I'm So That Guy

A few days later Jeanie was out shopping at CVS. She hadn't yet gotten around to telling Joey the truth, he had a lot on his mind and she wanted to wait until he wouldn't get worked up. While she was flipping through the newest Cosmo she heard someone behind her.

"Jeanie?"

She recognized that voice. "S**t. No, no, no, no."

"What's wrong?"

"I was going to talk to you later."

Joey was about to say something when Kyle came up behind him. "What's taking so long?" he stopped when he saw Jeanie "Hi. Joey, who's this?"

"I'm Jeanie Sheik. This..." she gestured to the infant in the cart "is Annaleigh."

"Jeanie..." Joey started to say.

"Can we talk outside?" Jeanie asked.

"Yeah, um. Kyle, can you...?"

"Sure. I'll meet you there."

Jeanie grabbed Annaleigh and led Joey out the door. They walked all the way to Central Park before Jeanie sat down on a bench and Joey sat next to her.

"I was going to tell you. I just didn't want to ambush you."

"I ambushed you instead. How old is she?"

"6 months."

"Not mine, is she?"

"How could she possibly be yours if we were together 4 months ago?"

"I don't know, sorry." Joey cradled his head in his hands "Oh my god. What do I do?"

"What are you talking about? You are not doing anything. I just wanted to tell you so that you know why I'm keeping distance from you."

"Oh." Joey looked sad.

"Aw, I'm sorry. I just meant that I've finally got my life straight and I want to keep it that way."

"I understand. But can you do me a favor?"

"Sure."

"Will you finally tell me about yourself?"

"Fine. I guess I'll start from college." Jeanie's story took off at a mile a minute. "I went to MIT and majored in CS. When I graduated I got a job that paid, like, nothing. So I added on modelling. I still was barely living. Someone tried to recruit me as a prostitute, but I don't do anything illegal. But that doesn't mean there aren't ways to take part in the world's earliest profession, so I moved. And that helped the expenses in two ways; I got paid and my heating bill went down. It wasn't long until I fucked up and got myself pregnant. So if you were wondering, no I don't know who the father is. Once I started to show I took a break from hooking up because I didn't know if guys went for that, but if they did I did not want to be with those creeps. So I waitressed 12 hours a day for as long as I could until I gave birth. You'd be surprised how well I did. After Annaleigh was delivered I went back to having sex--it paid better--until a little after I met you when I finally had enough to quit, move, and work on jobs that actually look halfway decent on a resumè."

Joey took a deep breath. "Wow. Thanks for telling me."