Page 105 of Pregnant By the Playboy

My dad went to get a bag of Cheetos for my mother, and he never came back.

When I met up with Vince after discovering I was pregnant, I was thrilled I’d be able to give my child a father, the father I didn’t have, even if he wasn’t exactly the one I would have chosen.

Except now I think Vince will be the best father possible for Baby.

And the truth is, I did have a father when I was nothing more than a mango-sized fetus in my mom’s uterus. Maybe he talked to me. Maybe she placed his hand on her stomach so he could feel me kick.

He held me, he changed my diapers, he played with me.

He sang to me.

I had a father for three years.

He was younger than Vince when he died.

It suddenly seems ridiculous that I haven’t worried about anything happening to Vince, and now he’s not here when he’s supposed to be.

It’s all wrong.

Oh, God. Baby isn’t going to know their father at all. Baby won’t even have a hazy memory of their dad singing them a Cantonese lullaby.

No, this can’t be happening.

And maybe it isn’t. Maybe there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation...except I can’t wrap my mind around that. If he couldn’t be here, Vince would have contacted me some way or another. If his phone was dead, he would have grabbed a phone off a random passerby and punched in my number—I’m sure he has my number memorized.

“Are you okay?”

I blink and realize I’m crying.

“Are you okay?” the woman across from me asks again.

“Yeah,” I say, even though it’s clearly a lie, but she lets it go.

He’s three minutes late now, and I’m just thankful they haven’t called me in yet. We’re supposed to find out if it’s a boy or girl today.

Now it will just be me finding out.

How is this happening?

I never even got to tell Vince that I love him.

It hits me now, overwhelming in its intensity.

I do love him.

And I understand why I couldn’t tell him, why I couldn’t acknowledge it to myself. It had nothing to do with him not living up to my father.

It’s because I’m absolutely terrified of losing someone I love.

But why could I say “I love you” to boyfriends in the past? Perhaps, deep down, I knew they weren’t right for me, and that made it easier.

Vince, however, is the guy for me.

Admitting I loved him would be admitting how much it would hurt when he was gone. Nearly every memory I have is of the after, my father’s funeral being the first memory I could recall for the longest time. It’s still much clearer than my memory of that song.

Grief was a part of my early childhood. I don’t remember screaming when my mom sang to me instead of my dad, but it happened.

I do remember watching my mother grapple with his absence.