Date = 30 May
Place = San Francisco (Enrique’s home)
POV – Enrique
“So Nigeria? Fuck.” I’m doing a little one-on-one video chat with my brother. “Isn’t it dangerous or something?”
“Nah, risky maybe … I’m mostly going to treat malaria patients, maybe some other diseases. I just finished my training and I’ve received all my shots … so I’m good to go.” I stare at the luxurious room in the background. It’s obviously night already wherever he is.
“Guess you’re not in Africa yet, or else the accommodation is much more pristine than I imagined.” He glance around the bedroom he’s sitting in and then smile at me.
“Yeah, you got me. Made a little detour before going to the dark continent. You would not believe where I am right now,” he sounds chirpy and sad all at the same time. I wait for him to tell me.
“Don’t judge … I’m in Helsinki.” I gasp. Not at all where I imagined. Is he a sucker for punishment or what?
“You’re at … ” I ask slowly, not sure how I should react – sympathetic, hopeful or rude.
“I’m at the cottage where I met Amy,” he beams, answering my unasked question.
“You mean where you fucked Amy … for ten days … before she just left your sorry ass.” Maybe that was laying it on a little thick … but he needs to get his head out of the clouds. He needs to forget about that girl and the sooner the better. If she wanted him to find her she would have left a number or something.
“I know, I know … it’s probably not a good thing coming back here, but I found a clue,” his husky voice disclose the pain he feels inside. And at last I understand. Before, I just thought he was fucking stupid to long for a single girl since there are so many out there. But now … if Aria disappears I would probably lose my sole too. Well, back to reality … she already left my house. Packed her stuff. And no matter what, she’s not listening to a single word I say. She’s majorly pissed. And I can’t blame her … I’m even doubting myself.
I tried to make her move back. But no success. She even threw some stuff at my head while yelling how I fucked her even after I knew about the baby. She told me what a jerk I am … using some more colorful words to bring the message through. She then started hitting me … pounding her fists on my chest. I didn’t stop her … didn’t even try. I couldn’t, ’cause she cried the whole time … really cried … heartbreaking sobs … which I caused and I could not do or say anything to make it better. Those tears broke me. The look in her eyes tore me apart. I desperately need to fix this. So, yeah, I understand exactly where Ilkay is coming from.
“Will the clue help you find her?”
“Maybe … I’ll give it to D-boy when he arrives … maybe he can track her down.” He sounds hopeful. So that’s why Alejandro left for Finland in such a hurry. Bastard didn’t tell me he’s meeting my brother, even though I was the one to drop him at the airport yesterday.
“You know what, brother, do what you need to do. I understand you since Aria left. It’s the worst fucking feeling ever … way worse than any of the torture we went through.”
Ilkay laughs suddenly. “Hey, just think … if grams knew that, he would probably make us fall in love and then torture the girls in front of us.” A picture of Aria laying all bloody on the ground … like my mom flashes through my mind, and suddenly I gag. I grab the dustbin just in time and throw up my breakfast of this morning.
“Are you alright? You said Aria left … ” Ilkay’s worried voice comes from my laptop. I wipe my mouth with my hand and put the bin on the floor.
“Yeah. Think it’s nerves.” He stares at me through the screen, probably doing a quick checkup to see if I’m lying or not.
“Nerves? You said you urgently need my help. What’s going on?”
“I’m fucked. Amanda is pregnant and the DNA shows it’s my baby.”
“Holy shit!” Yeah, that’s stating it mildly. “You cheated on Aria! You dumb bastard! What the fuck where you thinking?” He gets up and walks around in the room, running his hands through his hair. Then he hits his palms on the counter on which his laptop is sitting, his face now zoomed in and a little out of focus on the screen.
“Amanda? Why bro?” He calmed down a little.
“That’s why I need your help.” I take a deep breath. “Ilkay, I haven’t had sex with that woman for over seven months … I swear on our mother’s grave. How can she be expecting my baby now?” He sits down again, a huge frown on his face, examining me again.
“You’re telling me that she’s pregnant with your kid without any sex? Are you fucking with me right now?”
“You must believe me. There was no sex, I haven’t been naked in close proximity of that slut for a very long time. I fucking swear, bro. You need to help me figure this out. How could she get pregnant without sex?”
