But Loving Him Was Red...

A Week Later

“This had better be good,” I grumbled, pulling into the parking lot of Jan’s Coffeehouse and shutting the engine off.

Lucia was giggling and chewing on the ends of her fingers. We were going to meet Sidney, so he could pick Lucia up. I had a class in 45 minutes and he was more than happy to watch her for me, it of course turned from ‘I’ll watch her for an hour’ to ‘Come get her in the morning’ So now, I had the entire night free.

“Hey Em,” I smiled at Sidney, walking up towards the Jeep. He had parked on the other side of the lot, but was obviously standing at the side of the building, waiting for us. “How’s it going?”

“Blah, I’ve got class in 45 minutes,” I grumbled, sliding my sunglasses up the bridge of my nose and fixing the brim of my woolen blue toque. “What do you have planned to do with Lucia today?” I was making random conversation to try and push this along.

Sid had opened my back door and was in the process of taking her out. Lucia was giggling, “Hi Daddy,” She smiled, pulling Sid’s toque off and pulling it on her own head. Sid beamed, holding her tightly in his arms.

It’s been about a week since Lucia called Sid ‘Daddy’ and he’s been flipping out, calling everyone and telling them. TK told me he was crying at practice the next day, when he was telling everyone. It was the sweetest thing.

“Hey princess,” He cooed back, kissing her cheek, locking his eyes on mine. “I don’t know, maybe we’ll go grocery shopping, chill out, fight each other on NHL11, who knows, really?”

“I want to bake cookies,” Lucia smiled. “Can we?”

“Of course, though, Daddy is a horrible cook,” Sid smiled, twirling her hair around his finger. “You remember last time?”

“Big fire,” Lucia smiled.

“Woah, you had a fire?” I interjected. Sid had a fire with my daughter there. Why wasn’t I told? When was this?

“Yeah, a few weeks ago, we tried baking cookies and I set the dial a little too high and burned them, there were flames,” I simply rolled my eyes. Sid was never a good cook, even though he was really trying.

I laughed when he tried cooking me spaghetti for one of our dates; he nearly burned his kitchen down.

I couldn’t stop laughing when he came out of the kitchen, black all over his face and hands and decided we’d order in Chinese.

He was so cute with soot all over his face.

“Daddy put out fire,” Lucia smiled.

“Daddy is used to putting out fires,” I smirked at Sid.

His cheeks turned red and he looked at his shoes. “In my defense, I didn’t know you had to boil the noodles first,”

“Yeah, but you put the noodles and the meat and the sauce in an uncovered pan in the oven at 450,” I laughed. “I’m shocked you didn’t burn your whole house down,”

“You said you have class in 45 minutes?” He asked. I slowly nodded my head, unsure what he was implying. “Did you want to grab a coffee? There’s something I really need to ask you,”

I glanced at my phone, noticing I had 40 minutes. “I have 25 minutes,” I followed him into Jan’s Coffeehouse, he placed the orders for our coffee and we got a booth at the back of the coffeehouse. I fixed the trim of my denim skirt, resting at mid-thigh and sat down on the chair, clunking my UGGS together.

Sid placed Lucia into the highchair and sat down across from me.

“So, what’s up?” I asked, taking off my toque and fixing my bangs. I really wanted Sid to get to whatever he wanted to tell me, so I could get out of here and go to class.

I was meeting Seth after class today, for lunch, but I may invite him back to my house for dinner.

He was silent, as he dug at his fingernails. I didn’t like when he did that, it only meant whatever he had to ask me was kind of serious. “Sid, what is it?” He slowly raised his head up and looked at me. “What?”

“Emily,” He smiled. “Why did we break up?” I was floored by this question. Were we really going to do this right now? In a crowded coffeehouse, right now. “I mean, what went wrong? I thought we were doing so well,” I frowned, turning to the wooden table beneath my red painted fingernails. “Oh, so it really was my fault then?”

“No,” I looked up, trying to hide the tears in my eyes. “It wasn’t all you, or it wasn’t even you, it was me,” I put my hands on the table. “I was 17, I was afraid; I didn’t know what was going on or what was going to happen to me,” I let out a shaky sob. “I told you I was pregnant, you didn’t give me the reaction I thought you would, Sid, I was afraid that you would just…”

“What?” He growled. “You thought I could know you were pregnant with my child and leave you,” I didn’t like the look on his face. “You honestly thought I would ever or could ever do that,”

“I just wanted to leave you…” I sighed, standing up and taking my toque. “Before you could leave me,” I turned and ran through the crowded coffeehouse. I had this intense feeling to get out of there as fast as I possibly could. I got in my Jeep and sped off to the college.