The next morning, Stenton drove me home. After helping out of the car, he didn’t walk me to the door, claiming he couldn’t greet my parents considering what he’d done with me the night before and just hours earlier that morning. With a heavy heart from parting from him, I told him I understood when I didn’t. I wanted him with me. I wanted to prove to my parents that this baby, no matter how unplanned the pregnancy, was conceived in love, not some May-December romance or summer fling. This was a genuine connection with an unexpected detour.
After kissing our goodbyes, I got out of the car and noticed the Audi. It was black, just like the BMW. Just like my life. My desolate feelings returned in spades. I didn’t understand the new low. I thought I’d hit rock bottom when he broke up with me, then when I learned I was pregnant, but at that point I felt dejected. After making love the way we did, I should have felt refueled and replenished in terms of my disposition. No. My future appeared as black as this shiny SUV that I could see my protruding image in. I walked into my parents’ home with heavier shoulders than I had before Stenton magically appeared and whisked me off.
Chapter 12
Then
~Zoey~
Time seemed to have sped up rather quickly after that. My due date was quickly approaching. I had so much to do to get ready for this baby and now this huge apartment made it imminent. At first I was overwhelmed at the prospect of furnishing it, but Paul contacted me the afternoon Stenton dropped me off and reminded me that I could hire an interior designer to get the place done before Jordan was due in April.
A designer? What was that?
Then there was Tynisha. She seemed to call more often, offering to assist with shopping for the designer for the apartment and clothes for me. What? I started with soft brush offs, but when she became insistent, I took her up on her offer one day and learned we actually could hit off. She was extremely over the top: high maintenance, unnecessarily loud and ill-tempered, but she really tried to suppress those characteristics when dealing with me. That was until it came to that trifling Alton, who always seemed to be busy getting into hot water behind a woman. She would sound off in front of the Pope when his mess came to her attention. She didn’t care who saw her flip side. I didn’t understand her attraction to him or his drama. That was too much work. That aside, Tynisha turned out to be bearable.
Church was another story. The word had gotten around who his father was. Yup! My parents and I were able to refrain from confirming Stenton’s identity for months. We even threatened Ruth not to open her flap in light of the nasty blathering taking place, but eventually word got out as all gossip does. That’s also when things got really interesting. People began smiling at me more, initiating conversations, offering to make and purchase things for the baby. It was all absurd. That’s when I got a taste of what Stenton went through. People are only good to you when they perceive you as a benefactor. I even had Doris King, a middle aged woman who ran the youth department, ask if I knew any athletes that wouldn’t mind speaking to our teens at their next regional conference. She was the main one on the sit these mothers of bastard children in the back pew committee! I didn’t even dignify that asinine inquiry with a response. I just walked away.