Binding Arbitration by Elizabeth Marx

became so red I thought he might ignite. “You have a kid, and you never told me? You asshole! You haven’t been paying child support.” His Irish Catholic rage-o-meter blazed up his neck through the tips of his ears. I thought it might spew a river of red rage out his eye sockets. “She’s going to clean your clock! Why didn’t you tell me?”
    “I knew she was pregnant, but it was right before I’d been called up to triple A. When I told her I wanted her to have an abortion, she disappeared, and about a year later I received Dissolution of Parental Rights papers. I signed them and sent them back. I assumed that meant she was giving the kid up.”
    “You aren’t supposed to assume a damn thing! You pay me to make sure your conjectures are correct. Why the fuck didn’t you show me the papers?”
    “I didn’t want anyone to know.” I met his eye. “I didn’t want to be pressured into doing the right thing.”
    “Do the right thing?” He ground out in agitation.
    “Coerce me to into being a father. I wasn’t ready.”
    “If you didn’t want to be a father you should’ve keep your bat and balls in your pants.” Fletch was silent for a minute solid. “And for the record, what the fuck would the right thing have been?”
    “I don’t know. Marry her and give the kid a name.”
    “From one friend to another.” He looked up from his hands. “If you thought she was giving the kid up for adoption, then why the fuck would you think I would tell you to marry her?”
    “I didn’t want to get married. I wanted to concentrate on my baseball career. So I signed the papers, thinking she’d give the baby away, and I would forget all about it. I wanted it to go away, and it did.”
    “You thought you’d force her hand. If you weren’t going to help her, she’d have no other choice than to give it up.”
    “Believe what you want, but that’s bullshit, Fletch.”
    “You didn’t count on her being as tough as nails.” His eyes narrowed. “She worked her ass off to get through law school. She probably had debt up to her eyeballs, and she was carrying your dead weight. You are one lucky fuck. She could have ruined you.”
    I never asked myself why, because then I’d have to admit she was the better person. She let me walk clean and clear and never held it over my head.
    “I’m curious. What did it take to forget?” He got to his feet and paced up and down in front of my desk. “Did hang-gliding in the Amazon make you forget? Did parachuting in the Grand Canyon? Did trying to climb an impossible mountain in the middle of a blizzard make you forget?”
    I shook my head. “It’s been eating away at me forever.”
    “And rightly so.” Fletch whittled words together in silence before the sharpened barbs would fly, you’d be impaled before you realized the icicles had pierced you skin. I wasn’t used to being on the receiving end of his rancor.
    “You’re an idiot! You had the chance to have a woman like Elizabeth Tucker, and instead you found a shallow immature bimbo to marry. Do you know what happens to your gene pool, when you marry someone that ignorant?”
    “For the record, I couldn’t have her. Libby, that is.”
    “Obviously you did at least once.” He shook his head. “Have you thought about what you’re going to do now?”
    “I had the blood test run, and I saw the kid’s doc.” I took in a deep breath. “I’m going to do whatever I can to help him.”
    Silence stretched out between us, filling the chasm the storm left. “I’m speaking as your friend, here. You clear your calendar, and make yourself available twenty-four/seven.”
    “Done.” It was the least I owed Libby and my son.
    “I knew you were too much of a choir boy—no booze, no drugs—of course not, that would have hindered your perfection on the field. Sheez, I should have realized why women weren’t your vice—because you couldn’t have the one you wanted!”
    “Shut up, Fletch.”
    “This gives me a whole