by Louise Bay
“So, you’re going to fight for her, right?” Beth asked.
Despite, or perhaps because of, what was going on with me, it was so good to see Beth. She looked great. Her eyes were bright and she seemed more relaxed at the core of her somehow. I smiled, but shook my head. “What do you think I’ve been doing? I’ve been fighting for her every day since I met her. I can’t make her feel about me the way I do about her. It’s not mandatory. And she’s right. I can’t expect her to stand by me while another woman has my baby. Like she said, it’s not fair to her. I was a fool to think we were going to be okay.”
Beth pursed her lips. “I don’t believe this is about her lack of feeling. If anything, it’s the opposite. She sounds like she doesn’t want you to be torn between her and Millie. She’s sacrificing herself for you. Of course, if she knew Millie, Haven would realize what a lunatic Millie is and that you were a dick for ever putting your dick anywhere near her. Scratch that. If she knew Millie, Haven would think your judgment was so off, she’d walk anyway.” She elbowed me, trying to elicit a smile.
“You’re not helping. You know that, right?”
“I am too. I’m making you feel bad about yourself and that’s important because—and I’d know—you need to hit rock bottom before you can start recovery.”
I rolled my eyes and she laughed. It was good to have her back. Haven had asked whether Beth was back today. Had she been waiting for Beth to return to end things? Had she been that careful with my feelings? I didn’t know if it would be better or worse if she had. My stomach churned with the loss of her.
“So do you have a plan?” Beth asked.
“A plan?”
“Yeah, to win her back. You always have a plan. That’s what you do. You plan, you fix, you make everything better.”
I let myself consider her analysis of me. Was that who I was? I suppose it was. But this situation wasn’t fixable. Maybe Haven had been right. It wasn’t our time.
“Of course, it will help when you get that paternity test back to prove that baby isn’t yours,” Beth continued. “But what else are you going to do?”
“I’ve told you. I can’t make her do anything, and what makes you so sure that Millie is lying? She’s vacuous and a bit cold, but she’s not a monster. And she’s not stupid. She’s not going to tell me it’s mine if she’s going to get found out eventually. Why would she bother?”
“I’m not saying I understand her, I just think she’s got a game plan. But time will tell and then I’ll take great delight in saying that I told you so.”
Beth getting to gloat would be worth it, but the instant I had the thought I felt guilty. If the kid was mine, I didn’t want to be wishing it away.
“I can’t think about that. It seems wrong that I’d be hoping that the baby is another man’s. And I don’t think she’d lie. I really don’t. I’m going to concentrate on Elemental Energy. It needs a lot of time and attention from me. We’re also going to move.”
“We are?” Beth asked.
“We are. There’s no room for three of us in this apartment.” I put my hand out to silence Beth from saying anything else about paternity. “And I need to move on. This place is a dump, you’re right.”
“Oh my God, breakthrough! You see? Every cloud has a silver lining. You might have broken up with the love of your life, and you might never be happy again, but I’ll be cooking in a nicer kitchen.” She grinned and I threw a cushion at her.
“I saw some places this weekend with Haven.” I stood up and headed to my desk in the corner of the living room. “These. I think two were ones you’d picked out.”
I handed her brochures from the apartments that we had visited. She grabbed my hand and pulled me down onto the sofa.
“Have you considered sharing your feelings with her about everything you’ve got going on? Rather than just trying to keep everyone happy, you could explain to her the pressure. If you don’t let her see the strain, how can she trust you when you show her the good stuff, when you tell her how important she is to you? You have to reveal all of you, and trust her to love you anyway.”
I closed my eyes and let what Beth was saying sink in. “Stop with the making sense thing, just for a little bit.” I exhaled. I was exhausted.
“Okay, but if you love her, Jake, you can’t just let her go. I’ve never seen you give up on something you really wanted. Don’t let me think that giving up is an option.”
I pulled her into a hug. I didn’t know what to say. Haven wanted me to let her go, and I had to give her anything she wanted.
“But I’m great at house hunting,” Millie said, trying to convince me to take her to a second viewing that Beth had arranged that afternoon for one of the apartments that I’d seen a few weeks before. With Beth’s exams finished, she’d thrown herself into finding us a new place to live now that I’d finally agreed it was time to move.
“I’m going with Beth,” I replied. When I’d told Millie that Haven and I had broken up she hadn’t tried very hard to hide her glee. She dressed it up in concern, but I could tell she was delighted. I suppose it was better for her. Even though we weren’t together, Millie was increasingly demanding, asking me to pick up shopping and medication for her, and now that Haven wasn’t in the picture, there seemed to be less of a reason to resist.
“But I could see what would work for the baby. If there are danger zones and things.”
I sighed, wondering which was the lesser of two evils: Millie’s whining or Beth’s temper if I dared to bring Millie along.
Beth won. “No, Millie. Stop.” The thought of seeing her in that last apartment that Haven and I had seen together was just wrong. Haven owned that space.
“Okay, I’m sorry.”
I must have really snapped at her if she was apologizing. My stomach churned with guilt.
