Dirty: The Complete Series (Secret Baby Romance Love Story) (107 page)

“But it hurts, Mama.”

“I know, sweetie, I know it does,” I said,
giving him a quick hug. “Let’s finish up your juice and you get some sleep.
You’ll feel better, okay?”

“Okay,” Brady said doubtfully. But he
drank down the rest of the Pedialyte, anyway. I made him sit up for a few
moments; I didn’t want to jostle his stomach any more than I had to. But when I
thought he would probably keep the liquid down—at least, for a little while—I
let him lay back down on the bed.

“Now if you start feeling bad again,
you’ve got a bucket right here, okay, little bud?” I showed him the bucket I’d
cleaned out earlier—it was better than him puking up in his bed, at least. “So
try and aim for this, got it?”

“Yes, Mama,” he said, nodding weakly. I
felt my phone buzz once—twice—in my pocket.

“I’m going to be right outside, if you
need me, okay? Just rest up, little bug.” Brady didn’t argue with that idea. He
curled up on his side and pulled his pillow closer, closing his eyes.

I stepped out of his room and slipped my
phone out of my pocket. The first message was from Alicia, the babysitter I’d
texted; she said that it was fine, she understood completely, and that she was
grateful that I’d let her know as soon as possible. The second was from Zeke.
Why did you need to cancel? I put a lot of
thought into tonight’s date.
I twisted my lips into a wry smile, looking
back at my son’s bedroom. I sighed. I hadn’t told Zeke about Brady—I never told
any of my clients about my little boy, unless I absolutely had to. But I would
have to give him a reason.

I took a deep breath and wrote a reply.
I have a son. He’s about three, and this
afternoon, he came down with a bug. I don’t know what it is, but he’s pretty
sick; I just can’t make myself leave him. I’m sorry—I really am.
I tapped
send and set my phone aside, getting some soup started for my dinner. Maybe if
Brady started feeling better, he could have some, too. I threw in some veggies
and some rice into the broth and set it to heat up. My phone buzzed and I
snatched it up, hoping against hope that it wouldn’t be an angry reply to my
story.

You
didn’t mention you have a little boy. I’m sorry he’s sick; of course if you
need to take care of him, I can’t expect you to come out tonight. What’s his
name?
I smiled to myself as relief washed through me.

His
name is Brady,
I wrote, and added a picture to the
message.
I try not to mention him because
it sometimes makes things a little weird with clients. I’m glad you understand.
I set my phone aside and went back to work on the soup for dinner. That seemed
to be settled, at least. We could reschedule the date, and I could make sure
that my little boy got better.

But then my phone buzzed again.
That’s odd,
I thought
.
I picked it up and saw that Zeke had
replied. What could he have to say after what I’d told him? I decided that it
was probably just that we would reschedule for the following week, maybe have
two dates instead of just one.
I know
this is probably not the way you usually do things…but do you think we could
have a virtual date?
I frowned at the question. What did he mean by a
virtual date?

How
would that go?
I looked around my kitchen; it was
clean—my parents had taught me from a young age to respect myself and my home
enough to keep it clean as best as I could—but it was far from fancy.

Do
you have a laptop? And Skype?
I chuckled at the
questions. I replied that I did.
We could
have a date on Skype then, couldn’t we?

I considered that. Technically, it wasn’t
against the rules—but it also wasn’t exactly approved of. I didn’t think it would
necessarily be a bad thing, but it was definitely a gray area. If I was going
to do it, I wanted to make sure that I did so in as professional a manner as
possible. I had to admit, the fact that Zeke had been so understanding and the
fact that he’d been so nice about it intrigued me. And, I had actually been
looking forward to the date—at least, a little bit.
If you can give me about an hour and a half,
I wrote back to him,
I just need to make sure my boy is sleeping
soundly and won’t be likely to interrupt us with a barf-fest and then I will be
happy to have a virtual session with you.
I waited to make sure that Zeke
would accept that and then went to check on Brady. He was fast asleep in his
bed, and when I carefully checked his temperature—the thermometer I had went in
his ear—he was still feverish, but not as much as before. I thought he might
sleep a few hours yet; plenty of time for me to have a date with Zeke and get
my professional obligation out of the way.

I didn’t shower, but I pulled my hair back
and put on some makeup, and I made sure that the kitchen table and the area
around it looked all right. I dressed from the waist up the same way that I
would if I’d had the chance to actually go on the date and finished up the soup
that I had started before Zeke came to me with his idea. I would wake Brady up
after I got done with the date and get him to eat a little of it—it would do
him some good.

By the time I had my laptop open
 
and Skype ready to go, and everything the way
I wanted it, Zeke texted me to ask if we were going to go ahead. I replied that
I was ready, and told him my Skype handle. I have to admit that when I heard
the incoming call sound, I felt a little nervous. I didn’t know what to expect.
Would Zeke have decided that since it wasn’t a real practice date, he should
just be in pajamas or something?

I clicked to accept the video call and sat
up straight in my chair as the screen resolved and my camera started up. “I’ll
have to be a bit quiet, since my son is sleeping,” I said right off the bat, as
soon as Zeke said his hello. He was seated at a table, as well, in an apartment
kitchen somewhere, and either he had chosen the same method I had—being dressed
in date-appropriate clothes from the waist up—or he had put in more effort and had
simply gotten fully dressed as if he were going out.

“That’s fine with me,” Zeke told me. I
plugged my headphones in and showed him my bowl of soup.

“I have a very, very exciting dinner
here,” I told him wryly.

“I got takeout, so I think that’s just
about perfect,” he said. He lifted something up in front of the camera: it was
a Chinese takeout box.

“What are you having?” My stomach
grumbled. Whatever it was, it was certain to be more exciting than the soup I’d
made with my little boy’s troubled stomach in mind.

