What the hell am I doing here?
Spencer sat in his car, parked in front of the coffee place Charlotte was at. He suddenly realized that only a tool would be so willing to meet up with his ex after being dumped with no explanation. That made Spencer a tool. A big giant tool. And wanting to go in and see her made him an even bigger tool.
He told himself to leave: he took the keys out of the ignition. He told himself under no circumstance to get out of that car: he did just that. He told himself to get in that car, tell Charlotte to go to hell and never talk to her again: he went inside.
His eyes scanned the room for her. There was a girl in the corner staring out the window in front of her, dazed. She had on dark jeans, a cotton teal form fitting shirt, with matching flat ballet shoes. It was Charlotte, except she had more curves, still as skinny as before. Before she was just skinny, with hardly any curves but they were undeniable now. She looked older mentally somehow. Like she had grown up, even though she had to be only about twenty-two now. Spencer just stood there, staring out how different she looked. How could one person change so much in two years?
She was still painfully beautiful. And for some reason that made him mad.
Spencer took a deep breath, willing his nerves to calm, walking over to her. She jumped when he reached her, looking up at him with the dark blue eyes he had been in love with, dreamed about since she left. "Hey, Spencer. Sit, please." he did so. "I hope you don't mind..." she gestured to the two coffee's at the table. He didn't respond, just took a drink. "You look good, Spencer. And different."
He coughed, clearing his throat. "So do you." he avoided eye contact with her.
"I'm glad you came. I didn't deserve your understanding."
"What's this about Charlotte?" he asked coldly, looking up.
He really looked at her now; she was tired, and by the purple under her eyes it had been quite a while since she slept a whole night, She was nervous, jumpy, and fidgety. She looked drained. Her cell phone was on the table, and she kept glancing at it, as if someone called, she wouldn't let herself miss it.
"You were never one to beat around the bush." he went on.
She sighed, grabbing her purse and digging through it. "I have to tell you, the reason I left..." she trailed off, trying to find the object she needed. She pulled a piece of paper out, and set it in front of him.
A boy, about a year and a half old, with light brown hair and round, bright dark blue eyes, had on a large smile. His hair was a handsome mop on his head. He had on a t-rex shirt, sitting on a swing. Spencer felt a rush of confusion and anger. "Who is this?"
"His name is Jude. He loves dinosaurs, and coloring." she rambled nervously. "He is 18 months... He is my son..." she looked at him through her eye lashes nervously.
Doing the quick math in his head, Spencer felt his throat go dry. She had a son with some guy from around the time they dated. "What does this matter to me?"
"I left because I was pregnant."
"Obviously." he snapped, setting the picture down. "You called me out here to tell me you cheated on me?"
"I didn't cheat on you, stupid." she snapped back.
Spencer's world stopped as realization struck him. "He's mine?" she didn't answer, only nodded. Spencer leaned back, his world stopping.
Spencer looked down to the picture again, staring at it. Charlotte left because she was pregnant, with his child. She went through nine months of pregnancy, labor, and raising a kid all by herself, and the thought never crossed his mind. How could he go two years of not knowing? And she didn't have to do it alone, Spencer would have been there, and in fact he wanted to be. Now she went through all of that with their son, and she didn't give him a choice to be there. How was that fair? So much missed time. Sure, if he had to choose between having a kid or not so suddenly, he would choose not, but the idea of having a kid with Charlotte wouldn't have been the end of the world for him. If anything, on that day she had said goodbye, if instead she had said she was pregnant, he knew he would have been excited. His son was real, very much alive.
Spencer couldn't believe it. It sounded so unreal. "Are you sure?"
"Of course I'm sure." she said evenly. "Back then, you made it very clear to me that your job always came first-"
"I never said that!" he said loudly, talking over her, coffee long forgotten. A few people at surrounding tables were staring at them.
