“Is this a bad time? I know you don’t get much time for lunch usually.”
“No, it’s Monday, right? I’m gold. And not sure what I’m hungry for yet. What did you do for lunch?” It always had been easy to get her talking about food. If Matt could get Molly chatting, like they used to do, maybe he could bring things back to normal between them.
She giggled—if barely, it still counted—and said, “Well, I wanted marzipan, but I had to settle for lumpy homemade almond pudding.”
Dessert for a meal wasn’t Molly’s usual healthy fare, but he went with it. It had to be good for some laughs. “Ah, yeah? How do you get that?”
“It’s easy. You just buy almond extract from the store and slosh a bunch of it into your homemade pudding while you cook.”
Matt didn’t know. In his world, pudding came out of a box or a cup or, more often, a huge stainless steel serving tray from the lot cafeteria. “You can make pudding? Like, at home and all?”
“Pudding is not one of life's great mysteries, hon. It’s essentially boiled milk sweetened with sugar and thickened with flour and/or corn starch.” Molly had a smile in her voice. So far, so good.
“Huh. I never knew what was in pudding.”
“With respect, you don't know what’s in most things. That’s why those of us who love you only allow you to cook with close adult supervision.”
He laughed. It was no lie. Matt could barely make coffee. Though he was good with a barbecue. But it was the other thing she’d said which arrested his attention. “You’re one of those loves me?”
“Of course,” Molly said, dead serious. “Don’t you know that by now?”
“I don’t know what I know anymore.” So not the direction Matt wanted to drive this conversation, but it was out of his mouth before he could stop it.
“Matthew…”
“Forget it. That was inappropriate, right? We were talking about pudding. Could you thicken it with eggs?”
“No,” she said.
“Why not? It seems like it would work.”
“It would work. But it wouldn't be pudding then. It would be custard.” Matt heard Molly smile again. Good.
“Oh. It just seems like ‘custard’ would have more protein.”
“It probably does, but I’ve only three eggs in the house, so I made pudding.”
Molly was always almost out of eggs. That fact had years ago been elevated to the status of a running inside joke between them.
“Wait, though,” he said. “Once, you told me you didn't want to make bread pudding, because you only had a few eggs.”
“I don’t remember that particularly, but I believe it. I never have enough eggs for anything. As you know.”
Matt laughed short. “Sure, but how then is bread pudding ‘pudding’ if it has eggs in it? How is it not bread custard?”
She paused then said, “Well, actually the custard is a component in the bread pudding, which is pudding in the British sense of the word.”
He gave her a beat.
Molly carried it.
He rejoined for an improv punchline, “And you wonder why I don’t know what’s in things.”
She laughed a bit, but Matt could tell something was wrong.
It hit him then.
She hadn’t called to talk about pudding, and after the sex, she certainly hadn’t called just to chat.
Matt looked around. He’d made it more than halfway across the studio parking lot. He was sure he’d passed his current ride, a shiny red perk-leased Shelby Mustang which should’ve been hard to miss. At the moment Matt hadn’t the spare attention to find it, though, so he stopped his blind tread and slowly drifted out of the lane reserved for moving vehicle traffic.
Molly was usually a single-minded sort. Why would she let him distract her?
Matt’s whole body went tense. Whatever Molly had to say, it had to be bad.
She was going to tell him they couldn’t talk at all anymore. Matt felt wrecked, but he swore to himself he’d find some way to get around it.
Like I got around her prohibition on dating me by having sex with her and ruining our friendship?
But Matt couldn’t think about that now. He had to get through this conversation.
He said, “I’m sorry. I’m cutting you off. I realize that now.”
“No, it’s okay.”
“But you sound like something’s on your mind. Are you okay?”
Molly’s tone was flat. “I’m fine. But you’re right. We do need to talk.”
Matt’s head spun, and he sat down—hard—on a concrete traffic barrier at the edge of the lot. Imaginary lines from her side of this conversation scrolled through his head like a script carved in stone. “I need you to leave me alone from now on. No contact. I mean it. No more emails. No more calls. I’m blocking you on Skype and Facebook…”
“I’m pregnant.”
What? Pregnant?
King-hit. Not what he was expecting. At all.
Pregnant?!
But we used protection.
He swore.
And the Emmy for Worst Possible Response to an important announcement EVER goes to the bludger creep Matthew Andrew Patrick Kelly.
“Yes,” Molly sounded resigned to Matt’s reaction. Not grizzly like any self-respecting woman should have been with the ratbag who’d say something like that when she told him he was gonna be a—what?!—father. But that was Molly. At the core of it, she was incredibly insecure.
She continued, her voice thin and shaky. Embarrassed, like. Almost apologetic. “I am having a baby. Your baby.”
“I see,” was all Matt could manage.
“I am sure he’s yours, but I’ll have a DNA test.”
He scratched at a coffee stain on the knee of his cargo pants. Of course Molly’s baby—a baby! Dear God—was his. Matt hadn’t been drunk, after all (well, not exactly); he knew she’d been a virgin until he— Anyway Molly wouldn’t wait so long then go out and sleep with a bunch of guys all of the sudden. “That’s not necessary. I believe you.”
“Well, in a weak moment, you might wonder, so I’ll have the test done.”
“If you want.” If Molly suddenly had turned uncharacteristically promiscuous, it was Matt’s fault, anyway. He was the one who broke her. “Funny, huh? All these years we knew each other, and it all ended up, you know, happening in that little window when you could fall pregnant.”
“Actually women’s hormones are designed so their libidos peak precisely in that cyclic window.” Molly’s voice was dry.
Did she think Matt meant to accuse her of something? He knew her better than that. This was the last thing Molly would have planned. Just, his mouth.
“Is that so? I didn’t know that. You read it in a book, did you?”
“Books are handy that way. For information, I mean.” Molly sighed. “Seriously, Matthew, could either of us make this conversation any more awkward?”
Ugh. Matt’s brain was busy tying itself into a knot behind his eyes, and Matt knew himself. In this state, he couldn’t shut his mouth. The longer he kept talking, the deeper he’d shovel out his own grave beneath him. “Hey, I’ll talk to you later, okay? I don’t want to be a jerk right now, mate. I just need a few minutes.” Matt knew he was saying all these words, but could barely hear his own voice. It sounded far away. Life itself seemed to retreat to a remote distance.