“No. Not yet anyway. But in time, she could,” he said cryptically, and Jim smiled. If that’s what it was, he knew Mike had nothing to worry about. There were no grounds for a lawsuit in a bad restaurant review, if what he had essentially said was that he didn’t like the food.
“She can’t sue you for that. Hell, if that were true, you’d be sued three times a week.” Jim laughed.
“She could sue me for child support,” Mike said bluntly, as Jim’s face grew serious and he looked long and hard at his friend.
“Would you mind elaborating on that for me? I seem to have missed something here.” Now Jim looked worried too.
“So did I apparently, my self-restraint,” Mike confessed to him, and felt foolish as he did. “She had a terrific wine list, and I must have tried a half a dozen different wines. We got drunk together, and she’s a hell of a good-looking woman. I don’t remember exactly how or when it happened, but I know that eventually we wound up in bed, and what I do remember was pretty impressive. It would have been memorable, and I would have seen her again, except I decided to write the review I did anyway. I thoroughly dumped on her restaurant, so I thought it would have been tasteless to call her. I never heard from her either, until last week. She invited me back to the restaurant for dinner, as some sort of peace offering, I thought. It turns out that she asked me to dinner to tell me she’s pregnant.” Mike looked almost ill as he said it, and Jim looked stunned.
“And she wants money?” That much he could figure out, but the rest of what had happened was a little fuzzy.
“No, not a penny,” Mike said grimly. “Her mother is a well-known TV personality, and the restaurant is successful, in spite of what I wrote about it. She doesn’t want anything from me, nor did she ask me to participate in the decision. She has decided to have the baby, and all she wanted was to inform me.” Mike looked miserably at his friend, who was staring at him in consternation. “I’m screwed whatever I do in this. Either I stay away from her and the baby, and then I’m an asshole who is ruining some innocent kid’s life. Or I get involved, and then I’m up to my neck in a situation I would do damn near anything to avoid. I don’t want a child, ever. I promised myself years ago, after my own childhood, that I would never have children. And now this woman I don’t even know does this to me. I can’t goddamn believe it. And nothing is going to sway her. Believe me, I tried. She is absolutely determined to have this baby, and she doesn’t give a good goddamn if I participate or not. I think she’d almost prefer it if I didn’t.” And in some ways that was true. He could sense it in the way she had told him. She expected nothing from him, which somehow made the situation even harder for him. She was being so gracious about it that it made him look even worse for his violently negative reaction. It was visceral for him. He didn’t want the baby.
“Does she seem like a nice person?” Jim asked with interest. He was still stunned by what Mike had just told him.
“Maybe. I think so. All I can focus on is this baby she’s foisted on me.”
“If she’s not asking you for anything, it doesn’t sound like she’s doing much ‘foisting,’ ” Jim pointed out fairly.
“Not financially, but she’s sticking me with the responsibility of fatherhood for the rest of my life if she has this baby,” Mike said, looking angry about it again.
“Maybe that’s not the worst thing that could happen to you,” Jim said thoughtfully. He was two years older than Mike, had been happily married for fourteen years, and had three children he was crazy about. He had been telling Mike for years that he should find a nice woman, get married, and have children. Mike was always adamant when he said no. “Since she’s going to have the baby anyway, why don’t you spend some time with her and get to know her, and see how you feel about it then? It’s hard not to fall in love with your own children,” Jim pointed out to him. He had been there when each of his were born, it had been a life-changing event for him, but he had never had the resistance to having children that Mike very obviously did, and Jim loved his wife.
“Funny, my parents seem to have managed not to fall in love with me,” Mike said with a rueful grin. “I don’t think parenting is for everyone. That notion is probably the only thing I have in common with my parents. They never wanted children, as they say at every opportunity, and I’m smart enough not to try.”
