Unfinished Ex: A Second Chance Surprise Pregnancy Romance

 

I’ve always had a sixth sense. Or good intuition. Or some kind of inexplicable awareness. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve had it. Once when I was five, I told my parents I was going to have a little sister. Three weeks later, they told us Mom was pregnant with Addy. It happened again when I was thirteen. I knew Nicky was going to walk into my eighth-grade history class at the middle school. More than that, even before I kissed her behind the dugout that Friday night, I knew she was going to be my wife.

At eighteen, when a local child went missing, I was the one who found her alive, albeit hypothermic, out near old Joe Henson’s cabin. I’m not sure why I looked there; my feet just took me.

The day I found out about my brother Chaz’s death three years ago was the worst. I couldn’t concentrate on anything. It was the strangest feeling. Cooper was his twin, but I was the one who ‘felt’ his death without really knowing it.

And now I’ve had a feeling all morning. Heisman knows I have. He’s stuck close to me. He didn’t even run after the stick I threw to him in the park after our run. Dogs have an even better sense of things than humans.

“What?” I ask him, as if he’ll answer. I pull out my phone and reread the text from my oldest brother Tag. “He said he wanted to tell me something later.” I cock my head, studying Heisman as he walks from tree to tree, picking his favorite toilet. “You think I should call him?”

He glances up at me as he pees, almost like he knows what I said.

Heisman isn’t just my dog. He’s my best friend. I know it’s corny, but it’s been true since the day I got the rambunctious golden retriever puppy from the pound two years ago—both of us rescuing each other in ways we couldn’t possibly understand at the time. And call me crazy, but I actually do think he knows what I’m saying sometimes. And I swear he would speak if he could.

He trots over and licks my hand.

“You’re right.” I put away the phone. “I shouldn’t call him. Whatever he has to tell me, we’ll learn soon enough.”

Still, this feeling—it’s nagging at me. I look at the sky. No looming storm. We cross from the park to McQuaid Circle, and I glance down the street. Nothing to see here. Just the normal Friday evening activities: kids running toward Calloway Creek Park, adults carrying coffee from Ava Criss’ Corner Coffee Shop. People coming and going from the eateries, the bookstore, and the flower shop.

I peek into Gigi’s Flower Shop, the establishment owned and operated by Maddie Foster, Tag’s girlfriend. She’s at the counter helping a half dozen people. And her daughter, Gigi, is by her side. Her daughter. I still can’t believe my brother, the playboy of Calloway Creek, has a girlfriend. One with a kid no less. The world has definitely shifted on its axis. Gigi spies me peeking through the window and happily waves to me. I smile and wave back. Because I actually like kids.

Heisman nudges me. He knows our routine. Home is our destination, and once we get there, he gets his treat, a large Milk-Bone.

My house is just around the corner. I love the fact that Heisman and I can take this walk every day. Along the way, I say hello to every person we pass, and Heisman greets every pet. Not in the same way. I smile or extend my hand, while my sidekick smells buttholes and sometimes noses.

I stop walking and contemplate turning the corner when we come to Tag’s street. But somehow I know this feeling I have isn’t about him. Heisman grunts. He’s getting impatient. I reach down and pat his head. “Come on, buddy.”

As we approach my house, something is off. Heisman usually runs ahead, excited about the impending treat he knows he’ll receive. But he doesn’t leave my side. I’ve heard dogs can sense when people are ill. They can smell tumors, and they can even tell when their owners are going to have a seizure.

“Are you trying to tell me I’m sick?” I ask, trying to think of the last time I’ve been in for a checkup.

He presses his weight against my leg.

“Shit. I’m dying, aren’t I?”

He sits dutifully by my side at the gate by the front walk. I stare left and right and shake my head at the white picket fence in front of the perfect bungalow I bought for Nicky and me thinking it’d be a great place to raise kids. Yet now, Heisman and I are the only occupants, the second and third bedrooms sitting empty, if you don’t count the piles of boxes I never got around to shipping to Oklahoma.

Why is that?

I open the gate for Heisman. He doesn’t trot to the front door as usual. He’s glued to my side. “Dude,” I say. “If I’m going to keel over with a heart attack, just tell me now. Give me a sign.”

He stares up at me with his innocent brown eyes.

“Some best friend you are.”

I open the door, the weather stripping on the bottom edge sweeping the mail across the floor inside. I love that I live in a town where they still drop mail through slots in the front door. I lean down to pick up the mail and freeze.

My eyes focus on the official government return stamp on an envelope. Immediately, I know what it is. And it has me feeling like I could very well be having a coronary, because it feels like a fist is closing around my heart. I thought the envelope would be bigger, thicker, more significant somehow. After all, you’d think the end of my marriage would have arrived with more fanfare than a sixty-cent stamp.

I hold it and slump to the floor, my trusty friend ignoring the box of Milk-Bones on the foyer table. Heisman lies next to me and puts his head in my lap.

There are a million thoughts going through my head. But I only voice one of them. “Fuck.”

