Free Seeing Trouble by Ann Charles Page B

asked why he was having sex with my sister, he claimed it was only because he couldn’t have me.
    I tried to break his nose with the door when I slammed it, but he’d been too quick for me.
    For the next few weeks, I’d chewed my knuckles about whether to tell him or not about the baby. Maybe he really did love me. Maybe, somehow, we could carve a happy family life out of this mess. Maybe I was delusional from pregnancy hormones.
    In the end, Natalie, my best friend, had talked me into giving him a chance to be a father.
    I turned the pages until I found the entry about me coming clean with him. Two pages later, I had written down his response.
    September 12th : Psycho Susan called me this morning crying hysterically. When she finally calmed down enough to make sense, two words rang clear. “He’s gone.” So much for having a loving, responsible father for my child. If I ever see the dickhead again, I’m going to tear his nuts off and turn him into a eunuch.
    After our little chat about me bearing his child, the jerk never did contact me to tell me I was going to have to fly solo. Apparently, being a genius didn’t guarantee he was smart.
    A bunch of self-pity filled the next chunk of pages. Then I came across an entry I remembered all too well.
    October 5th : TWINS! I’m having twins. Oh! My! God! I’m so screwed. The nurse gave me some information on adoption today after I mentioned that the father had run for the hills, abandoning me to raise two babies on my own. The flyer says that they screen the potential parents, including an FBI background check. I don’t know what to do.
    I scanned through the next bunch of pages, chuckling at my attempts to return to the dating circuit with a very obvious bump sticking out the front of me. It had been Natalie’s idea for me to get out, meet some new men, sniff out a potential father. The only thing I smelled in the dates was a lot of cologne and freakiness.
    First, there was the fellow classmate who’d been shocked to learn I was pregnant—he’d just thought I was chubby because I ate like a 300-pound construction worker.
    I still wince about the insurance salesman, who after learning why my belly stuck out so far had wanted to cover my baby bump with olive oil and rub his stubble-covered cheeks all over it. Before I shut my apartment door in his face for good, he tried to sell me whole life insurance.
    Next came the serious college professor who looked like Magnum P.I. He turned out to be hiding his true age behind dyed hair, a glued-on moustache, and a fake tan. His gray chest hair gave him away, and his desperate fantasy to “bonk” a young female student went unfulfilled by me. My bonking days were long over.
    Then there was the angry dentist, the possessed baker, and the narcissistic toy airplane maker. My life had turned into a disturbing nursery rhyme.
    Around that time, I finally gave up on men and focused on my new job—Administrative Assistant at a local engineering firm. I decided to keep the babies, much to my family’s relief. Well, except for Psycho Susan, who suddenly found the spotlight shining on me and didn’t like it that I had toys she couldn’t take and mess up—they were attached by umbilical cords.
    December 23rd : Got fired today, one week before my probationary period was up. When I asked the HR rep what I did wrong, I was informed that my sister was caught making a pass at my boss when she came to visit me yesterday (I’d been at the doctor’s for my monthly checkup and Susan knew it). “What kind of pass?” I’d asked, explaining that my sister was a perpetual flirt. The kind involving her sitting on his lap in a dress sans her underwear. That was probably an accident, I explained straight-faced. Susan sometimes forgot she wasn’t wearing underwear—she never has worn them, claiming an allergy to elastic. The HR rep went on to explain that my boss accidentally had his pants down, too. Yikes! Needless to say, after being told