Love Always,

by Sonya Loveday

  I stuffed his shirt into my laundry bag and made my way down to the commons.

  I really didn’t want to spend a lot of time down in the laundry room, so I dumped the entire contents of my bag into one washing machine and started the load. Other than Ed’s stinky shirt, the rest of my clothes had only been worn once, and a quick wash would work.

  When the washer completed its cycle, I switched it over and started the dryer when my phone alerted me that I had a text message from Ed.

  Princess Sophia of the kingdom pain in the ass is here. What do I tell her?

  I clutched the phone in my hand as I gritted my teeth, wondering just what in the hell she was doing in my dorm room. I’d made it more than clear with her where I stood. Part of me wanted to just ignore the text, but Ed didn’t deserve my silence.

  I shot back a quick text telling him to let her know where I was.

  His text came back instantly.

  Sent queen bitch your way. Good luck, mate.

  I tossed my phone in the plastic chair beside me and squared my shoulders as I stood. The last time we’d spoken, I’d been too weak to really stand my ground. The tables were turned now, and I’d had more than enough of Sophia.

  The door pushed open as Sophia walked in, sunglasses perched on her nose with a pinched look on her face as the pungent smell of the communal laundry room met her distaste.

  “We need to talk,” she said, sliding her sunglasses off to look at me.

  It was her tone that warned me that I wouldn’t like what she had to say. Even worse was the feeling of lead that sat heavy in my stomach. She used the very same words I had on her when I’d pulled her to the side at my parents’ house and told her there would be no wedding.

  “The last time we talked, I told you that I never wanted to see you again. That hasn’t changed, so what could be so important that you’d show up here, knowing I want nothing more to do with you?” I asked, crossing my arms for good measure.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  In a room filled with noise, you could have heard a pin drop.

  I shook my head, hoping that I’d misheard her.

  “You can shake your head all you like, but it’s not going to undo what you’ve done to me. I’m pregnant with your child. You’re going to be a father,” she said, unmoving from the spot she’d stopped in when she’d entered the room.

  Everything inside of me churned. Tingling pinpricks danced along my skin as my mind tried to catch up with what she said. My mind raced to come up with some sort of response, anything to stop the cruel, horrible joke she had to be playing on me.

  “You’re lying,” I said, hoping to call her bluff.

  Her mouth pulled tight into a thin, white line as tears pooled in her eyes, overflowing to fall down her cheeks. “I’m not lying. And how dare you say that after everything I’ve been through.” She swiped the tears away with hands the visibly shook, continuing on with a trembling voice. “But why would you care? You already took care of your part, didn’t you? I’ve been dealing with this on my own while you’re here, doing what you want, when you want.”

  I’d never seen Sophia so shaken. So vulnerable.

  “You’re acting like I’ve already spurned you. Like I was supposed to know what was going on somehow. Did you ever think to pick up the phone and call me? Don’t stand there and act like I’m some kind of deadbeat father, when you’re just now telling me!”

  I clenched my fist and took a deep breath, trying to gain some sort of control over my anger and the situation.

  “How long have you known?”

  “I went to the doctor two days ago because I’d been sick, like really sick. I thought I had food poisoning, but that doesn’t last for a week. So I went in to find out what was wrong.” She held her hand out, silently asking me to wait for her to finish as she drew in a shaky breath before continuing, “I... I didn’t want to believe them at first. Even after the bloodwork results showed I was pregnant, I didn’t fully believe it. So I asked them to do a sonogram. They tried to tell me no, that I’d have one soon enough, but that wasn’t good enough. I needed to see it... see the proof myself.”

  “And where is this supposed proof?” I asked, feeling as if the walls were closing in on me.

  “You don’t believe me? You think I’d make it all up?” She flinched as if I’d used my hands on her instead of my words.

  Her breaths came in short bursts as she fumbled with the zipper of her purse and pulled a slip of paper out.

  I refused to look down at what she held in her hands. Refused to bend to another one of her tactics. “I don’t want anything from you. You can leave now. Your little game is over.”

  “Over? Oh, it’s far from over. You have a responsibility to me… to our child now. Like it or not, you’re going to be a father come April. The way I see it, you have eighteen years’ worth of responsibility, and I won’t do this…” Her voice broke. “I won’t do this alone.”

  Another round of tears rolled down her face as she turned away, giving me her back. I looked down at the floor, searching for a reason to believe her. There at my feet was a sonogram picture.

  My search was over.

  Bending down to pick it up was the last free act of my own doing, because as surely as the sun would rise the next day, I was going to be a father to the child I’d created with Sophia. An innocent child that didn’t deserve the fallout of me walking away because its mother was a conniving bitch.

  There was no other option for me. I had to let Maggie go.

  My eyes pooled with tears as I stumbled backward into my seat, clutching the first picture I’d ever hold of my child. My baby. The only bright spark in my life from that moment until I took my last dying breath.

  I cried.

  Sophia left without a word, leaving me broken in two, having to pick up the remains of my life by myself. She didn’t need any more threats to keep me in check. There would be no more she could do to me anyway. I would do the right thing and stand by my actions, be the best father I could be, and suffer in misery when no one was watching.

