Bulletproof

by Maci Bookout

  When everyone had left or gone to sleep, Taylor and I lay down in the one bed left and talked all night. Even though we were alone in a bed and there’d been plenty of drinking, he never tried to kiss me or creep close to me or anything like that. I’ve never been one to get physically involved with someone outside of a relationship, but most guys will try something. I had so much respect for him that he was able to hold a conversation with me without the slightest hint of pressure to do anything but talk. You have to give credit to a guy who can resist putting the moves on a Ninja Turtle. We just had a great time with each other, and when he left the next day, I got that feeling like we’d made a connection.

  Raj and I planned another trip to Texas for late November. Leading up to that, Taylor and I started to chat more about dating and relationships. By the time Raj and I went back down to visit, it was obvious we were interested in each other. We didn’t say anything about it, but it was pretty plain to see. I spent every night that weekend in Taylor’s room, although somehow we didn’t do anything more than kiss. Once again, he was just totally laid back and made me feel like he wasn’t expecting to get anything physical from me. By the end of it, I was even starting to get a little weirded out. I was like, “Why hasn’t he even tried anything yet? Is he not even thinking about it? This is getting awkward.” Finally I brought it up.

  “I just respect you and what you wanna do,” he said, “so I’m not gonna push you to do anything.” After we talked for awhile, I realized that just as much as I respected him not trying anything, he respected me for the same reason. If I didn’t want to give it up, he’d only respect me more.

  And that was good, because as I told him: “Until we’re serious or I just can’t take it anymore, you’re not getting anything out of me.” I wasn’t trying to put him to the test, but it was nice to know he could handle it. When I went back home to Chattanooga, it felt like a good cliffhanger. We were both dying for the next chapter.

  The next time I went back to Texas was in December, right around Christmas time. Taylor asked me to be his girlfriend, and there we went. It was official. Before I knew it I ended up at his house when his whole family was there for dinner, so I met them all. Grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. I was freaking out a little bit inside, but at that point I felt like I knew him so well that I knew it was going to be okay. In fact, I already wanted to meet them. I figured if I liked him and his morals and beliefs and how he feels about life, I was more than likely going to like his parents. And I did. The crazy thing was that they reminded me of my own parents. To me that was nothing but a good sign, and we just kept going from there.

  Long-distance relationships are kind of nice when they start out long-distance. All we did was talk and text all the time, and I got to know so much about him before we really even got started in person. And we got to do it without friends being involved or photos being all over social media. Nobody had input into our relationship as it started except the two of us. In a way, it was sort of an old-fashioned courtship. It was a nice way to get to know each other without all of the bullshit that can get in the way.

  Our personalities and our way of interacting with each other made long-distance easier. From the beginning, it was a more mature and adult relationship than anything I’d ever experienced. There was no drama, and he was never playing games. There was no “I’m not gonna text him first today” or “I’m waiting to call back so she doesn’t think I’m too eager.” None of that, ever, at all. He was open and honest with me, and I knew he was taking it seriously. I never once had to doubt what his motives were, and it was really nice.

  As the months went by and we only got closer and more serious, I started letting Taylor and Bentley get to know each other a little bit. I’d take Bentley down to Texas every other time I went down on business, or on school breaks we’d drive the thirteen hours and stay there for about a week. They got to spend enough time together for us all to know that they were going to get along just fine.

  After a year and a half, we were over that. It was time to get serious about what we wanted to do next. But I wasn’t about to move Bentley halfway across the country. So all I could say was, “Are we going to break up, or are we going to figure out how to get you out here?” We both decided that we wanted to stay together, and he was ready to take that step. For the next four or five months, our focus was on saving money, finding him a job, and figuring out the right time to take the plunge. In the meantime, we talked a lot about how he’d fit into Bentley’s life, and he was definitely nervous about the prospect of growing into more of a father figure rather than just being Bentley’s friend. There were a lot of deep conversations about what he was expecting and what I was expecting.

  We probably went overboard trying to prepare, but it was scary. I wound up bracing myself in a way that told me I was carrying a lot more baggage from my past relationships than I even realized. I was afraid of things turning out with Taylor the way they’d been in the past. I was scared that once he moved in we’d end up miserable and start fighting all the time. Or maybe he’d realize he was a commitment-phobe after all and take off for the hills. And part of me was just afraid my life was going to be too much for him all at once. It was hard to wrap my head around him taking on such a huge change. Down in Texas, he was basically a single guy whose only responsibility was his job. Not only that, but he had an awesome life down there. Everybody knew him and liked him, and things were good. Now he was preparing to go from that to being my boyfriend, living with me and my five-year-old kid, in a new place away from his family and his friends. Frankly, I was afraid he was going to get to Chattanooga and freak out. I was waiting for shit to hit the fan.

