by Lisa Shelby
I’ve held so much hostility towards her these past years, but once I saw her again it all came back. That instant connection. It’s like I was an addict who had been clean and sober, and the moment I saw her I fell right off the wagon and started imbibing again. I feel a calmness overtake me just knowing I’ll be in the same room with her, but at the same time I’m nervous as hell. What is she going to tell me? Will it be enough to make me understand how she could just walk away from us?
I start to make my way towards her and Devon pats me on the back and still has that strange look on his face. What. The. Hell? I feel like everybody knows what’s going on but me.
“Hey there, Georgia, glad you could make it.”
“Me too. Did I miss anything exciting?”
“Nope, no drunk cop stories to tell yet. I see you got a beer are you hungry? Can I get ya something?”
“I’m good right now. I’ll get something in a bit.”
Tell me now!
I hate this polite conversation and beating around the bush bullshit. Right when I’m about to lean forward and ask her if she wants to go talk we’re suddenly surrounded by people. It appears Emily was wrong and the drunk cop stories have begun. Eventually we all find deck chairs to sit in and the beers start flowing. I notice Emily still doesn’t seem to drink. She’s been sipping on a Diet Coke all night. I notice her sneak away into the house a couple of times. She must be keeping her own personal stash of Diet Coke in the house. Lord knows you have to hide things with this crew because anything out in the open is fair game.
After a while Emily seems to be in a deep conversation with MacKenzie Theissen and her girlfriend Liz, so I take this time to sneak away to the bathroom.
As I leave the bathroom I hear something coming out of the room just across the hall and notice there’s a small light on and the door is cracked. On instinct I take the two steps across the hall and peek my head into the door.
In the bed talking to her stuffed animals is the cutest little girl I have ever seen. She has big brown eyes and curly blond hair. She sees me and gasps and closes her eyes to pretend she’s asleep.
“It’s okay, I’m a friend of the person who owns this house. I won’t tell anybody your awake if you don’t want me to?”
The sweetest little voice I have ever heard whispers.
“You’re friends with Uncle Mickey and Frank?”
Did she just say Uncle? What the . . . ?
“Yep, I sure am. Mick’s your uncle?” I ask as calmly as I can without hyperventilating.
“Yep,” she whispers.
Shit . . .
“Who’s your mommy?”
“My mommy is Emily. Do you know her too?”
My heart starts to beat out of my chest as I try to calculate how old she is.
“I do know your mommy, she’s an old friend of mine.”
“Cool.”
“What’s your name sweetheart?”
Still whispering she says, “My name is Ireland, what’s yours?”
Did she say, Ireland? This cannot be happening. I just keep hearing Emily telling me that she loved all things Irish back in California.
“It’s nice to meet you, Ireland. My name is Jonathan.”
“Hi, Jonafon.”
I think she might be the cutest thing I have ever seen.
Trembling I take a couple of steps into her room but not far enough to frighten her.
“Ireland, how old you?”
“I’m four with a half.”
My heart has jumped out of my body, I just know it has. I was never great at math but even I can do this math. Just as I feel I might have a God damned heart attack right here and now I feel a hand on my shoulder. I startle and turn around to see Cami holding what I think is a baby monitor in her hand just as Ireland says, “Sorry, Aunt Cami. I can’t sleep. This is Jonafon, he’s a friend of momma’s and Uncle Mickey’s.”
Still with her hand on my shoulder Cami says, “He’s a friend of mine too, Ireland, and I’m glad you two could meet, but you really need to go to sleep. I was supposed to be making sure you were sleeping tonight and I’m gonna get in trouble if you don’t get to dreaming, little one.”
“Okay, I’ll try better, Aunt Cami.”
Cami walks over to the bed and tucks her covers in around her and gives her a kiss on the forehead. On her way back to the door she turns me around to leave with her.
“Bye, Jonafon. See you later,” the cutest voice on the planet whispers.
“What the hell is going on, Cami? She’s four and a half?”
I can barely breathe.
“Let Emily explain, Jonathan. Just listen to her. You may not like everything you hear and you may not understand it all but she’s worth it. But I think you already know that though.”
I see her look over my shoulder and give a nod of her head.
“I’m gonna let you two talk. I’ll stay in here and listen for Ireland and you guys go out front where you can talk in private.”
I still haven’t turned to look at Emily, but I feel her as she gets closer and then walks past me and to the front door. She opens the door, walks out and leaves the door open behind her.
Cami gives me a push and says, “Go. She’s worth it. They both are, Jonathan.”
And with that Cami leaves me standing alone in the living room. I stand there for a beat because I’m just not sure I’m ready to hear what Emily has to tell me. I finally nut up and make myself go outside.
When I get to the front porch I see Emily sitting out in the middle of the big grassy front yard. She’s just sitting there cross-legged, staring into the star filled sky and playing with the dragonfly on her necklace like she always does when she gets nervous.