  There wasn’t anything I could say to her at that point anyway. She knew I’d come for her when I had mourned the loss of a life I hadn’t even started yet. She knew I’d marry her and support our child. Her walking away without another word was for the best.

  I SAT IN TOTAL SILENCE waiting for my laundry to dry. When the buzzer went off, I shoved everything back in the bag, made my way back to my room, and found Ed pacing the floor.

  “I canceled my date,” he blurted, coming to a stop beside me.

  A sort of hollowness had enveloped me as I just stared at him, trying to make sense of what he said.

  “I followed her down to the laundry room… I overheard the whole thing, mate. I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but I wanted to make sure you’d be okay before I left. I never thought… who could’ve bloody seen that coming?” He was almost shouting.

  I watched his face, fascinated by the vein that pulsed at the top of his forehead.

  Ed snapped his fingers in front of my face. “Snap out of it, man!”

  I jerked away, tossing the laundry bag to the floor, and fell face-first onto my bed.

  “She’s bloody lying to you, mate! Ger off yer damn bed and do something about it!” Ed shouted at me.

  It took me a minute, but I was finally able to pull the hand clutching the sonogram picture out from under me and hold it out to him.

  “Bloody fucking hell,” he whispered.

  I couldn’t have agreed with him more.

  IT TOOK ME TWO DAYS after Sophia showed up and spun my world off its axis to sit down and do what I knew needed to be done. I stopped going to classes and had buried myself under my blankets, only coming out when I had to use the bathroom, or when Ed threatened to force feed me.

  Two days should have been enough time to put my thoughts together on how to tell Maggie goodbye. Each time I crawled out of bed and sat down with a fresh sheet of paper, the urge to vomit over
took me, leaving me in a cold sweat. But there was no way around it. I had to tell her. I had to move on and let her go, so I sat down and wrote the hardest, most heartbreaking letter of my life.

  August 24, 2015

  Maggie,

  I don’t even know how to start this letter. I’ve tried so many times, but each time I can’t bring myself to even put the pen to paper.

  I’ve done something, something I cannot take back, and I’m going to hurt you. I’m sorry. Oh, God, I’m so sorry.

  I went to my parents’ house a few weeks back for the annual gala my father hosts every year, and I made it a point to tell Sophia to her face that I’m not marrying her. I should have left right after that. But I didn’t.

  I don’t know how it happened—I’m still questioning it myself—but I awoke to find Sophia in my bed the morning after the gala. I have no memories of it, but she said we’d slept together. I didn’t believe her. I even kicked her out of my room because the thought of doing something like that… with her… knowing how much I love you… it just didn’t make any sense to me at all.

  I know I should have told you about this after it happened, but I felt so guilty…so ashamed. I didn’t want to hurt you—didn’t want what we had to be gone before we had a chance to even start it.

  It’s all lost now. Every moment that could have been is forever gone, taking you and my heart with it.

  Maggie, I’m going to be a father. Sophia came five days ago to tell me, with the sonogram picture as proof, what the night I made the biggest mistake of my life produced.

  There’s nothing I can say to right the wrong I’ve done to you. There’s no amount of apologies I can make that would undo what’s been done, so I won’t even try.

  I will be the father my child needs me to be and marry Sophia to keep the stigma of what the vultures would say of my child if I were to turn my back on both of them.

  Please know this is never what I wanted. I will love you for the rest of my life and think of you for the rest of yours.

  Be free of me, Maggie, and set fire to the world. Live your dreams. I hope that one day you find someone who deserves your love.

  Always yours,

  Phillip

  “COME HERE, MAGGIE GIRL. QUICK!”

  I dropped my bucket full of shells and ran to my mother, whose soft smile beamed from ear to ear. We were in Florida, visiting a friend of my mother’s for summer break.

  She put her finger up to her lips, and then held her hands out, telling me to slow down as my father opened his arms to me.

  Wrapping my arms around his waist, I followed to where my mother was pointing—to tiny movements in the sand.

  “It’s baby sea turtles getting ready to make the hardest journey of their lives,” my mother whispered, kneeling down in the sand. The moonlight danced over her quiet features, washing her sun-kissed skin in a bath of pale light.

  I always loved looking at my mother. At her full smile and the way her large, round eyes always crinkled at the sides like paper every time she laughed.

  “Look!” she said, pulling me onto her lap.

  Baby turtles poked through the sand, one by one, all heading toward the moonlight that hugged the shore.

  I squealed with giddiness as they made their run for it, making wishes for each and every one of them.

  But then the predators came out to play. Crabs and birds started moving in, picking each one off with an ease I didn’t understand.

  “Mommy!” I cried. “We have to help them.”

  She pulled me back against her and leaned down against my ear. “This is a part of life, Maggie girl.”

  “But it isn’t fair, Mommy. They don’t even have a chance.”

  She spun me around to face her, using her thumb to brush away my tears. “Look at it like this, sweet girl. Every living thing on this earth has a purpose. Has a dream to reach for. Whether it’s making it to the ocean like these turtles, or becoming a fisherman like your dad, dreams are what keep us moving forward. They’re what give us hope.