“We’re friends, right, Jake?”
“Of course, I didn’t mean to snap at you—” I pushed my hands through my hair.
“So friends can have dinner. Let me take you out, as a friend, and maybe I can get a smile out of you,” Millie continued.
I sighed. I didn’t have the energy to say no. “Okay. We can go around the corner for a quick, early supper.”
Millie’s face lit up and she smiled widely at me.
“I need to go,” I said. “I’ll see you here at seven. Be ready.”
“I like it,” Beth said.
I liked the apartment, too. The first time I’d seen it had been with Haven. I could still see her face as she walked from room to room, open-mouthed. She looked good in this place. It was comforting that she’d seen it and liked it. If I ended up living here, I would feel as if a part of her was always with me.
“By the grin on your face, it seems like you like it, too,” Beth said, snapping me out of my thoughts of Haven.
“It’s big,” I said.
“It is. The views are amazing . . .”
“And you don’t think I’d be better off in a house, a bit further out, rather than an apartment?”
“No. I think you’ve got great outside space here. A house takes maintenance, and if you want that, you can buy a proper country place. If you’re in the city, live with all the conveniences.” Beth was right, as usual. And I needed to be close to Millie and the baby.
“And you like your room?” I asked.
Beth’s chest rose as she took in a deep breath. “I’ve been thinking,”
“Careful, you might strain something.”
She gave me a hard stare. “I’ve been thinking,” she repeated, “that I might get my own place.”
My stomach dropped away from me. It was the last thing I was expecting her to say. We’d lived together for years.
“You want to move out?”
“I think it’s time. I dealt with so much stuff when I went back to Chicago. I’m so much stronger. I think I need to try to be independent. A bit.”
“You’ll still be nearby?”
She nodded, and her eyes danced as if it
were Christmas, and we were kids. She was excited and it was so good to see. “I thought maybe I could rent somewhere for a while, close by, and then see.”
“I hate to interrupt,” my realtor said. “I couldn’t help but overhear. I don’t know what your budget is, but I have a lovely one-bedroom place in this building. I could show you that now, if you’d like to see it?”
Beth looked at me and smiled. I grinned back. This could be the perfect solution.
“It’s twelve hundred square feet, so considerably smaller than the penthouse that we’ve just seen, but that’s reflected in the price,” Debbie said as we walked into the open plan living and dining area.
“It’s a lot of money,” Beth whispered.
“But you have enough, and if you need more then you can have that, too.”
“Of course I don’t need more. You’ve been more than generous. I’ve never felt that the money’s really mine, Jake. It’s yours.”
When I’d sold Energy Trade, I’d given Beth a chunk of money that she wouldn’t touch other than to pay her college tuition. My dad had point-blank refused to take anything, so the fact that the money sat in an account with Beth’s name on it had felt like a victory at the time. I wanted her to use it.
“Can we not do this again? I want you to have that money. I have plenty. And buying this place would be a smart investment for you. The money’s not doing much sitting in the bank. Spend it, or invest it.”
“You think?” She looked up at me expectantly.
“I really do.”
“Does it suit me? Do I seem like I belong here?” she asked.
“I think that you belong anywhere you want to. We both need to move on and move up. An apartment is just the people that live in it.” I wasn’t sure if moving in here was moving on, it was more like a way of hanging on to something that had never belonged to me—my future with Haven.
“It wouldn’t bother you having your little sister living in the same building?” Beth asked.
“I think it would be perfect. I’ll have a built-in babysitter.”
She punched me on the arm. “You won’t need one. When are you going to realize that I’m always right? But it would be good, wouldn’t it?” She grinned.
I was sold. The realtor was about to make a killing from the pair of us.
Haven
“It’s Saturday night. We have to go out,” Ash whined.
“I’m not stopping you,” I replied.
“You totally are. You’re my only friend. I can’t go out on my own.”
I rolled my eyes. Ash only wanted to get me out talking to other men to take my mind off Jake. It had been nearly two weeks since I’d last seen him. All the books I was reading and songs I was listening to were telling me how it would get better in time, but each day seemed more painful than the last. I knew I’d made the right decision. He was free to spend as much time with Millie as he really, truly, in his heart wanted to. He didn’t have to think about how jealous it was going to make his girlfriend. He could fly to Chicago and see his father, he could concentrate on his new business. But that didn’t mean it didn’t feel like a red-hot poker in my stomach all day, every day. Scared of completely falling apart, I did my best to keep my longing for Jake hidden, zipped up inside me. If no one else saw the effect on me without him, then maybe the feelings within me would just disappear.
“Jesus, your fridge is barren apart from ketchup. When was the last time you ate?” Ash called from the kitchen. I didn’t respond. Food hadn’t exactly been the top of my priority list. “Not even any ice cream. That’s it, there’s no way we can stay in.” I heard the freezer door slam shut and Ash pad back into the living room. “You keep telling me how you made the right decision about Jake, but I don’t think even you believe it.” She started gathering up empty glasses and mugs from where they were scattered about, carrying them back into the kitchen.
