the wisest decision

December 14, 2086. Aliyah Sylvester is 26. Angelo Shaw is 24.


Aliyah had options, she was told. She had to admit that she sometimes wondered whether not keeping this baby would have been the wisest decision. It was unplanned, she was unprepared, and her relationship with the father? Well, she hadn't heard a peep from Angelo in the five weeks since she dropped the news.

She had more reasons not to have this baby than to have it, and yet, here she was having a fourteen week dating scan instead of an abortion. Maybe it would all make sense later.

Everything looked healthy, her doctor said. Her baby girl would be due June 2nd. She could keep working for as long as she felt comfortable. Although, as a restaurant manager, on her feet, walking, and carrying things for hours in a night, she should expect that the work would become very exhausting to her as the pregnancy grew.


Some days she didn’t hate the idea of becoming a mother. One minute, she might be thinking of little girl names and baby bow headbands. The next minute, she was terrified to find out how much a nanny would cost.

Times like these, she really wished her parents were local, and she almost took them up on their offer to move back home. She would keep that in her back pocket in case it was ever needed. But she liked it here. She really liked her job and her boss. She had friends. She wished she could depend on Angelo, but it was looking like she probably couldn't, so she didn't want to count on it and then be let down. A great new daycare just opened up not too far away, but they couldn't take the child until nine months old.


Now Aliyah realized how absolutely inappropriate this trendy and luxurious building was for a baby. The bar was full of alcohol and sharp glassware. The pool outside taunted with its certain drowning. How many months did she have until the baby could crawl and topple down these staircases?


The main staircase had no handrail! This apartment building was a death trap!

And, in her pregnant state, she couldn't even make good use of the luxurious sauna or hot tub, the full gym, or the well-stocked bar.

But where would she move? How soon should she decide? She figured that she could stay until the baby was crawling, but she lived on the second floor and who wanted to climb up stairs with an infant? Wherever this baby was born, here or somewhere else, she intended to think of herself and the baby first.

She would certainly complain to the landlord about that missing handrail!


Now she thought about everything differently. That tiny thing, that little heartbeat, would be her life and responsibility for the next eighteen years.

Even before he poofed into thin air, she had never intended to ask Angelo to move in with her. It was too soon for that, and with the added stress of a pregnancy, it sounded like a perfectly wrong idea. And now that perfectly wrong idea seemed blown out of the water since they'd been out of contact for five weeks. To be fair, she hadn’t tried to call him, either, but she would soon. He had a baby on the way, and she needed to know what his intentions were. At the very least.

If she would have met his mom that night, maybe things would be different now. But maybe it was for the best. If he didn't want to make something real out of this, if he could be spooked away that easily, she didn't want to rope him in. If she was going to have a partner, she wanted him to be a willing participant. She didn't know a lot about the kind of family she wanted, but this much she knew.

A family. She and this baby would be a family. Anything else was still up in the air.

—

“Hey, don’t I know you? Didn’t you used to work for my dad?”

Sleep with your dad, April thinks. Work for and sleep with. Yes, indeed, that was a very low point in my life, thank you for reminding me of that. “Yes, I did. So how is your dad?”

In jail, Angelo thinks. For a very long time. “He’s great,” Angelo says. “He’s, um, taking his business in a different direction. It looks promising.”

“Glad to hear it,” she says.

“Yeah, so... Um, kiss the cook?”

“No,” she says, giggling nervously. “Definitely positively no. Getting married soon, got a baby at home.” Yikes, she thinks. Was my reputation that bad? 

Baby, Angelo thinks. Yeah, I have one of those on the way, somewhere, maybe, I guess. “Well, anyway, good for you with this ice cream shop thing. Ice cream is awesome. See you around.”

That was awkward.

—

Angelo didn't have much time for a social life right now. He was scrambling for work and struggling to get himself removed from his ex-client and that disaster of a divorce case, six months of his working life flushed down the toilet. Since it was the first six months of his working life, that was basically his entire career-to-date flushed down the toilet.

So he poured himself into his work, which made a lot of sense to him on a subconscious evolutionary level. Maybe he didn't see himself becoming "Daddy of the Year" any time soon, but Angelo was a lawyer and he knew how child support worked. So he picked up some scraps of work on court-appointed cases. The hours were long and the pay was meager.


He also met a guy who had a brother who worked as a scientist of some sort, and he needed some human lab testing volunteers for a little extra cash on the side. Of all the shady work Angelo had heard of in his time, human lab rat was hardly near the top of the list. Totally legal and if there was money involved, Angelo would do it. Maybe he'd even get some good drugs out of the deal. Angelo never realized while he was growing up how HARD it is to make money while staying legit. He understands completely why his father chose a life of crime instead.

Angelo tried to slot himself into some of the 20-somethings social circles in Potomac Heights, but he realized now how terribly bad he was at making friends. He knew how to talk to women he was trying to get into bed, but beyond that—even though he failed at that half the time—he struggled. It made him realize how his experience with Aliyah was hard to recreate. She was the perfect amount of bold, funny, easygoing, flirty, interesting, and horny all at once. He remembered that bright fuchsia shirt she wore the day he met her, lighting up the room. This very room, in fact. Everyone else seemed dull in comparison.