  “But some dreams never make it. Some dreams are swallowed up before they ever even have a chance. And that’s okay, Maggie girl, because new dreams can be formed.”

  She spun me around just in time to see two of the baby turtles being picked up by the tide and swept back into the ocean where they could live to see another day, and I knew then that I would fight like the turtles. Like them, I wouldn’t let any obstacles keep me from looking ahead.

  But how could a ten-year-old girl with nothing but dreams ahead of her have known that some obstacles… especially those of the heart… couldn’t be overcome, no matter how strong you were?

  The letter from Phillip fell from my hand as the memory flitted across my mind. As my mother’s words hugged me close, reminding me that even though some dreams died before they ever had a chance, there was still hope for more.

  I had to believe that.

  Had to, because if I didn’t, then I swear the pain bleeding from my heart would surely drown me.

  But even I knew it already was. No words could prevent that.

  Under the dim light of the moon, I ran. Ran from his words. From his betrayal. Trying to outrun the hurricane of his revelation that would surely swallow me whole. But how could you run from your own mind? From your own heart?

  I stopped at the edge of the crashing waves coming into shore, my chest rising and falling in a chaotic dance. I couldn’t catch my breath. Couldn’t steady the pounding of my broken heart, which tried to break free from me.

  I didn’t like that feeling. Feeling like I wanted to claw at my own skin just to be rid of the pain. Feeling like I wanted to scream and cry, and… hurt. Hurt him. Hurt her.

  Hurt them for hurting me.

  Cold, crisp air blew in off the water, climbing up the sandy beach from the storm moving inland, and I inhaled a briny lung full, hoping it would calm me, but all it did was fuel the angry fires stirring within me.

  Blow after blow, his words had torn through me like a tornado I never saw coming. Had set on repeat inside my brain like a broken record I couldn’t find the off switch to.

  He’d slept with Sophia.

  Fucking slept with her, and then chose not to tell me because he couldn’t remember. Because of his guilt!

  And now he’s going to be a father.

  And he’s… he’s letting me go.

  He loves me, but he’s letting me go.

  Because he slept with Sophia.

  My feet guided me to the water as his written words fractured into tiny pieces inside my mind by the axe I took to them. My mouth opened as I screamed out every one of them. The searing, raw pain rolled over the cool waters, drowned out by the crashing waves as I purged it the only way I knew how.

  “How could you do this to me?” I shouted. “I waited for you! I loved you! I still do, but you… you gave it all to her! Everything I wanted… that I had been waiting for… you gave it to someone who doesn’t deserve you!”

  It scared me how much my voice didn’t sound like my own. It was crippled… damaged. Torn.

  “How could you, Phillip?” I cried out. Cried deep in my soul. “How could you lock yourself up like that?”

  I wanted to yell at him. Scream at him. Slap him over and over as I asked him why? Why did he let this happen?

  Why did he… did he…?

  Bile clawed up the back of my throat as I thought about his hands on Sophia.

  Discovering her.

  His lips pressed against hers.

  His loving words rolling over her skin.

  Words that were meant for me.

  Words I had been waiting to hear for far too long.

  I dropped to my knees, reveling in the broken bits of shell and sand digging into my flesh as the cool water soaked through the bottom of my sundress. I used that pain to hold me present. To steady me in my own personal storm.

  Thinking of them… of his child in her stomach. Of her smiling at him as he dumped every piece of my heart I
had sent to him into the garbage… I felt like I was standing on a stage being presented as the world’s biggest fool. My hands itched with the need to hurt them both.

  I hated him.

  I loved him.

  Pain crashed down on me in waves my body wouldn’t be able to sustain, dragging me deep down into the undertow.

  This is what going crazy feels like.

  And worse was the permanent scar torn clean across my heart.

  I knew Phillip wasn’t mine. Knew we had never made anything official between us, but deep in the core of my soul, I had always felt we would end up together. That by letting each other go, we would find our way back to one another, whole and ready… just like my parents had.

  Because I had never met anyone like Phillip. Never tasted love the way I had with him. Never felt a feeling so marrow deep.

  He was more than kisses to me. More than stolen moments in the dark.

  He was secret words. He was a divine rush.

  He was forever.

  But I guessed even forever had an expiration date.

  I got to my feet, ran into the surf, and then jumped head-first into the water without thought, wanting to clean off all the residual pain left behind from Phillip. But no matter how long I swam for, or how far out I went, the feelings didn’t go away. They hovered over me like a cloud. Like a ghost whose fist was clenched tightly around my throat.

  I came up through an angry wave just as another crashed down on me, pulling me under. For a brief moment, I didn’t fight it. I let it push me further down until my back slammed against the ocean floor and what little breath I had rushed up toward the surface like tiny stars.

  I was bewitched by those bubbles. Watching them disappear… vanish… just like those baby turtles had. Just like my dream of seeing Phillip at the end of the dock with a smile on his face and a kiss on his lips.