Phillip nodded as he ran his hands down Stanley’s fur. Looking over at Erik with a grin on his face, he said, “I look forward to that moment, the moment when I find the girl who makes me want to change, because I think it is pure luck to find a girl like that. It means that you care, that you love her and care how she feels. It means she matters.”
“Whoa!” Erik exclaimed with his hands up in the air. “Who said anything about loving anyone? Change, Phillip, I said, change for her, no love. I have never been in love with a woman a day in my life and no matter how much she makes me want to change, I don’t think I’ve ever loved her. I feel like I care for her, or something, but I don’t love her.”
Phillip laughed as he rolled his eyes. “You might not now, but you could if you allowed yourself to.”
“She worries the piss out of me. When she is mad, I get upset, too, but that doesn’t mean anything. It means that she is getting under my skin and that I need to get the fuck out! Because I actually care about the ultrasound, does that make any sense? I actually care about finding out what the baby is because she cares, and I like to make her happy.”
“I’d want to know that, too. That’s cool. When is that?”
Erik paused. “The twenty—oh fuck!”
“What?” Phillip asked.
Suddenly the front door flew open, banging against the wall, causing some pictures to fall. It startled them both and Stanley started barking his ass off. Standing in the doorway was a very angry pregnant woman.
“You son of a bitch,” she sneered as she stomped down the hall, leaving the front door wide open. “How dare you!”
“Now Piper,” Erik said, standing up with his hands out in front of him.
“You forgot about the ultrasound, didn’t you?” Phillip asked as he leaned back into the couch.
“Shut up, Phillip!” they both said at the same time. Erik turned to look at Piper just as she picked up his hockey stick.
“Piper, I’m—”
Before he could get anything else out, she swung the stick into the middle of his beautiful seventy-inch LED TV.
“Oh, you are so fucked, dude,” Phillip laughed as she continued to slam the stick into the screen.
“How dare you!” she screamed as she turned, the stick resting at her side. “How do you forget that today was the day we find out what the baby is! Oh, I know how! Because you are always playing these useless fucking games and you don’t give two shits about this baby or me!” Before he could even move, she swung and slammed the stick into his Xbox console. Erik took in a sharp breath as she continued swinging annihilating his poor game machine. When she was through, Piper was breathless as she turned to him and screamed, “You promised me!” Her body began to shake as tears poured down her face.
“Piper, I’m sorry—”
“I don’t want your apology! Because of you, I still don’t know what my child is because I fucking promised our child that I wouldn’t know unless you were there! I promised myself, and also you. I said I wouldn’t do it because I kept things to myself for so long!” she yelled, and it felt like she was jabbing him in the heart with knives. He didn’t know what to say. He wanted to take her in his arms, hold her, kiss her angry mouth, and apologize but he knew there was no touching or even trying to talk to her right now. “So thank you! Thank you for ruining my fucking day and hell, the rest of my pregnancy because the ultrasound techs are fully booked for the next three months, which means I can’t find out what I am having until the baby is born! I wonder if you’ll be there for that, or maybe you’ll fucking forget!”
She threw the stick down, knocking over an end table as she stomped through the house and toward the back door.
“Piper!”
“No!” she said, whirling around and pointing her finger in his face. “No! You have broken my heart, Erik, for the second time, and you get to say nothing else to me!”
Her eyes were wide, tears pooling in them before they fell in heaps. She turned to walk out of the house, slamming the door behind her. Erik never meant to hurt her, and when he looked around the house, he was in complete shock at all the destruction she had caused. The biggest blow was the one she did to his heart. He had never felt like such a piece of shit since he left his father’s abusive home.
“You can promise a fetus things?”
Erik looked down at Phillip and was about to yell at him when he saw he was wearing his hockey helmet. “Why are you wearing that?”
“Dude, I gotta protect my head. She was swinging that stick harder than Shea does, I swear.”