"-And that you weren't good with kids in the first place, and you certainly didn't seem to like them. You were at the most important part of your career, I couldn't do that to you. Couldn't ruin your life. I couldn't bring you down like that, and I didn't want to hurt you."
"So you decided to leave, pregnant at twenty, and not tell me I created another human being with you?" Spencer shot back. She didn't respond, just took a drink of coffee and blinked tears out of her eyes. It hurt him just as much as it use to to see her cry, but he wasn't going to show that. "Where did you go?"
"I went to Connecticut." she said, avoiding eye contact. "That's where I'm from. I told my mom, and she was dissapointed in me. I briefly considered an abortion." she looked ashamed for a brief second.
"I'm glad you didn't." he said. He resisted the urge to reach out and grab her hand; he was mad at her, he hated her."What made you come back?"
"You." she said. "I knew I had to tell you."
"Two years ago." he said ruefully.
"I need to make it clear to you, I'm not here for money, or child support." she said seriously. "You can forget this whole meeting completely, and never talk to me or think about it again. I am just here so you know he exists. I'm pretty much giving you a out of jail free card." Charlotte almost smiled; she always had the oddest type of humor.
"Of course I want to be there for him." he heard himself say before he could think about it. He couldn't be like his father, he refused. He was going to do everything to be different than William Reid, like he always swore to himself. "You stole a year and a half of his life from me, I can't let more get away." he added coldly.
Charlotte didn't respond. Was snapping at her uncalled for? It wasn't like he could help the anger he had, the confusion. He was pissed she took it upon herself to decide what's right for him. He was his own person, wasn't he? He wasn't sure if he could ever forgive her. "So, you want to meet him I take it?"
"If you will allow me." he said sarcastically. Spencer knew she would only take his rude comments for so long until she started snapping back; it would take a day or two. While she obviously felt guilty and liked she deserved it, she was stubborn and defensive.
She took out a pen and scribbled on a napkin. "This is my address and my number. I live in the apartments near here."
He took it from her, staring at her neat scribbles. "I will call you tomorrow. I have off, so maybe I could..." Spencer trailed off.
"Yeah." she answered for him, grabbing her purse. "Keep the picture. I got to go, the homeless man I left him with said he will sell him if I'm not back by ten."
The oddest sense of humor.
The next day Spencer woke up, he called Charlotte immediatly. He was to go to where she lived in an hours time.
He showered, shaved, then dressed. He sat at his table and stared at the clock.
Since he had gotten home the night before he couldn't stop staring at the picture she let him keep. Maybe he was biased, but he was an adorable kid. He had Charlottes eyes, and looked a lot like her. But as he looked at Jude, the more Spencer saw himself.
Jude was just at the age where he could recognize people and the role they had in his life. Spencer stayed up most of the night looking through child development. How would he be introduced to Jude? He would be confused for a while, but it wouldn't affect him long term. Would they introduce him as dad?
Spencer thought of this over and over while he drove over. He felt like a drone as he buzzed her apartment and walked up the steps, then to door 209. He knocked, reeling his mind to go blank and relax.
Charlotte answered, looking just as tired as before. "Hello." she said plainly, stepping toward the side. Spencer stepped in awkwardly, looking around. Boxes littered the apartment and there was no furniture. "We just moved in." she explained.
The only response he gave was a twitch of the lips. She sighed. "He in the kitchen, I got a table set up already."
Spencer toed his shoes off, then followed her. She walked into the kitchen. "Jude baby."
A small boy sat at a table, turning his head immediately and looked at Spencer. There was a moment where Spencer felt something he had never understood before, but he fell in love in one millisecond. It was his son. And Spencer had this moment of holy crap. He was in awe, he didn't know what to do, forgot how to move. But Jude just looked at him with curious eyes. "Say hi to Spencer." the boy didn't say anything. "Say hi." she repeated.
The boy looked at his mom then to Spencer, smiling shyly. "Hi Jude." Spencer said, grinning.