“Sweet horseshit,” he wipes his hands over his eyes, “let’s see … ” I know he’s thinking so I give him some time.
“Well, the most obvious in your case would be to ask your identical twin if he could be the father.”
“Who … Jackson?” I’m confused but hopeful.
“You have another twin I don’t know about?” Ilkay is just being sarcastic.
“A standard paternity test can’t tell which identical twin might be the dad,” he continues all mighty. I roll my eyes at him and he laughs. I’m glad he thinks it’s funny. Prick. But I can’t afford to be rude to him right now … I still need his help, so I suck it up.
“Okay, let me phone him.” I pick up my phone and put it on speaker. Jackson is playing hockey in St. Louis. He doesn’t answer, so I phone again. We have this secret thing between us brothers … it started in our childhood. If the sibling we’re calling does not pick up the phone, it means he’s in the middle of something. Therefor, for unimportant calls, we don’t redial and the other party knows he can just return the call at a later convenient stage. However, if the call is urgent, concerning life or death stuff, like now, a second call would inform the recipient to interrupt whatever he’s doing and answer the damn phone.
“Wait, I’m on the ice,” he shouts and I hear some noise in the background. It takes a while, the noise getting softer and then he speaks again, “Hi, bro, what’s up? We’re in the middle of practice.”
“Eh, I need to ask you something … have you fucked Amanda lately?”
“What the fuck?” Jackson sounds pissed. But he doesn’t know how important this is.
“Sorry, but I need to ask. This is all serious, bro … no jokes.”
“Hell no. That bitch has never seen my dick. I have never and will never fuck her. She’s not my type.” Well, that’s not totally true.
“Dude, she’s exactly your type,” Ilkay lays out the obvious. Now that’s the truth. Amanda is the type of girl Jackson likes to fuck – sexy, dumb and willing. Easy to dominate.
“Why are you part of this conversation?”
“I’m video chatting with him and you’re on speaker,” I explain not to wast time.
“Oh, okay. Well, she might be my previous fuck type … not my present type. Not even sure WHAT I’m into anymore,” he mutters the last part softly and I’m not sure I heard it right … but that’s not important now.
“What the fuck does that mean?” Ilkay mumbles through the screen. Somewhere in my mind it registers that we’re cursing a lot … and Aria would not like it. But given the circumstances … I don’t give a fuck.
“Nothing … forget it … point is, I’ve never done anything with Amanda. And that’s the truth. You better explains this later … but I have to go … coach is calling.” He hangs up without a goodbye. Typical Jackson. And I know he’s gonna ask for an account. Except for Aria none of my family knows about this. Since they are not in the city at the moment, they don’t even know Aria moved out. Ilkay is the first one I’m confiding in.
“Okay, so we can scratch that option from the table,” Ilkay sighs. “You know … I can’t imagine Jackson having a kid.” Yeah, that’s one crazy thought, a miniature psychopath running around the streets, causing havoc.
“I can’t even imagine him getting married,” I continue.
“The girl that marries Jackson must have escaped from a mental institution or something.” Ilkay laughs and it makes me smile.
“Either way, their kid will be born broken, poor thing.” My brother continues to tease. Luckily Jackson is not here to hear him or my screen might have been broken.
“But seriously, all jokes aside, I would love for him to find the right girl … one that would piece all his broken parts together,” Ilkay says, “he deserves to be happy.” My brother is done joking and back to serious business.
“So, there are only two other options for Amanda to get pregnant without sex, invitro or turkey baster … but in both cases she needed your sperm … or Jackson’s for that matter.”
“I don’t think Amanda has the brain capacity to think about using Jackson’s sperm to fool the DNA test.” The girl is dumb.
“Well, she was smart enough to get herself pregnant with your baby.” Is she apt though. She did get pregnant, yes, but she’s not that sharp to have come up with this all on her own.
“No, she must have had help.” I bite the nail of my left thumb as my brain starts working more clearly, voided from most of the previous tension. A name comes up.
“So what are you thinking? Brian?” Ilkay is thinking the same as me. I nod.
“Just think about it … they both get what they want. Aria left me … so Brian can swoop in. And having my kid, Amanda will always be part of my life somehow.”