He’d meant to call her, maybe. He wanted to talk to her—wanted to fuck, of course—but he couldn’t just call or just fuck because they had all of THIS to talk about first. She was pregnant. Talk about an elephant in the room. She didn’t call either, so he figured she was good and done with him, whatever the outcome. So he didn’t call. He wanted to know if she was keeping it, but maybe she had already decided. Maybe it was already over and done with and that’s why she didn’t call.

Then he finally got a text, weeks after he should have sent her one first.

Aliyah: We need to talk.
Angelo: Sure, where?
Aliyah: The internet cafe in Magnolia Park, next to the hospital.

Not either of their apartments. Not her work. Not the hookah bar where they met. Somewhere neutral. She was very sensible. Too sensible for his own good. He always knew that.

—

So he showed up at the coffee shop where she told him to.



"Hey, whoa. I guess I did that," he said, pointing to the visibly swollen belly. He didn't know what he expected it to look like, but the transformation was startling.

"Yes, you did," she said.


They got in line together to order.

"Coffee?" He asks. "Or wait, can you drink that?"

"I’ll take a glass of milk and a chocolate scone," she told the barista.

"Good choice. I’ll have that, too. Coffee with my milk, lots of coffee."

The bill came to $26, and he didn’t ask her to pay. Thank god he had $28.


"So, obviously, I’m keeping it," she said.

"Good, that’s great news," he said. "I'm glad. I mean, I would have been totally on board if you didn't want to keep it. But I wanted it to be totally and completely your decision. I didn't want to interfere, that's why I wanted to give you your space, you know? For all those weeks. But I'm glad with what you chose. It was a good decision. You look great. It suits you. You’re, um, glowing."

"Hmm," she muttered with a doubtful expression and took a bite of her pastry.


He said, "If you’re worried about money, I just want to say, I wouldn’t try to weasel out of child support or anything. That’s mostly why you haven’t heard from me, I guess. Besides not wanting to interfere. Nose to the grindstone, you know?"

"Sure, okay."

"I mean, I’m still pretty broke, but I’m working on some things. I’ll have it sorted out before it’s time. Unless you need something now?"

"No, I’m okay for now. I'll need baby furniture in a few more months, I guess."

"And I can write up some papers if you want, if you want to put something down in writing. Remember, I'm a lawyer?"

"I remember," she said. "We'll see. I'd want my mom to look them over first."

"Yeah, of course. So, how has it been? The baby growing and stuff?"


"Good," she said. "Pretty good. Considering the surprise and everything. I haven’t been very sick, from what I hear. The baby is healthy. I had an appointment. I'm just starting the second trimester. And she's due June 2nd."

"She?"

"Looks like it. A little girl."

"Whoa. A little girl in June. Should we call her June?"

"No," Aliyah said. "We're not calling her June. I, uh..." Aliyah hadn't expected that he might want to help pick out her name. That was partly reassuring, but it also caused a sudden reformulation of plans. Maybe he might be more involved than she thought? Maybe he might be more than just a child support payment? "We can talk about some names together, but not June."


"So your mom," Aliyah said. "She probably hates me?"

"No, she understands," Angelo said. "It’s complicated."

"You told her? What did you tell her?"

"Uh, everything, I guess," he said.


"Everything?"

"Uh, well, yeah." Angelo shrugged. "I know I’m a dastardly rogue sometimes, but I don’t lie to my mother."

"That’s good to know," Aliyah said, mulling on that tiny white lie she told her own mother. "She must be a great lady. I’m sorry about not meeting her. That was rude. I guess I was scared. And unsure."


"It’s cool," he said. "And hey, I’m sorry for knocking you up."

She laughed, which made him happy.


But she couldn't say she was exactly sorry that he knocked her up. It didn't feel like "sorry."



They finished their snacks, then moved nearer to the fire to talk some more. It was weird, he thought, that they never got around to talking very much while they were dating. If you could call what they were doing "dating." It wasn't that he didn't want to get to know her properly, but they were clicking so well and having so much fun naked that it all just got pushed to the back burner. He always assumed that there would be more time for that later, or that there would be a "later" at all.

But this was nice. Talking was nice. Getting to know her better and finding out that she is just as fun and funny and carefree and smart as he thought she was. She was too good for him, he knew it then and he knew it now.

"Hey," he said. "Do you maybe wanna go see a movie or something?"


"As friends?" she asked.

"Oh, friends? Is that what you want?"

He couldn't hide his disappointment.


"I just think that would be best. For now," she said. "I don’t think either of us really know what we’re doing right now. I don't, for sure. There's so much changing and so much to think about. I think that would be the smartest thing for us right now, to not pile on too much pressure when we have so much to make work already. And I don't want us to mess this up with sex and drama and expectations. I just want to start this right."

"Yeah, totally," he said. "If we’re going to do this parenting thing, it’s important that we’re friends."

Angelo had to know that he'd probably fuck it up anyway. But damn.


She couldn't stay much longer. She had an evening shift at work to get ready for. They got their coats and stepped outside.

"I'm not going to forget you promised me a movie," he said. 

"I'm looking forward to it," she said. "Hey, there's the bus. Gotta run. But I'll see you around. Right? Before five weeks this time?"

"It's a date."

"A friendly date. Okay, bye." 

—

footnotes: the ex-client (also, very possibly, conception day!) // five weeks ago // Aliyah lies to her mother

notes: Tyler is the guy with the scientist brother (Beau) who needs a human lab rat! I kind of can't wait to get to that play session, lol!