The Baby They Bonded Over

Chapter 4

Nadia, Jeremy, and Sylvia stood in Nadia’s living room in somewhat of a stalemate. Sylvia knew she had to back this crazy ass idea of theirs; no matter who got hurt by the end of it. She wished that Paul would do something already so they could just have him arrested, but as she thought about that, she knew that would end badly as well. At this point, going with the lesser of the two evils was her only option. She looked to Jeremy and Nadia staring at her waiting for her definitive answer to support them. They weren’t taking sarcasm as an answer.

Nadia sighed, “Okay, seriously now Sylvia. Are you going to help us with this or do we have to orchestrate this entire thing without you?”

“You know I’m not going to say no. I just couldn’t let you guys move forward with this without hearing all of the repercussions possible from an outsider’s point of view. I really hope this hair brained scheme of yours works, Nadia. Either way, I’m down for the cause,” Sylvia reluctantly agreed.

“You say that like you don’t know and have never seen the things that Paul has put me through over these last few years,” Nadia complained. “You’re really making it seem like I’m blowing things way out of proportion and I’m doing too much to preserve my sanity.  Do you really not remember what it was like having him in our lives?”

“Oh I remember plenty,” Sylvia stated shaking her head. “I remember all those women he was messing around with and had you out here looking all kinds of crazy and dickmatized.”

Nadia blushed a shade of red that showed through her mahogany skin. She didn’t expect Sylvia to go there with Jeremy standing right in front of them. “Jesus Christ, Vee! Don’t even try and play me. I only stuck around at the end because I still had hoped that I could help him be the man he told me he wanted to be.”

“Okay that’s all well and good, sis, but what about all the years before that?” Sylvia shot back.

“Fine, I’ll admit I was a bit naïve but once I got that lust for him out of my system I was done, and he can’t handle that obviously. But, his time is done and now that I got you and Jeremy to help me get rid of him, I know this plan is going to work!”

“Speaking of timing,” Sylvia’s eyes darted between the two of them. “Have you two considered when this whole baby thing is supposed to happen? You know there can be complications and other variables that you two aren’t considering. Like what if you can’t get pregnant right away, or what if you’re shooting blanks?”

“Ain’t nothing wrong with my baby making juice!” Jeremy shouted with laughter. “Besides we haven’t gotten that far in the plan yet, right?”

“Well, I mean,” Nadia wavered. “You saw how Paul was acting out here tonight. It’s only going to get worse until we give him a reason to leave me alone or he does it on his own. Which we all know ain’t gonna happen. So I think it is time we move on to the next stage of this plan.”

The awkwardness in the room was palpable as the three looked at each other knowing what Sylvia’s next questions were going to be. Nadia didn’t want to acknowledge the fact that her sister was about to get extra personal with her s*x life. And the mere thought of Jeremy being present for the discussion forced her to blush again.

“You know what?” Sylvia began. “Never mind.”

They all burst into laughter.

“I really thought you were gonna go there,” Jeremy chuckled.

“I was,” Sylvia admitted. “But then I thought, ‘Why do I want to know the ins and outs of you two trying to make a baby, a baby y’all not gonna keep, to scare off an obsessive ex- boyfriend of this one?’ This is way too deep for me and I don’t want any mental images of you two doing the do.”

They all laughed again as Sylvia shivered at the image of her little sister and best friend getting it on. Jeremy and Nadia laughed but in the back of their minds, they didn’t find it repulsive or that funny.

Jeremy had been so wrapped up in work these last few years, the girlfriend he had just stopped coming around. Although, when he thought back to it, she would complain a lot about them not spending enough time together. It wasn’t too far into their relationship before the woman figured out Jeremy was into his work way more than he was into her. She tested her theory seeing how long he could go without hearing from her or seeing her before he reached out. The first time she tried her experiment, it took him three days to realize they hadn’t communicated. The second time she tried it, he didn’t reach out to her until a week went by. And the last and final time, he didn’t reach out for nearly a month and even then that was only because things in his apartment were out of place because she had moved out.

Now, as he stood in Nadia’s living room with Sylvia, he reminisced on his old relationship. She was a nice woman, a great woman, but just along for the ride at the wrong time in his life. Jeremy had sacrificed a lot to get himself and his company to this point.  He had actually started to become okay with the idea of not having a family and just living vicariously through his friends. 

Nadia had a fleeting image of Jeremy and her together. It made her nervous. She trusted Jeremy completely, but it had been so long since she was intimate with anyone. The last year and a half of her relationship with Paul had been s*xless; at least it was on her side of things. She had made up her mind after the first rumor she heard turned out to be true that she would give Paul a chance to make things up to her but she wasn’t giving up the goodies until she could trust him again. That never happened. She had been made a fool time and time again by Paul and his s*xual escapades. The women would talk about her in the shop and they would even speak recklessly about it to her face. They didn’t care about her feelings, her relationship, or her as another woman. But, deep down inside, Nadia never blamed them. She knew the only reason they felt that kind of freedom was because Paul allowed them into their lives. He never checked the women who went after him. He accepted them all with open arms, and a hard dick. She couldn’t stomach the idea that she wanted to stay with him just to see if he would change. He never would and she knew that now.