So, it's a girl, Alec thought. That made it worse.
The pink smoke billowed impressively out of the firework. Shelly and Jim had only the one, which was less impressive, but he guessed it was enough for a backyard barbecue; it was enough for their little circle of friends.
The six of them worked together at the fish packing plant. Overnight, 12-hour shifts, six or seven days a week. Not that any of them really showed up for that many days. He didn't, anyway. It was the running joke: Must be we have to work today; Alec is here. He wondered what they said when he wasn't there.
Julio went over and collected the firework when the pink sputtered out and died. Of course he did. Julio was the leader, if they had one. He drove the rusted out Ford minivan which took all of them back and forth to work. He decided when they left, what gas stations they stopped at for coffee or smokes. Julio was used to deciding things for the group.
What would he decide about Shelly and Alec? Their innocent baby girl. Alec couldn't believe he was going to be a girl dad.
As if Julio could read his thoughts, his dark eyes sought Alec's as he walked back from the abandoned parking lot across the street from Jim and Shelly's trailer. There was amusement in those eyes, Alec thought, along with something else. It couldn't be judgment.
Jim was the most reliable worker of the group. Jim hadn't missed a day all summer. Or fall. And that included the seven-day work weeks they had most of the summer. His reliability is what had cuckolded him.
Alec took a chug of his beer, put the bottle down on the deck next to his lawn chair. He watched the group gathering around Julio with the burnt out firework: Jim and Julio and Donovan remarking on the burn pattern and the fuse mechanism; Shelly and Andrea off to one side, watching the boys. Shelly held an arm over her stomach, though she didn't have a baby bump yet. She looked wistful.
How had it started? In the van, that morning when he and Shelly had crashed out in back together. July, probably: at 7 a.m. it was broad daylight and already hot. The air rushed in the open windows as Julio sped them along the highway, making any conversation impossible without shouting, but they were all wiped out from work anyway. He had thought Shelly was sleeping. None of the others could see them there behind the bench seat. She lay flat on her back, arms splayed out, with one boot off and her T-shirt tucked up into her bra. He was crammed up, back against the bench seat, resting his head on his backpack. Her eyes were closed. He traced her form with his eyes, lingering on her smooth stomach. The way it rounded up a little around her belly button.
When he made it back up to her face, Shelly was looking at him. He hadn't even noticed that she had turned her head to him. But, she smiled and held his eyes with her blue sparkles, instead of judging him, and he hadn't been able to look away, until he panicked with worry that someone would catch them gazing.
Jim was coming up on the deck. He was beaming, his sandy mustache spread out over his grin.
“Alec, I'm glad you could make it,” he said, extending his bottle of beer to him.
Alec grabbed his beer and clinked the bottle against Jim's. “Of course,” he said as he stood up. “Congratulations, man.”
“Thank you, thank you.”
“Yeah, helluva a thing, having a kid. And a girl, no less.”
“I can't believe it.”
“Did you know it was a girl?”
“No, Shelly wouldn't tell me. I tried everything, but she kept it secret.” Jim laughed. “I only hope it looks like her.”
“Me too,” Alec said, and Jim laughed.
Julio was coming up the steps to join them. “We all hope it looks like Shelly,” he said. The way he looked at Alec when he said it, though. Like he knew something.
But how could he? After that morning in the van, he and Shelly hadn't even spoken to each other. At least not around the others. It's like a world had opened between them in that first gaze, along with an agreement to keep it secret. They kept apart at work, and Shelly stopped riding in back with him on the way home, making a complaint about her back. She had swapped places in the van with Jim though. It's one of the reasons Alec had stopped going to work so much: he grew paranoid that she was avoiding him, sending Jim to ride with him in the back to remind him she was married, to punish him for looking, for even thinking it.
And then she had skipped work too, texting him in the middle of the night so that he knew she was skipping. He didn't dare answer her first 'wyd'; how could he know it wasn't a trap? She was surely going to show Jim if he texted her, and Jim would tell everyone. He couldn't bear the thought of the shame.
The next night at work, when he stood on the gut line waiting for the conveyor and the long night to start, Shelly ran over from the hand wash station and pressed herself subtly and gently against him. “Ready to do this?” she asked.
It was only a moment, the briefest of seconds that her body was against his, then she was moving to take a place at the far end of the line. She had set his blood raging though, and hours of squelching guts from headless fish hadn't subdued it. The next week when she texted him he had immediately accepted her invitation to come over. She had kissed him at the door not ten feet from where he now stood.
Jim had moved to the far end of the deck to fire up the grill. Donovan and the girls were cavorting in the street. Julio stood right beside him. He turned his back to the group, tapped his bottle against Alec's and said, sotto voce, “Congrats, Papá.”
His eyes had that amused light in them, and Alec couldn't look away. He couldn't say anything either. Couldn't get the words out to protest.
“Pendejo!” Julio laughed. “You think you're the only one having that forbidden fruit?”
“Like I say, we all hope it looks like Shelly.”
Cover for “Secret Girls” designed in CanvaPro, using this week's A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words prompt image (image source).
Creative Coin banner designed by @ pacolimited.