  But it never did. What I liked most about him was exactly what made it work. He’s always been confident, headstrong, and a fighter, in a sense. I was glad to see that he was never interested in giving up or running away from what we’d gotten into. As for him adapting to life in a new city, the man could make friends with a wall. My parents absolutely adored him, and he loved them, too. That was one of the best things I could hope for and had never experienced. With Ryan and Kyle, it wasn’t like my parents ever disliked them, but I sensed that they were mostly just supporting what I wanted. With Taylor, they liked him all on their own. Considering how much respect I always had for their opinions, that was a huge blessing.

  I was still going to school when Taylor first moved to Chattanooga, and I felt like I was finally getting a handle on what I could do for a career. While I kept up with the speaking engagements around the country, I ended up moving deeper into social media. After I got so many followers though MTV, I started getting offers from companies to host social media events and things like that. There were lots of opportunities to host chats or be paid by clicks and so on. I started to work on being savvy with my posting, thinking about the best times for certain tweets and other things that could influence how people interacted with them. The work appealed to my problem-solving side. If I wanted to make a post related to babies, I could narrow in a target audience by analyzing the details: Moms in this location who have children from X age to Y age are seeing my tweets at Z time, so that’s where I can get my bang for my buck. There was a surprising amount of satisfaction in solving those puzzles and seeing the results. Since I took to it so well, I started looking into the prospect of becoming a social media specialist.

  While I took night classes twice a week to wrap up my media technology degree, Bentley and Taylor were home by themselves. We knew there’d be some challenges and tests involved in Bentley accepting Taylor as a parental figure. They got along fantastically well, but one night Taylor let me know there’d been a couple of times, not a lot, but a few, when he’d told Bentley to behave and Bentley had fired back with “You’re not my dad.”

  “Oh, shit,” I thought. “Here we go.” We’d already discussed that it was something that would happen and that we’d have to deal with it right away. But it was something we had to work out with Bentley himse
lf. It took Taylor having a good conversation with him along the lines of, “I’m not your dad, and I’m not trying to replace your dad. But when you say things like that, it hurts my feelings. I am here for you, and even though you might not like what I’m saying, you still have to respect me as an adult and as someone who takes care of you.” Then he told Bentley that if he was ever confused or angry about anything in the world, he could talk to him about it. Taylor said to him, “You won’t be wrong if you can talk about it without being disrespectful.” As soon as they had that conversation, it never happened again. It was clear Bentley felt much more understanding about what was going on. Pretty soon we weren’t just acting like a family. We had become one.

  The positivity and respect I found in our relationship were exactly what I’d always hoped for, but it was almost surreal to feel that standard being met after wondering for so long if I was crazy to expect so much. It turned out I hadn’t been crazy at all. It was possible to find someone with warmth and integrity who wanted the same things out of life as I did and who loved spending time with my kid. And I’d done it.

  After all I’d been through and all the failures I’d experienced, I finally had someone I could imagine building a life with and not fighting tooth and nail every step of the way. I could see us working together and having fun with the journey, challenges and all. Finally, at long last, I felt like I was part of a team.

  And Bentley got more than a teammate. He actually got a new coach. Taylor didn’t just show up to Bentley’s Little League games, he dove right into heading up the team. The kids call him “Coach Taylor,” but Bentley calls him “T-Money.” It’s hilarious. A lot of people at the games probably don’t realize Taylor’s not Bentley’s dad, so they’re probably thinking, “Why is he calling him T-Money?”

  It’s all good with us. When Bentley started asking what he should call Taylor “when we get married,” we told him, “Taylor, Dad, T-Money, it’s up to you.” Bentley knows Taylor as a dad, besides the fact that he’s not a biological father. Taylor’s parents too, have been great as far as treating Bentley like he’s their grandchild.

  When I saw Taylor take on fatherhood like it was something he actually wanted to figure out and master, it was even better than anything I’d dared to hope for. I tried not to let my thoughts slide over to the same old territory, but the closer Taylor got to settling in as a co-parent, the deeper I felt that old thorn in my side. Where was Ryan? How could he stand it? Didn’t it bother him to see another man filling that role in Bentley’s life when he still couldn’t be counted on to spend some time with the kid over the weekend? And what about later? What if years down the line Ryan did decide he wanted to show up and be a dad? Would all Taylor’s work and sacrifice for Bentley go down the drain?

  I started to get stressed out thinking about all of the things Ryan was entitled to as a biological father that he took for granted, that he didn’t deserve. As hard and as heartbreaking as it was for me, I couldn’t imagine what it was or would be like for Bentley.

  But I was getting so tired of running the same old trails in my head.

  In the last season of Teen Mom, in the very last scene of the show, I’m sitting at the kitchen table talking to my mom about Ryan and the fact that I’d spent so much time fighting something I couldn’t change. And my mom says to me, “You’re going to be around him for the rest of your life. You just have to let it go.” That day I finally started working to accept that I couldn’t fix him. I couldn’t change him. It wasn’t my job or my responsibility. All I could do was keep the door open, just in case he was ever ready to show up and try. I had to do the best I could on my side without letting it consume me the way it had been consuming me for almost seven years.

