Pregnant with My Roommate’s Dad by Sofia T Summers
Ian
Ithought the old man had been overreacting on the phone. He’d been so upset about our early starts when we started renovations last year. I figured he was just an ornery sort of person, but I was mistaken.
His anger had been entirely justified.
Kids in Michigan’s school colors loitered around the yard, the sidewalk, and even the street. I had to stop my car in the middle of the road. They all wandered aimlessly, and I worried I might hit one of them if I tried to pull up behind Brandy’s hatchback. My patience had reached its limit. Between Lily’s advances and this clear betrayal of trust, I was done.
I grabbed a megaphone from the backseat of my car. I typically used it on large job sites, shouting to crew members who might be working on a roof or deep under a house’s crawlspace. It also had a useful wailing siren. I began to blast it as soon as I jumped out of my truck.
“Party’s over!” I screamed through the megaphone, blasting the siren as I chased off kids.
“Who are you?” some young guy asked me, clearly wasted.
“The homeowner!” I snapped back.
“Oh, hell,” the kid mumbled, taking off into the dark.
The partygoers outside began to scurry off like little roaches, but there were more pests in the house. I prepared myself to chase every last one of them away. As I threw open the door, it seemed other college kids had already gotten wind of my arrival. Kids dressed in blue and yellow snatched up their things, abandoned their drinks, and took off before I could get my hands on them.
“If you’re not out in two minutes, cops will be happy to drag you out themselves!” I threatened, having no real interest in calling the police.
The hollow threat worked. I flicked on the overhead lights, and drunk kids stumbled out and away. I could see a dark-haired girl smirking in the corner of the living room, taking some video or something on her phone.
“Party’s busted, you guys,” the nasal-sounding girl declared to her screen. “I hope you liked my makeup look tonight, though! Click the link in my bio for products!”
Shoving her phone back in her pocket, she scurried off with a gaggle of other girls out the front door. I wasn’t interested in them. I wanted to find the two girls who’d promised to take care of this place.
“Dad?” I heard Brandy squeal before she came running out of the kitchen with some floppy-haired boy. “What are you doing here? Seriously, what gives?”
“Your neighbors were threatening to call the cops on you!” I shouted back. “You’re damn lucky they only called me!”
“I’m gonna go,” the floppy-haired kid said nervously. “Um, nice to meet you, Mr. Weiss. I’ll, um, text you, Brandy.”
“Okay, Leo,” Brandy said with an eager grin.
My body bristled at the look on her face. She was giving him the same look that Lily had been giving me. My little girl shouldn’t be looking like that at anyone, even if he had the sense to show some small courtesy toward me.
“What’s going on?” a guy I almost recognized called out from down the hallway. “The party was just getting good!”
I finally remembered he was the guy who’d helped Maxie move into the girl’s old apartment. A redheaded girl brushed past him, pulling at the hem of her Michigan sweatshirt. Her eyes were glued to the floor as she made her exit.
“The party is over,” I declared as another figure emerged.
Maxie stood there with her shoes in one hand and a beer bottle in the other. I couldn’t tell where she came from. I hadn’t seen her as I shouted around the living room or kitchen. Seeing her had me on edge. My fury about the damn party was mixing with memories of what I’d done that evening in the shower.
Even through my anger, I noticed her hips fit snugly in the black velvet pants she wore. Lily could only hope to look so devastating in the soft fabric, but my awful admiration of Maxie’s figure was halted by the look in her eyes. They didn’t have the devilish disdain I expected. She wasn’t mouthing off at me. She just stood there quiet again, her mossy eyes looking almost heartbroken.
It was too hard to tell with Maxie, though. Every other feature on her face was perfectly composed. If her college education didn’t pan out, Maxie Lawson would make an excellent professional gambler.
The tall idiot still stood in the living room, seeming unaffected by my words. I needed answers from Maxie and Brandy, but the kid didn’t move. He just chuckled at my glare.
“Yeah, man,” he declared with a drunken smirk. “You can’t make me go anywhere.”
Standing on shaky ground, the athletic-looking punk wrapped his long arm around Maxie’s neck, forcing her against his side. Her mahogany hair got caught up in the crook of his elbow as she frowned. The rude look I thought she reserved for me shot in his direction.
“Stop it, Chris,” she muttered.
He didn’t listen. Chris just pulled her closer, making a pathetic attempt to assert himself over the situation. I thought I’d been angry to see Brandy smile at that Leo boy. I thought I was mad about the party and the hoards of moronic children, but it was nothing to the rage I felt when this asshole punk started making Maxie uncomfortable.
Something inside me snapped. I was seeing red from his pompous attitude, and I refused to stand it a second longer.
“That’s it,” I growled. “You’re gone.”
“Wait,” Chris began, not knowing what I meant.
My nostrils flaring, I grabbed the idiot by his overpriced cashmere sweater. He hadn’t realized I was a few inches taller than him with years of manual labor keeping me stronger than he’d ever been. With the element of surprise, it was like snatching up a rag doll as I dragged him out the front door.
The moron stumbled, nearly falling off the porch as I tossed him out. I didn’t wait to see if he recovered. I slammed the heavy door shut, feeling a final gust of night air blow through the room. It was just me and the girls now, both of them looking at me like I’d grown a second head.