“Singapore noodles, with a couple of egg
rolls on the side.”

“Definitely more exciting than this soup,”
I pointed out. “I want Brady to eat some when he wakes up, so I made it as
bland as possible. Lots of root vegetables, lots of chicken, some rice, and
some broth.”

“It doesn’t sound
that
boring,” Zeke told me. “Tell me about him.” It was strange,
talking about my son to one of my clients, but I figured that it would at least
give him an opportunity to put the active listening skills I was trying to
teach him into practice, so I let him ask questions about Brady—he wasn’t old
enough, in my opinion anyway, for preschool, though I was looking for places
for him for next year. He loved the park, the zoo, and even liked the library,
though obviously most of it was lost on him.

I found myself opening up to Zeke about
how difficult it was sometimes to be a single mother, and I was surprised he
didn’t ask any questions about how I’d come to be a parent on my own. Normally,
it was the first thing that anyone wanted to know—how it was possible that a
smart, “together” woman like me could be a single mom. By the time we’d both
finished our meals and signed off, with me giving Zeke praise for his newfound
conversational skills, I felt relaxed and happier than I had in weeks. I was
shocked at how well the awkward situation had gone.
If I had ten clients like that, I would never have any job stress,
I thought as I cleaned up my dishes and prepared to get Brady to eat a little
bit before going back to bed.

Chapter
Eight

Zeke

A little less than a week after our
“virtual date,” I set up another practice date with Natalie, this time for the
movies. I had planned something else for the date we’d canceled, but after
eating takeout with her over Skype, I thought I would save it for another time.

Instead, I’d told her to meet me at the
movie theater, and this time I decided I would come prepared. I stopped at the
florist again on my way over to the Cineplex from the office, and I had been
much more careful than I had been the first time. I got a bouquet of yellow,
orange, and red tulips, the ends wrapped up to keep them from going dry while
we watched a movie together. I hoped that Natalie would react to them much
better than she had to the roses I’d gotten her for our first date together.

I checked the time when I got to the
parking structure next to the movie theater; I had about eight minutes to get
around to the entrance where we’d agreed to meet. I had left the choice of
movie up in the air—I didn’t want to dictate to my coach what we would see,
especially when I knew she might take it as me being businesslike yet again.
Hopefully, after the Skype date, she sees
that I’m paying attention to what she’s been saying,
I thought, grabbing
the flowers from the passenger seat of the car before I climbed out. I smoothed
my hair against my scalp as I found my way out of the parking structure and
toward the entrance of the movie theater.

I figured that Natalie either would be at
the entrance when I got there or she would arrive just after me, and I was
careful to keep the bouquet of tulips concealed behind my back either way. I
wanted to see the look on her face when she saw them. I wanted to see her
surprise and delight. I spotted her hanging out off to the side of the doors
and closed the distance between us, my heart beating faster in my chest at the
thought of the surprise I had for her. She was dressed professionally, as
usual, but more casually than she had been the two previous times I’d met with
her; she wore a cardigan and jeans with a pair of heels, and her hair was down
around her shoulders instead of pulled back into a bun.

“I’m here,” I told her, stepping up. I
held the tulips behind my back for another moment. “I’m not late, am I?”

“You are actually a couple of minutes
early, just like usual,” Natalie said, smiling at me.

“We haven’t gone on enough dates for you
to know what’s usual for me,” I countered. I took a quick breath and brought
the flowers out from behind my back, holding them where she could see them without
shoving them in her face. “I believe you mentioned liking tulips.”

Natalie glanced down, and I watched her
face intently. I couldn’t help smiling as I saw the look of surprise light up
her eyes, the color rising in her cheeks. She went completely silent, just for
an instant. “These are beautiful,” she said, and I heard her breath catch in
her throat, the slight creak in her voice that told me her reaction was
genuine. A moment later, she recovered from her surprise and glanced up at me.
“You
are
paying attention,” she
noted, grinning. “Or at least you checked your phone for the messages and found
what I’d said.”

“I remembered it all on my own, actually,”
I told her. “Here—take them.” Natalie hesitated for just a moment and I
wondered what I’d done wrong this time, but she took the bouquet from my hands
and brought the flowers up to her nose, breathing in the scent of them.

“What movie are we going to see?” She held
the flowers in her hand and turned towards the marquee as she asked me the
question.

“I’ve never actually been on a movie date
before,” I admitted. “I’ve always either done dinner or something more casual.
But I thought this would probably come up in dating eventually.”

“There are a couple of trains of thought when
it comes to date movies,” she told me.

“I didn’t know there was a philosophy on
it at all,” I said, almost laughing at the idea.

“If something exists, there’s a philosophy
for it,” she said blandly. She cleared her throat. “One train of thought says that
scary movies—as long as they’re not too gory—are the best type to watch on a
date.”

“I can see that,” I told her, nodding.
“Girl—sorry, woman—gets scared, cuddles close…”

“And all that adrenaline of course,” she
said, nodding.

“So should we pick the horror movie
they’re running?”

Natalie shook her head. “I said more than
one train of thought, didn’t I?” she raised an eyebrow at me. I laughed.

“Okay, go on then,” I told her.

“The second train of thought is that it
should be a romantic movie—a chick flick, basically. Get the woman in a loving
mood, show off your sensitive side.”

“So do you want to watch that Shakespeare
one? It looks like it’s probably pretty romantic.”

Natalie shook her head again. “First of
all,” she pointed out, “this isn’t a real date. It’s a practice run.” I nodded,
accepting that. “Second of all, I belong to the third school of thought on the
issue: the best dates are comedies. Not the gross out stuff, not the eye
rolling stuff, but a good, solid comedy.”