“I do. I didn’t say it wasn’t going to hurt, though.”
“Well, going out, even if it’s just for a drink, will help distract you. You might start to function like a normal person again.”
The only person more stubborn than me was Ash. She wasn’t going to take no for an answer. And she was right. I had to accept Jake was gone, and at least act as if I had started to move on. “Okay, an hour. And as long as you don’t want me to do anything to my hair. I’m either putting it up or leaving it like this,” I bargained. I knew my hair could do with a wash, but even the simplest of things seemed to take all my energy. My laundry was piling up and I hadn’t changed my bed linens since Jake left. At first it had been because I could still smell him on my pillow, but now the thought of the sheer effort that was required to put clean sheets on the bed filled me with horror.
“Two hours and can you put some dry shampoo through it?”
“Not a minute past two hours? And fuck off with your dry shampoo.”
“Do a shot of tequila with me before we go out, I will no longer care about your hair. Deal?”
“Deal.”
Jake
I arrived at exactly seven o’clock. I expected Millie to be still getting ready, but she answered the door with her coat on.
“You ready?” I asked.
“Don’t I look ready?” she asked, tilting her shoulder up slightly, and glancing at me from under her lashes.
“You look lovely.” She did. She always looked beautiful. It was just difficult to see it through the rest of her crap.
“Thank you. You look very handsome, too. But you always do, Harry.”
I smiled and led her out of her apartment. “I brought the car, but we can walk to Italian, I think,” I said.
“Actually, I booked us something in Soho.”
“Millie . . .”
“What? I’m treating you, remember? I want to take you somewhere nice.” She grinned at me.
“Isn’t this nice?” Millie asked, scanning the restaurant before her eyes rested on me.
“Sure,” I replied. A happy Millie was much easier to handle than a miserable one.
“They do a thing with black cod here which is meant to be amazing. It was in Tatler last month.”
“Tatler?” I asked. I thought Rallegra was a vacuous magazine but Tatler was elitist and vacuous.
“They have the best recommendations. This place is super-hot right now. I can’t believe I managed to get a table.”
I couldn’t tell if Millie was simply ignoring me or just didn’t notice my reaction to her reading material.
“I like that Italian by you.”
“Harry, don’t be a spoil sport. Anyway, I can’t eat pasta. I don’t do carbs.”
“Jesus. You’re not dieting when you’re pregnant! You have to think of the baby, for crying out loud.” A crash exploded in my head. This situation was ridiculous. She was so selfish and trying to be nice to her in the hopes that she would do the right thing by me and my child was utterly futile.
I wanted to leave. The fact that I was having dinner with Millie and not Haven was unacceptable. Even if I couldn’t have Haven, there was no way I was going to go back to Millie or someone like her. If necessary, I’d take Millie to court to get proper access to our child. I wasn’t going to mollycoddle her anymore.
“I’m not dieting. I’m just being careful,” she said softly. At least she had the good grace to blush.
“You need to be healthy. Are you even taking folic acid?”
“Um, yes, I’m doing everything the doctor recommended. But sometimes it’s hard, especially when I’m on my own.” She sounded sad again. Was she trying to make me feel bad for wanting her to take fucking vitamins? There was no need for us to spend time together. I’d been an idiot for indulging her. I looked down at my plate. I couldn’t wait to leave here and get home, away from Millie.
“Let’s change the subject. Did you find a new flat you like?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Really? So Beth is moving out? That’s amazing. Can I come and see it?”
&
nbsp; “Maybe,” I replied. There was no way she was going to see my place. I wanted to keep it separate from her. Things needed to switch to a different setting between us.
“Do you need a hand picking furniture? You need to make sure you go classic, rather than modern bachelor. I saw a great mirror in Elle Interiors this month, it would look fabulous—”
“Stop.” If I could render her mute until I dropped her off, that would be ideal. I could be working at the moment, rather than wasting time with someone who didn’t deserve my attention.
The silence between us only lasted a few minutes.
“Did you show your parents the video of the ultrasound?” Millie asked, bringing the conversation back to the baby.
I shook my head.
“Doesn’t your mother want to see?”
Had I told her my mother had died? I couldn’t remember. I hadn’t told my dad about the pregnancy. It wasn’t that I thought Millie was lying, but there was something stopping me from telling people. The only people who knew were Beth and Haven. It felt as if I was living in some kind of limbo and when things started to become more concrete, with Elemental Energy, with the new flat, with my dad and the baby, then I’d be able to put words around my future.
I shrugged. “How’s your sister?” I asked, trying to change the subject. If Millie was talking about herself then she couldn’t be asking me questions. I just needed to get to the end of this meal and then renegotiate our relationship. It wasn’t working for me. I was done indulging her. Done with her trying to engineer something more between us, and done with spending any more time with her than was absolutely necessary.
“She’s good. She’s been with Matthew a few months now. I think she’s hoping for a ring at any moment. When they get engaged, they’ll move in together. I’ll be on my own apart from you and the baby.”