“What did you do that for?” Brandy whined. “That was Maxie’s boyfriend. You can’t just treat him like a bag of trash!”
“I’d be way gentler with a trash bag,” I swore, still angry from the sight of that prick.
Maxie said nothing. If he really was her boyfriend, wouldn’t she have said something? Maybe the weary look in her eyes went deeper than I knew. Maybe she was too drunk to care.
“It doesn’t matter,” Maxie mumbled, glancing Brandy’s way.
“I can’t believe you did this, Dad,” Brandy complained, her blue eyes filled with Maxie’s usual fury. “This is beyond unfair!”
“Unfair?” I shot back. “I trusted you with this house, and look how you’ve repaid me! The place looks like a dump and smells like the inside of a keg! It’s one thing to have a few friends over, but this was out of control! You’re lucky I showed up when I did!”
Maxie said nothing. She set aside her drink on the cluttered coffee table as the battle unfolded before her in the trashed living room.
“I wouldn’t call it lucky,” my daughter fumed, her voice pitching up. “It was an embarrassing nightmare. Everyone is going to know that my dad broke up my party like I’m in freaking high school again. God, it’s mortifying!”
“That’s what you’re worried about?” I gawked at her in disbelief. “You could’ve ruined this house and cost me thousands of dollars, and you’re worried about what some dumb kids will think about you. God, Brandy, what’s the problem here? What’s so wrong that you’re acting like this?”
All five feet and three inches of her trembled with fury in her little blue sweater dress. Her small hands balled up into fists, turning white with frustration. She looked like a little bomb about to go off.
“My problem?” Brandy exploded. “The only problem here is that I’m finally being my own person, and you can’t stand it! You want me to be somebody I’m not, just like Mom! You drove her away being the same stubborn jerk, and now you’re doing it to me too!”
I could’ve braced myself for a lot of things, but I didn’t think she would bring Kate up. I rarely heard Brandy talk about her mother. The two were never close, but words like that didn’t come from nowhere. They came from deep resentment that had been lingering for years.
I wished Brandy had slapped me across the face instead. That pain would’ve been easier to bear. I wasn’t sure when I became the villain in her life. I didn’t know where I’d gone wrong.
“I’ve had enough of this. I’m going to bed,” Brandy huffed, storming off.
The bedroom door slammed shut, echoing through the house. As I debated following my daughter, Maxie still stood there. The same traces of weariness remained in her eyes. I couldn’t decide if she was tired, drunk, or both.
Right then, I couldn’t be sure of anything.
I was so deep in my disbelief that I almost missed Maxie’s hand against my elbow. The touch was as gentle as a summer breeze blowing off a lake. She was always so stubborn, immovable as the mountains that raised her. I didn’t know she could be capable of such tenderness.
“Hey,” Maxie spoke in her soft Southern lilt. “I’m sorry about the party. I understand if you don’t want us here anymore, but if you let us stay, I promise to make it up to you. I’m pretty good at painting, and I know how to garden. I’d be happy to fix up the back yard over the rest of the semester. I could even buy some plants or shrubs if it would help.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I assured her.
Offering a half-smile, she laughed lightly. “What, a girl can’t spend some of her inheritance on a few bushes?”
Inheritance? Maxie Lawson made no damn sense. She was a hellion one day and sweet as honey the next. If she was desperate to stay, this was just an attempt to butter me up. I hated to admit it was working.
“At the rate you two are going,” I muttered, “you and Brandy might be kicked out of school before the semester ends.”
Maxie’s hand dropped to her side. She withdrew into herself as she looked down at her bare feet. I instantly regretted my response. Even if it was true, Maxie didn’t deserve my boorish behavior. Talking to her like that made me nothing short of a damn hypocrite.
“Maybe you’re right,” she murmured. “The attic looks like it’s going to be really nice, by the way. I, um, was just curious about it.”
Reaching into her back pocket, she pulled out the old attic key, placing it into my palm. All of my awful daydreams hadn’t been close to the real experience of Maxie’s touch. Her soft skin was cool like a stream running over my hands that were calloused from years of work. I had to stop myself from closing my fingers around hers, keeping the feel of her close.
“Thanks,” I mumbled.
“Goodnight, Ian,” she murmured.
I couldn’t get out a reply as she turned down the hall to her bedroom. All the words I had were stuck in my throat. As her door quietly clicked shut, I finally managed to answer her.
“Goodnight, Maxie.”
With a heavy sigh, I looked around the living and dining rooms. It would just take a gallon of cleaner and a few giant dumpsters to get this place clean again, but there was no real damage. My mind couldn’t stop going back to the key balled up in my fist. Curiosity got the better of me, and I went into the attic to look around.
I imagined that Maxie had brought that moron boyfriend of hers upstairs for some privacy, but there was only one fresh set of footprints in the floor’s dust. The bedroom was warm like she had turned on the fireplace. Finding a bottle cap on the floor, it appeared that Maxie had come up here, in the middle of a party, alone.
It all got me thinking. Turning the bottle cap in my fingers, I wondered if everything I knew about Maxie Lawson was wrong. Maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t the villain in my daughter’s life, but somehow . . . I was.