I walk out to join her but I just can’t sit right now. I have too many questions and too many emotions raging through me and I have to keep moving so that I don’t explode.
“I see you met Ireland?”
“She’s four, Emily.”
“She is.”
“Fuck, Emily! Is she mine?”
Emily jumps up in an instant and is on her feet and standing right in front of me. Well, she’s trying to but I won’t stop pacing so she finally grabs me by the arms and stops me. I feel the connection as always but push it away. I’m too pissed at the moment to enjoy the feeling.
“Jonathan, no. She’s not yours. I am so sorry that you thought that. You must be so freaked out right now. She’s not yours but every day I wish she was.”
I bend over and put my hands on my knees and hang my head as I try to fill my lungs with air again. Oh, thank fuck! If she had kept my own child away from me, I could never forgive her.
“I would never do that! I may have messed up plenty with us, Jonathan but I would never do that!” she practically screeches.
Shit! I said that out loud. I need to pull myself together.
“I am so confused, Em. Am I that bad at math?”
“No, you aren’t. Let me explain, can we sit?”
I don’t speak but I do sit my ass on the ground and she sits directly across from me. We’re sitting in the dark, in the middle of Mick’s front yard, but I can still see her face from the street lights. She’s scared to death and I give her the minute she needs to gather herself enough to tell her story. I think I need the minute just as much as she does if I am telling the truth.
And then she begins . . .
“The week before I met you I had found out that I was pregnant. I hadn’t even realized that I had missed a period yet but I had to go in for my drug test for the new job I was starting and when they called to say it was all good to go they congratulated me on my pregnancy. I was shocked. I couldn’t believe it was true so that night Cami and I went and bought two packages of pregnancy tests. There are two in each box and Jonathan, I took all four tests because I had worked too hard to get where I was and I only had one year of school left. Then I was going to get my masters,” she says as she hugs her knees to her chest.
“Jonat
han, every one of those tests came back positive. I wanted to die. How could I have been so stupid? It wasn’t like I slept around, in fact it was quite the opposite. I was so busy studying I didn’t really have time for guys but there was one guy that I did see from time to time. Harrison Flowers, you may have heard of him? He was a professional surfer and gone a lot. He would call when he was in town and we would hang out.”
“I get it. I don’t need details, Em. Keep going . . .” I say just in case she was going to go into any broken condom stories that I really don’t want to picture.
“Sorry, I just don’t want to leave anything out. I need it all out there. So, I found out on a Thursday and he called to hang out on Friday. When I met up with him I told him that I was five weeks pregnant and he said there was no way it was his because he had been on the road. It had only been two weeks since I had seen him last and about three weeks before that. Well, that’s five weeks.
He lost it on me, Jonathan. We were at a party but had gone to a room to talk and he started calling me a whore and a slut and said that I was probably screwing every guy on campus when I wasn’t with him, and there was no way it was his. Then he stormed out of the room and just left me there dazed and confused. I was so hurt and embarrassed. I was scared to death and I had no idea what I was going to do.
Cami and I left the party and I figured I would give him a day to cool off and try to talk to him again. I called and texted but he didn’t reply the next day. I knew he would be leaving again in a few days, and we knew they were always throwing parties when they were home, so we showed up without an invitation and you know what he did? He pretended he didn’t know me. Like I was some stranger. Even his friends, who knew we hung out, were confused and didn’t know why he was being such an idiot. But I knew why. It was okay to ruin my life but his was too important for an unplanned pregnancy or at least that’s how I looked at it then.”
“What an asshole,” is all I can get out at the moment. The thought that some dickhead could treat somebody like Emily like that infuriates me. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t know when we were in California because I may have paid him a little visit.
“That’s a nice way to describe him. He made it pretty clear that he didn’t want anything to do with me or Ireland. I tried again when she was born and he came to the hospital and saw her. But he wouldn’t hold her and said he didn’t want his name on the birth certificate.”
She releases her legs from her chest, crosses them in front of her again and makes sure my eyes are on hers when she says, “Jonathan, I swear to you I wasn’t sleeping around. There wasn’t anybody but Harrison. I knew he wasn’t the one and he was only around from time to time, so it was perfect for my busy schedule of school and work. I didn’t love him. Hell, I don’t even know if I liked him. I don’t know how it happened, we always used protection but it happened.
I met you exactly one week later. At that point I didn’t know if I was going to keep the baby or not. I was so confused and scared and had so many decisions to make that I didn’t know which way was up. That’s why I told you I didn’t date or do relationships. Between Harrison and my dad, I hadn’t had the best of luck and really couldn’t take any more rejection. I was some chick you met on vacation, and you were going away for nine months. Well, you would have come home and I could have very well had a baby. That wasn’t fair to you, Jonathon. What was I supposed to say . . . I know we just met, and we’ve known each other a week, but want to be a dad to some other guy’s baby? I would say that would be a little more than you bargained for.”
“You should have given me that choice, Emily,” I say coldly.
