He had accepted me with no questions asked, but it seemed that had run its course. Now, he was curious. In all honesty, I didn’t want to tell him. I was hoping I would be able to just skate through however long I was going to stay there without having to actually say any of the situation out loud.
But I really didn’t have a choice. I was the one who had shown up at his house. It made sense he was going to be curious, and he really did have the right to know why I had taken over his guest room.
“Last night when I was at work, the new bartender came up to me and said she had something she needed to talk to me about,” I said. “As it turns out, I’m going to be a father.”
Tom’s stopped in the middle of his bite and stared at me. “Are you seriously telling me you had sex with another employee? After you signed an agreement about your relationship with Ava?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head as I tried to compute where I went wrong explaining it. “I did not have sex with the new bartender. She was outside when she overheard Ava and Stephanie talking. And yes, Ava is, in fact, pregnant.”
I braced myself for his reaction. He finished his bite, washed it down with a sip of his drink, and took another. He swallowed and looked at me with little expression.
“So, what are you going to do?” he asked.
I was nothing short of shocked. “You’re not mad?”
Tom laughed and shook his head. “No, I’m not mad. Like I said at the restaurant when I was having you sign those papers, I just want you to be happy. I wasn’t sure how things were going to work out between the two of you considering you work together. And now with this and your past history, it’s just a lot. I was just wondering what you’re going to do about it. I’m happy for you if you’re happy.”
I nodded, looking at my own sandwich like it was going to give me all the answers. “Well, as soon as the bartender told me, I stomped out of the bar and drove directly here. So, that’s about where I am right now. She lied to me, Tom. I asked her if she thought she could be pregnant, and she said no she wasn’t. S I just don’t know how to deal with that.”
“Mason, how do you really feel about Ava?” Tom asked.
There was only one answer to that question.
“I’m in love with her,” I said.
“Then you need to go back and explain that to her. Let her know that she has your support before it ruins everything that you just took off like that. Have you even thought about how much that might have hurt her? Isn’t it what you did to her before?” Tom asked.
That question made me feel ashamed, but I couldn’t hide from it anymore.
“Sort of,” I said. “But I needed to wrap my head around becoming a dad so young. This time, I’m just trying to figure out why she lied to me.”
“Maybe it’s because she’s afraid,” Tom said. “She went through a miscarriage. Losing a baby is traumatic, and a lot of women end up feeling like it was their fault.”
I was stunned by my brother’s insight. That definitely wasn’t the way I ever would have thought he would react. But he made absolute sense. When the bartender said that to me, it breezed over my head. I didn’t let myself really think about it. Now that I was hearing Tom say the same thing, I felt awful that I did this to her.
“I have to go,” I said. “I need to get back to her.”
“Let me pack you some food,” he said, not even hesitating or trying to change my mind about the twelve-hour drive back home that was ahead of me.33AvaThe next day, I was still replaying everything that happened in my head. It was like watching a terrible movie. I couldn’t possibly have actually stood there in the parking lot watching Mason peel away after he found out I was pregnant from somebody else.
In all the scenarios I had gone over when it came to him finding out about the baby, this wasn’t even something I had considered. I had come up with several different versions of a worst-case scenario. There were moments when I was positive he would completely freak out.
But in all of those scenarios, whatever his reaction was, it started because I was the one who told him I was pregnant. In every single one of those situations, I sat him down and gave him the news myself. This happening was so outside the realm of what I could think, it had never even crossed my mind.