Love to Hate You: Three's a Crowd

Chapter 5 - Surprise!

But no, because the next moment he'd hung up, and was looking her in the eye to tell her,

'I've got a friend coming over. You don't mind, do you?' He knew she didn't. She was no cockblocker.

'Of course not.' She smiled in relief. Face-to-face would be much better. 'I'll show her through to you when she arrives, shall I?' Xander scanned a glance over his work space, sucking on his bottom lip thoughtfully, before haphazardly throwing his notebook aside. He rose from his chair and stretched his arms above his head as though he'd been long sat hunched over his work and needed to stretch out his spine, before saying, 'I'll come in with you. We've not spoken since before Italy. I'm not really sure of the etiquette, but I feel as though I ought to be there to greet her, rather than have my minion send her out here to me.' Vee smiled. No one had ever had the audacity to call her a "minion" before. Primarily because she had minions, herself.

'Special then, is she?' Vee hoped she was. It'd increase the chances of Xander taking the news... well, not well. That was too far-fetched. But, perhaps, with a modicum of self-control.

'She's...' He paused to consider it. 'I'm not sure. I've seen her more than I've seen most women, and I think I'd have kept seeing her if I hadn't been in Italy, so...' He shrugged carelessly, before offering his Godmother a nonchalant smile. Aunt Vee returned it, whilst inwardly thinking that there'd be nothing nonchalant about him in the next fifteen minutes.

Aunt Vee was not wrong.

'So, yeah, I'm pregnant,' Amy finished, looking to the father of her unborn child with bated breath. Xander stared at her, his eyes penetrating and unblinking. So devoid of blinking, in fact, that she realised that his gaze wasn't penetrating at all. It was dazed. His eyes were open and fixed on her, but she was quite certain that he saw nothing. 'Xander?' she pressed.

'What?' he uttered, with a minute twitch of his head. She watched his throat bob thickly.

'I'm pregnant,' she repeated. A further silenced ensued. She wondered how far it could stretch before it – or her sanity – would snap. Quite far, was the answer, because after uttering that one-syllable word, Xander appeared to decide that speech was unnecessary. 'Did you hear me?' Amy asked. 'You understand what I'm saying?' It wasn't normal, surely, to be so silent for so long?

'Of course,' he said, as though he hadn't been mute for the past four minutes.

'So...' Amy broke off. She wanted to say, "So... what do you think? Are you interested? Do you want to be involved?" but his silence made her feel pushy. The presence of a surprise child in her womb made her feel pushy. She didn't want to be pushy.

'It's mine?' he asked, hesitantly.

'Of course,' came her immediate rejoinder, determining not to launch into a tirade at his offensive question, because they weren't a proper couple, so she supposed that he was entitled to ask.

'There's literally no way it could be anyone else's?' Well, now she was a bit annoyed, because how many times did she have to tell him that his was the only penis she'd been in contact with in the past year, let alone the past two months.

'No. No chance at all.' He nodded. Wordlessly, of course. And so, another silence loomed between them; thick and cloying. Really, Amy thought to herself, he's making this far more awkward than it needed to be. He's being a bit thick.

'Excuse me for a moment,' Xander eventually said, unfreezing from his statue-like stance in the middle of the designer rug in the pool house's living area. Amy glanced at it nervously. It probably cost more than her car. She nodded her acquiescence, of course. Watched him step outside into the garden, assumed he was getting some fresh air to collect his thoughts, and drew in a relieved sigh at the temporary easing of the tension in the room. She'd been nervous earlier, about telling Vicky's husband that she was pregnant with his child. When she'd found out Vicky's husband was a handsome man called "Rudy", and not a lothario called "Xander", she'd felt relieved. Now she wasn't so sure. Certainly, she was glad she wasn't tearing apart a marriage, but preppy Rudy looked prepared to look after a child; equipped to deal with an adult conversation. Xander did not.