Heisman isn’t alarmed by my choice of words. I may not be the asshole that Tag is, or the grumpy daredevil that is our youngest brother, Cooper. But we all seem to have the same affliction when it comes to our vocabulary.

I turn the envelope over in my hand, wondering what my wife is doing. Did her envelope get delivered today? Is she thinking the same thing? That once we open them, that’s it, we’re done, it’s over. Or should I say I’m wondering what my ex-wife is doing? Ex-wife. The air whooshes out of my lungs as swiftly as if I’d been sucker punched. Any fragmented flame of hope has been doused. Pain closes in, its weight crushing and claustrophobic.

Five years down the drain. Well, fourteen if you count the nine years we dated before we got married, the three years we lived together as husband and wife, and the two after she left me before the divorce became finalized.

The front door opens and Tag walks in.

“Don’t you fucking knock?” I spit, well aware I’m not my usually sunny self.

He eyes me on the floor of the foyer and laughs. “I’d ask if your dog died, but I can see he’s lying here looking as pathetic as you are. Did you have a hard run or something?”

I don’t answer. I get up and throw the envelope on the table. Then I toss Heisman a Milk-Bone.

He doesn’t go after it. I retrieve it and hold it in front of his snout. “It’s okay, bud, take it.”

Reluctantly, he does. He walks to the corner of the living room and plops down, giving me one last glance before he devours it.

“Oh, shit!” Tag says jubilantly behind me.

I spin to see him holding the envelope.

“Is this what I think it is?” A smile splits his face. “You’re finally free of that lying, cheating bitch. We should celebrate.” He pulls out his phone. “I’ll have Cooper and Quinn meet us at Donovan’s. Eight o’clock?”

He wants me to celebrate. Double fuck.

His finger lingers over his phone. “Who else should we invite? Lucas? Eric?”

“No, man. Just us.”

“Got it. We’ll make it a family celebration first. We’ll organize something much bigger for your divorce party. It’ll be epic. Hey, now we have two parties to plan.”

“Two?”

“Your divorce celebration and my bachelor party.”

I blink twice, replaying his words. I knew he and Maddie moved in together last month. Still, I wasn’t expecting this. “You’re engaged?”

“Asked her yesterday.”

“Holy shit.” I can’t stop the motion of my head as it shakes back and forth. My brother, Tag Calloway, the guy voted in high school as most likely to never get married, is getting hitched. I push the jealousy down and try to be happy for him. I pat him on the back. “Congratulations, brother. Tonight’s celebration should definitely be about you, not me.”

“We can kill two birds. Two fucking years you’ve waited, Jax. The tramp left you in limbo for twenty-four months. You’re finally free. That’s worth tossing back a few shots, don’t you think?”

Heisman and I lock eyes. He gets me. Even though he never met her, he sleeps in Nicky’s spot on the bed every night. He knows everything. He knows my secrets. He knows I was the one who dragged my feet on the divorce. He knows I hold just as much responsibility for ruining our marriage as she does. He knows that although I should hate her, I can’t.

How could I hate her when I still love her so goddamn much?

Tag’s phone vibrates. “Cooper’s in. And speaking of our homeless brother, maybe you should invite him to crash with you since it seems like he’ll be in town for a while.”

“He’s living in his van. His very expensive decked-out, solar-paneled van that has more conveniences than my first apartment.”

“Sheriff Niles issued him a ticket the other day when he parked overnight behind the bank.”

“That asshole. Niles, not Coop.”

“Maddie said he could park in the spare spot behind her shop, or maybe at the train station. People leave cars there overnight all the time.”

“So why doesn’t he do one of those?”

He laughs. “Do you not know our brother? Danger has become his middle name. Rules—he breaks them. Guidelines—he doesn’t follow them. Laws—he thinks they don’t apply to him.”

“You’re worried about him.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Lots of people do what he does. He’s not the only crazy twenty-something who jumps off bridges and parachutes out of planes.”

“It’s more than that, and you know it. And surely it strikes you as odd that he didn’t do anything nearly this idiotic until after Chaz died.”

“You think he’s got some morbid desire to join our dead brother? I think he’s just found his passion. Plus, if you recall, Chaz died because they did something idiotic.”

“Still, it couldn’t hurt if you talk to him. You’ve always been the sensible, brainy one of the three of us.”

“Brainy? You think because I teach horny adolescents all day that I’m brainy? You’re the one who’s kicking ass at his own business.”

“He lived with me for a month, Jax. Never listened to a word I said. Tuned me out whenever I tried to get him to move back home.”

“What makes you think I’d have more luck?”

He shrugs. “Power in numbers, bro. I’ve got Addy working on him, too. Few people can deny our little sister.”

“Fine. I’ll see if he wants to crash here. But I’m not going to force him to talk about anything he doesn’t want to talk about.”

“Fair enough.” He heads for the door. “Eight o’clock.”

I wave a hand after him. Then I look at the envelope from across the room, deciding I’m not going to open it. I won’t give her that satisfaction.

“Come on, Heisman. Let’s go watch the game.”

He follows dutifully as I grab a cold beer and plop onto the couch. It only takes one swallow to know I’m going to need something much stronger.