“Okay, let’s start at a point. I’m sure we can rule out invitro, she would not had time for that … so baster it is. When did she say she conceived?”
“About a month ago … I remember the night. She claimed I was drunk.”
“And were you?”
“Maybe a little … but I’m 100% sure nothing happened. I haven’t even seen her that fucking night.”
“Did you ejaculate into anything? The norm would be cumming into a sterile cup in a clinic … but we should go with the unconventional here … so anything that can hold some runny jelly … her mouth, a glass … even a fucking teapot would do the trick.”
I think back to that night. Yeah, I ejaculated alright … I shot off inside Aria. I blush lightly and have to fight the dirty little smile from spreading into a full blown grin all over my face. So I bite my lip and turn my head away from the screen. My sex life with Aria is not something I want to share with anyone but her. Not even my brothers. But just thinking about it makes me hard. I swift uncomfortably in my chair.
“Oh, boy.” Ilkay caught on. “So you did the deed … just not with Amanda. Did you use a condom?”
“Yes.”
“And what happened to that condom?” I have to think about it. Mel interrupted so I could not dispose of it properly.
“I tied it up and threw it into the dustbin.” A sudden shock hits, turning my blood cold as ice, and I stare with huge eyes at my screen. Brian. That fucking condom thief.
“Hey … are you having a stroke!” Ilkay bawls, waving his hands on the screen to get my attention.
“That night I found Brian in my office. He was looking through my trash. But I never thought …”
“Fuck!” Now Ilkay looks like he’s gonna faint, “That’s just sick. He stuck a used condom in his pocket. Ehw. Motherfucker. ”
This whole business is sick. I feel like I’m going to throw up again. I swallow it down, enjoying the burning sensation spreading down my throat. The feel of it temporarily eases the pain in my chest. A familiar sensation hits me and I open my top drawer.
“So what are you gonna do now?”
That’s a very good question. But an even better one is how do I explain this to Aria? It’s so far fetched, I’m not even sure I would believe it. And the pain it causes is almost unbearable. I take out the knife from the drawer and my hands play with it.
“I don’t know. Even though I know now how it happened … the fact is, she’s still pregnant with my kid. Any advice?”
“No, sorry bro. I have no answers on that one. I never gotten a girl pregnant before.”
“But what would you do if you were me?” Ilkay scratches the back of his neck.
“I would not marry her for starters … cause I think that’s what she’s hoping for. Would not give her that satisfaction.” I’m not planning to get married to that bitch. “But the baby … I would care for the baby.” His face turns grave. I clam the knife in my hand, squeezing it. The impertinent pain makes me smile. It works as I knew it would … it always did before. But it’s not permanent. It never lasts. And that’s why I stopped doing it. Fuck, I haven’t harmed myself for years now. I move my hand under the table so Ilkay won’t see the blood. He would not approve. He’s the one that figured it out and helped me through it. No-one else knows.
“Or you could make her get an abortion … I know it sounds bad but it is an option. But if she went through all this trouble to get pregnant, she would most definitely not go for that one. You could sue her and force her to abort because of the way she got pregnant … but proving that in court is not going to be easy. Or need I say it would be impossible. What sane judge would believe that she stole a condom, drew your sperm into a syringe and emptied it into her vagina?”
I relish on the high, my body so focused on the sting in my hand that it forgets about the suffering in my heart. Just for a moment, I feel better.
“What about the DNA test? Could it be wrong?” That’s my last hope.
“Not easily, unless they bribed someone to switch out the samples … but you’ll still need the biological father’s DNA.” And the hope’s gone. We specifically went to Dr. Burden because I trust her. They could not have bribed her.
“Well, guess I’m gonna be a daddy then.” My throat balls up and I can’t breath. I don’t want my brother to see me break down. I need to be alone. So I say my goodbyes.
“Thanks bro, I’ll talk to you later. I need to get to the hospital. They’re gonna test to see if my bone marrow is a match.” He nods. I know he also got tested, but was not a match.
“Don’t worry, Sport. No matter what, we’re always got your back.” I smile faintly at him and then close the lid of the laptop. Tears roll down my cheek, and I just let them. I compress my hand even more around the blade. That prick and his bitch ruined my whole life.