Page 56 of All She Ever Wanted Was a Real One
“I’m fine.”
“What happened, Pat?”
“Some drunk maniac attacked me at the club. But I’m fine, I promise—just bruised up with a busted nose and lip . . . maybe a slight concussion.”
I tossed the sheets off me and leaped out of bed. “Oh my God! Are you serious? What hospital are you at?”
“The same one where Poppy was.”
“Okay, okay. Sit tight. I’ll be there soon.”
“Thanks.”
I ended the call while racing to my drawers to pull out something quick to throw on.
When I raced through the automatic ER doors a half an hour or so later, I was directed to the exam room where Pat was being cared for. I pulled back the curtain, expecting to see him sitting alone with maybe an icepack over his eye or maybe even resting since it was so late. Instead, he sat up, arguing in a hushed tone with a woman I’d never seen before. At first, I thought I was seeing things.
“Pat?” I called out. “Who the . . . what the hell is going on?”
The woman turned to look at me, and my eyes instantly dropped down to her protruding belly. She was visibly pregnant. But that didn’t explain why she was there having a heated, emotional exchange with the man I was days away from marrying.
Pat froze at the sound of my voice, and almost all the caramel drained from his face. “Baby . . . I can?—”
Before he was able to get out the rest of his sentence, the pregnant woman interrupted. “You must be the blushing bride-to-be.”
My forehead creased. “And you are?”
“The mother of his child,” she disclosed, resting her hand on her round belly.
Her words may as well have been a physical blow to the face because that was exactly what they felt like. My entire body went numb.
“W-what did you just say?” I probed, having difficulty processing something that was well beyond my comprehension skills at three in the morning.
Pat shook his head. “Alexis, don’t listen to her, she’s?—”
I held up my hand to stop him from blurting out any more half-baked excuses. Because in that moment—the cheating with the flight attendant before he proposed, the weird voicemail, the shameless flirting with the nurse at Poppy’s assisted living facility—all came flooding back. Whether it was him on the voicemail or not no longer mattered. It was painfully apparent that I wouldneverbe the only woman in his life.
“Is it true, Pat?” I asked, already knowing the truth was obvious, but there was something in me that wouldn’t rest until I heard it from his mouth.
Instead of poisoning the air with more lies, he dropped his chin to his chest and tore his eyes down to the floor.
“Look at me!” I demanded as my hands shook and my heart galloped in my chest. “It’s the least you could fucking do.”
The minute his defeated eyes landed on mine, and I saw his bent posture and how his arms hung limp at his sides, I got all the information I needed in his body language. I didn’t need to hear anything else. I couldn’t stomach another spoonful of his lies. Pat reached out his hand toward me, and I immediately stepped back as if his touch would infect me.
“Don’t you dare try to touch me, nigga.”
“Listen, baby. I—I fucked up, aight?” he admitted, voice cracking.
I scoffed. “That’s an understatement, don’t you think?”
“I said I was wrong, okay? But she was never marriage material like you are.I didn’t even know about the baby!”
“That’s bullshit, Patrick, and you know it!” the pregnant woman interrupted. “I wonder why you don’t know about your daughter. Maybe it’s because you got me fired from my job aftertelling HR I was a fucking stalker? Or maybe it’s because you chose to block me on every social media platform and through the phone so that I couldn’t get through to you!”
Hearing all the trouble he’d put her through almost made me feel bad for her. But I couldn’t feel worse for her than I did for myself. Truth was, he’d played us both in different ways. He lied as easily as the rest of us breathed.
After laying him out, she turned to me. “Look, I didn’t come all the way to Chicago to break up your wedding or whatever it is y’all have going on. All I want is for him to finally acknowledge that this babyishis.”
