BABY DADDY (14 page)

“You want to be a single parent?”

I nod.

“Why choose that when your baby’s father is willing to share the responsibility?”

I emit a scoffing laugh. “Responsibility. Do you know the meaning of the word?”

He shakes his head. “Why do you judge me too quickly? Because of my age?”

I evade his eyes. “Look—“

“No, I don’t see it.”

“You’re only twenty-five! I don’t want you to be saddled with a baby and fatherhood so early!”

“But I want to. Don’t tell me I cannot decide for myself. You’d be insulting me.”

I’m beginning to lose my temper with the way the conversation is going. “I’m thinking of you, Raiden. Your well-being.”

“Well, right now, I’m fine. More than fine. Don’t make decisions for me that I’m perfectly capable of making for myself. I’m twenty-five, not ten. My age is fine and I don’t have hang-ups with it.”

I open my mouth but he interrupts me.

“What are you worried about?”

I finally lose it. “Everything! Raising the baby together will make us fully involved with each other! You’ll be in my life and I’ll be in yours!”

“Is that so bad?”

“We don’t even know each other!”

“Then let’s get to know each other.”

I stand up and walk several steps away from him.

“Don’t you want to get to know me? I really want to get to know you.” His soft voice cuts me. It’s so hopeful.

“Why?” I ask him without facing him.

“Because I feel that you’re special. Because…I cannot really explain it in simple words. I just feel it. Do we need to explain everything for being? Why can’t we just accept them and enjoy them, especially if they’re beautiful feelings? And what I feel for you now, Ella…it’s like I’m creating my masterpiece.”

I close my eyes. God, is he for real? He speaks like he’s from another world, from another time, not in the twenty-first century where divorce rate is 30 times higher than America’s annual GDP per capita growth.

I feel his hand on my back.

“Why are you afraid?” he asks me gently.

“I’m not afraid.”

“Yes, you are. So afraid.”

I don’t reply.

“I want you to think about it. Imagine how beautiful it is if your baby has a father who will love him or her, too.”

Oh God.

I still have no words to say. I hate being put on the spot or backed on the wall. He’s doing that, so effortlessly, with his exquisite words.

“Can you walk now?”

I nod.

“Come, I’ll show you something.”

He holds my elbow and guides me out of the mausoleum.

We walk for minutes in silence, until we reach a clearing near the cliff. I see what he wants to show me right away.

There’s a cluster of huge rock obelisks forming a circle near the edge. It’s reminiscent of the Stonehenge.

Too magnificent for mere words as a lot of things at Punto Fiamma are, including the man standing beside me.

“Did you do that?” I ask, for lack of anything to say, even though I know the answer. Who else would do this?

“Yes.”

“What’s it called?”

“Sanctuary.”

I nod. “Beautiful. Very apt.”

“That’s my father’s resting place.”

I swallow. His father…

“His ashes used to be inside the mausoleum but I transferred it here. He loved nature, the vast open spaces.”

I want to ask him who his father was but the sheer possibility of it overwhelms me. “You must have loved him very much.”

“Yes. He died when I was sixteen.”

I feel the sadness in his voice. I glance at him. He’s looking at the stones pensively, probably reminiscing old days.

Suddenly I want to ask him about his childhood. How he grew up. How he was raised. But I curb the urge. I’m afraid to get to know him more. I’m afraid to want him more.

But I want to comfort him, to make him feel we all have loneliness in our hearts and he’s not alone.

I reach for his hand and squeeze it without saying a word.

He squeezes it back.

We spend the next minutes in utter silence, the soft whispers of the wind and the soothing splashes of waves as they hit the rocks below echoing around us. I didn’t know these sounds could be so calming. New York City doesn’t have these sounds. But even staying at my beach house at the Hamptons doesn’t give me this kind of peace.

Maybe it has something to do with the person standing beside me, his gentle strength surrounding me, rousing and soothing my fears at the same time.

He’s so decisive. So sure of everything as if he doesn’t give himself too much time to think of consequences. But then he’s young. Young people are mostly fearless. They live for the present. To them, the future is just an open highway waiting to be driven on. A big adventure.

That’s how life should be. A highway of mysteries and possibilities. You’ve been living a predictable, robotic existence for far too long, Stella Rhodes.

The truth is ugly.

I inhale air deeper into my lungs.

“Thank you,” I hear him say.

“You’re welcome.”

NINE

____________________________________________________________

25 CONTROVERSIAL QUOTES FROM THE STYLE EMPRESS

On marriage:

"My art is my real love. It has to be established

that it has no rival in my heart. If there’s a man who can give me

total space, silence, peace and freedom and

not feel like a bored fly on the wall while I work my ass off,

come to mama. On second thought,

I rather like my walls without flies.”

Stella Rhodes

________________________________________________________

I GOT TO SEE THE ENTIRETY
of Punto Fiamma the rest of the afternoon. The place was not so vast it couldn’t be toured in a day. Raiden’s body of work is extensive and staggeringly impressive. I call myself an artist but my art is not as pure as Akiko’s or Raiden’s. Mine is a derivative of many arts forms. Theirs are the real deal. It’s just a pity not many people get to see their masterpieces.

According to Raiden, only selected exclusive collectors from around the world get the privilege to bid for Akiko’s art. His works on the other hand are permanent structures and can’t be transported from the island as they were erected on chosen spots, complementing nature. His works are not for sale.