  I tried. I really did try.

  CHAPTER 22:

  CHANGE OF HEART

  one of those memories

  i’d be smitten by reliving

  i’m being followed by cupid

  and he’s not too forgiving

  flashbacks of summertime

  i’ve been living on those

  so maybe cupid’s trail

  is where my heart goes

  in a southern city

  i’ve never called home

  that’s what you felt like

  before you were gone

  irresponsible actions

  falling for a stranger

  there was just no time

  to worry about danger

  i wish i knew that night

  what consumed my being

  warmth i’d forgotten to feel

  parts of life i hadn’t been seeing

  fear i’d been running from

  caught up to my heart

  i never had a choice

  from the very start

  my heart i’d been neglecting

  damaged, closed, and put away

  but you can’t help who you love

  I’m still scared you’re here to stay

  i am in love with you

  even so, I’m not dumb

  you’re just like the rest

  so my mind will stay numb

  i’ve never been here before

  i’ll never do this again

  but my control was gone

  before you walked in

  maybe i should shut up

  maybe you should stay

  maybe i’m who’s running

  and maybe we will be okay

  CHAPTER 23:

  THE TIME IS NOW TO LEARN AND LIVE

  Taylor and I were settled in. Marriage was almost a given, and we’d both said we wanted kids. Bentley was happy, I was happy, and we were nothing but excited when we talked about the future. It was time for me to look into something that might have an impact on what that future would look like.

  Back when Bentley was about two years old and I was around twenty, I was out at a concert with my brother and a couple of friends when all of a sudden I got a terrible pain in my stomach. It was so severe and so sudden that it felt like a contraction. I thought, “What the hell is going on?” I went into the bathroom and started throwing up. It was the most painful thing I’d ever felt. It was worse than labor. I didn’t even know what to do. I was practically paralyzed by it. And then it just subsided. I had no other symptoms, no fever, nothing. But when it was over, I was actually sore. The next day I told my mom what had happened and she told me to head to the walk-in clinic and tell them what was going on.

  I followed her advice, as usual. The doctors took my blood and gave me an exam, and then they said nothing was wrong with me. I took their word for it and wrote it off as a fluke, and I never thought about it again until a month later, when it happened again. I was lying in bed with Bentley when the pain hit me just like it had the first time. Only this time it lasted longer. It lasted all night long. I ended up in the emergency room, where they did an X-Ray and took my blood and all kinds of different things. But they didn’t find anything, and the pain went away eventually. Once again, I was left with no answers. It was at the emergency room where a doctor suggested that I go to an OB/GYN and have an ultrasound.

  I had never had a normal period in my life, ever. By that I mean I barely even had one at all. I would get my period every four to six months, if that. It had always been that way. The ultrasound told me why: I had a bunch of cysts on my ovaries. Everyone gets them, but in a healthy menstrual cycle, they dissolve without causing any trouble. But I wasn’t ovulating, so the cysts were just staying on my ovaries and multiplying. When one ruptured, that was when I felt the pain.

  It turned out I had polycystic ovary syndrome. To treat it, they put me on Depo Provera birth control injections, which helps treat ovarian cysts. I was glad to figure out the problem and start treating it. When those things rupture, all the fluid stays inside and creates the risk of issues like pelvic inflammatory disease and other problems. So I was down for the Depo.

  After a year or two had gone by, I went in for my OB/GYN check-up. The doctor asked me about my P
COS and checked in on things. “Are you wanting to stay on birth control?” she asked as she did the ultrasound.

  “I want to stay on it,” I said. “I’m not trying to have kids.”

  “Okay,” she said, and didn’t say more about it.

  But after that, I did some more research into PCOS and learned that it’s one of the leading causes of infertility. Not everyone with PCOS has a hard time getting pregnant. But in seventy-five percent of infertility cases where women aren’t ovulating enough to conceive, PCOS is the cause. So the next time I talked to my OB, I asked, “Is this going to cause me any difficulty having kids down the line?”

  “Well,” she said, “Right now I wouldn’t worry about it. Not everyone has that issue, and you’re still young. Plus, you got pregnant before. Let’s just cross that bridge when we get to it.”

  Fast forward a few years, and Taylor and I were starting to bounce around our hopes and dreams for the future. I was always upfront with him about my health issues. I wouldn’t have wanted him to uproot his life and move to Chattanooga without knowing there was a chance that I might not ever be able to have another child of my own. I really wanted him to make a decision on his own behalf about whether or not he would be okay with that. If he wasn’t, I wasn’t going to hold it against him if he chose not to pursue our relationship any further.

  “Nope,” he said. Over and over, in his warm, laid-back way, he told me, “I would love to have a child on my own, and we can try. But that’s not a deal breaker for me.”