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Michael stepped through the door into the dim light of my office, a gray and black flannel overtop of his button-up shirt and dark jeans. So fucking unprofessional, but it was Michael, and at that exact moment, I couldn’t have cared less.
“You’re still here?” he asked.
In an instant, I slammed back into reality, and all of it hit me at once.
One shaky, broken breath in, and Michael was moving across the floor to me. “Shit, what’s wrong?”
“Everything,” I choked. “Everything.”
————
It took everything in me to keep from replaying the words I’d spoken and the moment I’d walked away from Ava, over and over again, in my mind. But talking through the last three months with Michael as we sat in the dingy, rundown bar a block down from the Darkwater building, helped keep my mind somewhat distracted.
“Can I be honest, man?” Michael asked, his glass of beer dripping condensation down his arm. I nodded. “From the way you’ve described her and everything up until this point, telling her father doesn’t sound like something she would do. Especially not to spite you.”
I leaned back in my creaking chair, staring at the still glass of red wine in front of me. “She kept the pregnancy from me for three weeks.”
“Yeah, she did. But those were the three weeks you’d been working yourself to the bone to deal with the fuckin’ chaos that came from shutting down that event upstate,” he continued. “I mean, you said it yourself that she told you she hadn’t wanted to stress you out any further. She knew you had a kid to look after and knew you had a lot going on with work. I’m not surprised she was trying to wait for a good time for you.”
The wine sloshed as I lifted it by the stem, tipping back a solid mouthful. It was cheap, barely developed. “She knows what I went through with Jan. It doesn’t excuse it.”
“And do you not think that what you went through with Jan might be exactly why she wanted to wait to tell you?” he asked, his brows raising and making the tufts of gray hair at his temples wiggle. “You didn’t want to fall as hard as you have. She probably knew that and didn’t want to freak you out on top of causing more stress.”
I shook my head. As much as I wanted to believe that, it wasn’t safe for me or my heart. “The fact remains that there’s no one else who would have run to David and told him.”
Michael narrowed his gaze at me. “You know that isn’t true. Assuming you haven’t been absurdly careful with all of this, your nanny could have.”
I stilled.
“Ava’s friend could have. That woman who cooks for you in the Hamptons could have. Have you looked into any of them? Have you considered any of it a possibility?”
“No,” I relented.
“Did you ask David who had told him?”
I swallowed another sip of wine to calm the uncomfortableness in my throat. “No,” I sighed.
Michael’s lips pursed. “You assumed.”
“Yes.”
“Text him.”
I snorted. “Absolutely not.”
“He’s your friend.”
“Was.” I winced at the memory of reiterating that word to Ava, remembering the look of abject horror on her face as it sunk in. “He was my friend. He is clearly not anymore.”
“Just text him and ask him, man. It’s not that hard,” Michael grumbled.
Sighing, I slipped my phone from my inner breast pocket and navigated over to the last few messages I’d had with David.
Me: Can you please tell me if Ava was the one who told you what was happening?
I set my phone face up on the table between us, the messages still open, so Michael would know I’d done it.
“Good job, Ade,” Michael grinned. “That’s honestly…”