"Hi." the boy said, then started to giggle and hid his face in his hands. Spencer didn't watch as Charlotte walked around the table to start cleaning of the table, unable to take his eyes away from the boy.
"Would you," Charlotte started, kneeling next to Jude to be eye level with him. "Like to go play at the park."
"Yeah!" Jude said excitedly, kicking his feet. His mother unfastened the buckles on his chair and pulled him out, setting him down. This was the plan, Spencer remembered. They were going to take him to the park, talk, and let him play.
Spencer removed his satchel and dug through it. "I got you something, Jude." out of guilt for not being there, even though that fault belonged to Charlotte. Jude looked up excitedly, grabbing the hem of his green shirt. "You like dinosaurs, right?" he asked.
The little boys face lit up. "Din-sore?" he looked to his mom, who had an amused smile. She gave a bigger smile to him.
Spencer pulled out a plush T-rex he had stopped to get the night before. "Here."
"Mine?" he asked, pointing at the toy.
Spencer laughed. "Yeah, its yours."
Jude took the toy from Spencer and hugged it to him, small fingers trailing the glass eye. "Fank 'ou."
After Charlotte gathered her things, they went to a nearby park and sat on one of the many benches while Jude ran off, trying to pull himself onto the swing, holding the T-rex close to him.
Spencer hadn't really said anything to Charlotte yet, most of his attention focused on the boy. Only now did he giver her a closer inspection.
When he had met her, she had three piercings on her lobes, one cartiledge on each ear, her tragus, and two micro-dermals on her sternum. She wasn't like a girl with tattoos and piercings, wearing dark clothes or died her hair funny colors. Now it looked like she had taken out more of her ear piercing but her micro-dermals were still there. "You took out a lot of your piercings." he commented.
She subconsciously touched her ear. "Yeah, out of like ten piercings I took out half. I'm too scared to take these out." she said, lightly touching her cleavage piercings.
"Sternum removals are painful." he quipped. "Especially to take the foot out after your skin has grown around in from the inside.
Charlotte wrinkled her nose. "Yup."
"You probably did it a month after birth." he said. "To fit into the mother role you saw more accurately."
"Mm-hmm." she hummed distractedly, watching as Jude left the swings and try to climb up a slide. "That brain of yours just never shuts down huh?" Spencer turned his gaze away from her, not responding. "So, how are we doing this?" she asked. "I figured you want to be apart of his life, how are you going to do that?"
He sighed. "I don't know, I wasn't really prepared for this." she flinched visibly. "Take it slow I guess. With my job, there really isn't no clear visitations. We just have to plan for times I can see him."
"When I'm not working at the hospital, you can come see him whenever you want." she said, biting her full, bottom lip. "I want him to be use to you, but I don't want to do any of this if you hardly see him. It's too unstable for him."
"I'll be there." Spencer said with determination. "Whenever I have free time."
"Do you want him to call you dad, or Spencer?"
"I don't know Charlotte." he said coldly. "Whatever you want."
He heard her let out a sigh of frustration next to him. He had been waiting until she stopped taking all of his passive aggressive digs. "Thank God you make this so much easier. Honestly, just what would I do without you!" she said sarcastically.
"You could take him away from me for two years." he snapped, looking straight ahead and not at her.
"I tried to explain to you my reasoning." she said. "I know you will never even try to understand why I did it, and I would take it back if I could. But this is the situation you were given so instead of bitching about what a horrible person I am you could deal with what you were given."
"You haven't changed at all." he said. "Even when you are wrong you still get defensive and argue."
"At least I know I'm wrong. Unlike you I try to move on from things like that." Spencer kept his mouth shut. She was so frustrating no matter what he said they would keep arguing.
He had to be honest and say he understood why she did it. But that didn't mean he liked it or would tell her he understood. She would never truly understand how much it had hurt him.
Spencer watched Jude, and suddenly felt better. He had to at least acknowledge that while the situation was messed up, he was happy. For now.
A/N
Thought's? Let me know what you think.