“I’ve had commissions in several parts of the world but they aren’t seen in public,” he informs me while we rest under a tree that must be centuries old. He installed a beautiful wrought iron bench that resembles a tiger, which he welded himself. Every man-made object I see is an artwork.

“Really? Where?”

“My latest work is located in the private quarters of a sheik in his palace in Dubai. It’s a lifelike bronze statue of a woman.”

“His wife?”

“He has three wives.”

“Then who?”

“The woman he’s secretly in love with but can’t marry because she’s not Muslim and doesn’t want to become one.”

“I suppose you know her quite well.”

“I spent more than a month creating the model for her statue. I got to know her, alright. She’s very much like you.”

“Me? Is she fat?”

He looks at me disapprovingly. “No, she’s quite slender, but her figure has nothing to do with her character.”

Okay, boom! Why do I continuously blurt out stupid self-deprecating lines in the presence of this young sage, making me sound like the pitifully insecure person that I was before? Old habits die hard, I guess.

“I suppose she’s top secret,” I remark to downplay my pity-party crap.

“Quite.”

“Can you tell me at least a bit about her? What makes men want to erect monuments for their women?”

“She’s very intelligent, independent, outspoken, ambitious, successful in her own right and treats the sheik like her equal.”

“The sheik allows that?”

He looks at me like I’m a gem. I want to cringe, but I can’t. Instead, I feel like I’m sparkling. Not good. I can’t depend on anybody for my sparkles. It would be relinquishing my power over to that person. Scary shit, that.

“He’s in love,” he simply says, as if it’s the answer to every riddle in the universe.

I couldn’t help my smirk. “Interesting.”

“You don’t seem to believe me.”

“Where is she from? How old is she? How old is the sheik?”

“She’s French. Only 28. The sheik is in his sixties.”

“Ahh.”

“What does your ahh mean?”

“Nothing.”

“It’s clearly something.”

“Well, I bet the sex is great.”

He laughs and shakes his head, looking at me in resigned exasperation. “Man, you’re cynical. Class A.”

I thump my chest like he did at the beach. “Guilty and proud.”

“Why can’t you just believe they’re in love?”

“Sorry, but I’m good with math. A sixtyish rich-as-Croesus man and a 28-year old woman equals great sex. It has zero probability of ending in infinity.”

“I beg to disagree.”

I raise a mocking brow. “Yeah?”

“My father was 65 when he met my mother who was only 35 at that time. There were 30 years between them. I’d like to think they had great sex all those years. They created me and they stayed together until his death.”

For once, my cynical soul shut the fuck up. Like speechless.

Okay. I can hypothesize.

So…the urban legend could be true. The degree of probability is huge though it’s still very inconclusive.

Holy mother of baby daddies!

A prince?!

I could be carrying a royal in my womb right now.

How awesome is that?

Beyond words.

Sitting at Akiko’s massive
24-seater dining table made of a giant log that Raiden has carved himself— now I figure where he got those impressive biceps. Carving boulders and thick chunks of hardwood takes a high level of strength and endurance—
it’s easy to drown in the illusion of having Akiko Hara for my good friend and having her gorgeous son as the father of my child.

It’s for the books. A fairy tale.

But I let myself bask in those beautiful thoughts as I spend this limited time with them. This may never happen again so I’d have to make the most of it.

I took a shower before dinner and now I’m feeling all fresh and relaxed as the breeze blows in gently from the tall glass doors lining the house’s perimeter.

“Do you ever visit New York nowadays, Akiko?” I couldn’t help but ask. I’d very much want to have her as my honored guest in one of my charity events. Minus Raiden, of course. God, I’m so bad for wanting to form a relationship with his mother while wanting to cut short my association with him. Well, Akiko is my idol and she satisfies a different need in my psyche.

“No. I’ve had enough of New York in my younger days. I don’t miss it.”

“Pity. MoMA sure misses you.”

Akiko smiles serenely and sips her tea, the tips of her dainty fingers barely holding the porcelain cup. I’m fascinated by her every movement. She glides across the room fluidly, elegantly, like a ballerina. I can understand why she’d snagged a king, if the legend is true. Akiko is a moving poetry.

Me, I can’t even shimmy into a dress without sweating buckets and don’t ask how I get into jeans. I’d never snag a royal. Not in three lifetimes.

A prince, albeit an illegitimate one, is sitting right beside you.

Well, I’ll never get him either. Not in that sense. Why would he want me when he can marry a young, beautiful countess or duchess or even a princess from a European noble house?

“Do you love New York? I presume you’re from there?” Akiko’s soft voice wafts into my musings. She has an accent that’s quite adorable. She pronounces each syllable distinctly and I understand every word. Raiden on the other hand has a slight British accent. Maybe he’s stayed in the UK for sometime. I don’t want to ask. I’m not curious.

Hah!

“Oh New York, New York. If I had a place like this where I can work in peace and quiet everyday, who needs the punishing winter, the smog, the atrocious traffic, especially the stuffy and the snooty?”

Akiko’s eyes twinkle with humor. “I sure had my share of the stuffy and the snooty. They used to lambaste my performances on Page Six.”

“I guess they were not ready for your cutting-edge art, well, until you made the cover of Time and they all went Akikooooooh!”

Akiko’s melodic laughter echoes in the expanse of her house. I’ll never get over how beautiful this house is. Light pours in from all the open spaces. Awesome architectural detail everywhere I look. The stark simplicity of it enhances the grandeur of nature surrounding it. The house is one with the earth, sea and sky.