It’s fine,” he said. “I understand.”
And then, with sudden abruptness, he turned and left, and Viola didn’t know what to say to get him to come back.
The next day, she had Martin come over, expecting much of the same, but he surprised her. When she told him she wanted to break up, he flew into a rage. He yelled, he screamed, he called her names, including the n- word. He swore he would get his car back, and Viola broke down into tears. She cried for days.
She had good friends who helped her through the pregnancy, but it just wasn’t the same without the father there. And after Martin’s horrific outburst when she broke things off with him, she hoped and prayed the baby wasn’t his. She didn’t know what she was going to do. She didn’t want to know whose it was, just so it wouldn’t be Martin’s. She didn’t want to do a DNA test, she didn’t plan on trying to get any guy for his money. She would raise the baby herself, and she would move on with her life.
As she grew closer to her due date, her mother flew in from Illinois, where Viola had been born and raised. It helped to have her mother there, but as the date grew nearer, Viola found herself in a state of depression.
Three days before the baby was due, he decided to come out, and Viola and her mother rushed to the hospital. It was a grueling ten-hour ordeal, but when it was done and Viola was holding her little baby boy, with skin the color of chocolate milk and a head of dark hair already, Viola felt nothing but happiness. All her worries seemed to go away. She thought it might have had something to do with the baby's nose. It was crooked, just like James’. There was no doubt in Viola’s mind that James was the father.
Viola named the baby Grady, after her grandfather, and she and her mother and the baby went home three days after he was born. The happiness of being a new mother couldn’t keep the crushing regret from coming back, though, and she found herself looking at the baby often and thinking of James. When it became too much, a month after Grady was born, she bundled him up and went to see James.
She got into his office building by having security call up to him, and she found him waiting for her as soon as the elevator opened. He arched a brow at the baby she held in her arms, but didn’t say anything until he led her past rows of cubicles and into his private office. The walls were glass, but he pressed a button on a small remote control he kept on his desk, and they darkened.
“Neat,” Viola said, smiling softly to James as she sat down across from him.
“You have a baby,” James said.
“I do.”
“Boy?”
“Yes,” Viola said.
“Is it mine?” James asked, not able to keep the question from springing forth from his lips.
“I think so,” Viola said, and she shifted the baby so James could see its face.
“He has my nose,” James said, and he smiled. “What’s his name?”
“Grady?” Viola said. “Like my-”
James cut her off. “Grandfather. I remember.”
Viola didn’t even remember telling James about her grandfather, but she must have, and he had listened, and remembered. It touched her, and with her hormones all out of sorts, it hit her hard, and she felt tears coming. She let them roll down her cheeks, but took a tissue when James slid the box across the desk towards her.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I really messed up.”
James sat silently for a moment. “If he’s mine, I want to help. He’s mine. I can tell.”
“The nose,” Viola said with a laugh, and James grinned and nodded. “My father has it, so does my brother.”
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” Viola said. “It was you. Always you.”
“I said I want to help,” James said again.
“I didn’t come here for that,” Viola said. “I don’t want your money.”
James grinned and nodded. “I know,” he said, adding, “and that’s why I love you.”
Viola couldn’t speak for a moment. He had told her he loved her. He had never done that. Martin had, and then when she broke up with him, he had yelled and screamed. James liked rough sex, and he had never said it, but now, that he did, she knew he meant it.
“I love you too,” Viola said.