“I didn’t know what choice I would have been giving you. Like I said, I didn’t know what I was going to do. If I did tell you, and then didn’t keep the baby, I would have felt like a slut for sleeping with you while pregnant with another man’s child. And if I did keep the baby, I didn’t want you to feel obligated because you had told me you loved me and I would have always wondered if you were only with me out of pity.”
“I was in love with you for Christ’s sake! I deserved to know!” I see her jump a bit and realize I just yelled that at her.
She whispers so low that I almost can’t hear her when she says, “I was so ashamed. I went from being the good girl who really never slept around to being knocked up at twenty-one with no baby daddy to speak of. I didn’t want to see the look of disappointment or disgust on your face, or to get rejected yet again.”
I don’t know what to say because I do understand where she’s coming from, but I still wish I had known. I just stay quiet.
“The thing is Jonathan, it’s because of you that I have her. If I hadn’t gotten to spend a week surrounded by love and joy—to see that good men really did exist out there in the universe—I don’t know if I would have made the same decision. What I felt for you was so strong and that week with you made me feel whole. I was in such a dark place, and without even knowing it you pulled me out bit by bit. It started before I even saw you. It was your laugh. I heard you laugh and it shook me out of the haze I had been wallowing in. You woke me up, gave me hope and for a short time, love. You gave me strength and confidence. You will never know how that one week of my life changed me forever. I haven’t felt that sense of wholeness again. Not since I walked away from you that day. Don’t get me wrong. Ireland is amazing, and I could not love her more than I do or be more proud to be her mom, but the love I get from her is different than what you gave to me that week.
So, what I have really wanted to say to you since December 1, 2010, is thank you. There wouldn’t be Ireland without you. I thanked you silently the day she was born and I held her in my arms for the first time. I’m so glad that I finally get to thank you again in person.”
I’ve been so entranced, hanging on her every word that I’m just now noticing that she has tears streaming down her face. I lean forward and wipe her tears away with my thumbs, give her a kiss on the forehead, stand up and wipe the grass from my shorts. My mind is going a million miles an hour right now, but what I keep coming back to is that she didn’t trust me enough or give me the option to stay or go. I can’t talk about this anymore. I need a chance to think.
“Emily, I really appreciate you telling me everything and I really am sorry you had to go through all of this on your own, but I just don’t know what to think. You were pregnant and didn’t tell me. I was making love to you every night and you didn’t tell me. I told you I loved you and you didn’t tell me. We sat and had coffee for two hours and ‘caught up’ and you didn’t mention the biggest thing in your life? This has been a lot of information and I really just can’t talk about it anymore. I need to get out of here and just think. I can’t fucking deal with this shit right now.”
I run my hands through my hair so hard I’m sure I just ripped a chunk out, but my mind is so fried it wouldn’t even register if I did. She’s standing now, still crying, and I just stare at her for a beat then turn and head for my truck.
Sugar
Emily
I didn’t sleep at all last night. So many things were going through my head after talking with Jonathan. Should I have told him way back when? If I had told him would we even have happened? Would he still have wanted me to wait for him? Are those decisions I should have let him make? The hardest part . . . seeing his face when he thought for those few minutes that Ireland might be his. That is what is killing me. What’s worse is that he thought I had kept her from him. His visceral reaction to thinking he could have been a father has me wondering if he would have wanted that role, or if the thought was something he couldn’t even consider.
I understand he needs time to think, I really do, but I have so many questions for him now. To start with does he think I am a slut because I was with him just weeks after Harrison? Does he think I didn’t mean it when I told him that I loved him back then? And of course I am back to thinking he hates me again. I just need to know where we stand and where we go from here.
Ireland and I are walking home from the park with Frank and I see that the driveway has filled up while we were gone. Mickey is hosting Sunday football at his place today. Seattle is playing the Rams and since this is Portland I have a feeling there will be a lot of Seahawk fans here today. Since Portland doesn’t have a team most people root for the Hawks, but after all my years in California I have to say I’m pulling for the Rams today. I have no idea who all is here but I hope they can keep the foul language to a minimum with Ireland around. I feel so bad that I am cramping my brother’s style and I hope he doesn’t grow to regret having us stay with him.
We go in through the garage so that I can throw away Franks bag-o-poop and come in from the laundry room and through the kitchen. I get stopped here by Shelley, Marnie and also Trish, who is Wesley’s fiancé. In the short time I’ve been back all of the ladies, and their husbands, have been incredibly welcoming. There’s something to be said for the family that is created within a police department. It’s a life that those not living it will ever understand. I may not be an officer, and I may not be married to one but I grew up with a dad in that line of work and now my brother is doing the same thing so, I get it. They have all offered to babysit, given me advice on day cares, the best stores in the area, where to eat and where not to eat . . . you name it and these ladies can fill you in. The best part is, so far, they don’t seem too gossipy. But I am the newbie so things could change.