Wait for Me

by Shannon Alexander

  He’s having a baby with someone else, and we have a little boy. How is that okay?

  I drop Stacy off at her and Eric’s apartment. She kisses me on the cheek when she gets out. I promise her that Matt will drop the car off in the morning. She smiles and says goodnight.

  It’s only after I pull away, that I realize my friend walked into her front door with the most obvious hesitation.

  Hind sight people. It’s killer.

  Chapter fourteen- Tyler

  She just left.

  I didn’t realize she was gone, until I came into the house looking for her, and saw Stacy driving off.

  She didn’t say goodbye, she didn’t say anything.

  I just told her that I still loved her that I wanted to be with her and she was just gone.

  I find Jessica crying in one of the backrooms. Apparently her mom is giving her a hard time. This shouldn’t be a shock. Jessica’s parents suck. Josh asked Jessica to marry him, she loves him, but she knows that her parents will not approve of a boy who is Jewish. Instead we continue our charade for her parent’s sake. To help her. We won’t actually get married, in fact I am not sure why she doesn’t just marry Josh, gain her green card and live happily ever after. But for not, she has to tell her parents it’s me she is with. An American boy, with a nurse for a mother.

  The fact that Josh got Jessica pregnant is only a slight issue if you ask me, but for Jessica it is making her paranoid. Worried that her parents will fly to the US and find out that she has lied to them. She asked me earlier tonight if I would marry her for real. She’s sweet, and if I didn’t love Alyssa, I probably would. But since her parents aren’t here, I don’t see a need to actually go through with anything legal.

  I just wish I had a chance to explain it all to Alyssa.

  “I saw Alyssa here, did the two of you talk?” Jessica asks me, wiping her face free of tears.

  I take a seat on the bed beside her, the bed squeaks loudly in protest to my weight.

  I don’t mind talking about Alyssa with her, but lately it has been harder to talk about Alyssa with anyone. Mom is angry with me for being fake engaged and never telling Alyssa what is happening. She doesn’t like Jessica and I don’t blame her. But it’s the fact that Jessica often pries information. She wants to know when we first met, the first time she asked me about that one night that Alyssa and I had sex bothered me. I understood she was forward, and she wanted to hear about a happy relationship, but I didn’t want to let pieces of Alyssa and I go. All I had were the memories we created one single night and a handful of emails. Those were mine and hers. I didn’t want to tell anyone else about them.

  “I did, but then she ran off. I am not really sure what happened, she was fine a minute ago.”

  Jessica looks down at her hands, and begins to bite on her lower lip. She’s not telling me something. “What, what is it?” I ask her

  She looks at me, fear in her eyes “I have to marry you, not Josh. My dad said he will kill me if I have a baby out of wedlock, I tried to tell him about Josh, but he wouldn’t listen. He turned his nose up at someone who doesn’t share his religion.”

  I scoff. That man is disgusting. “Well, I don’t know that I am a better choice. I am not religious.”

  “But you have beliefs, and you are handsome and smart, they will approve. I know you don’t love me Tyler, but just do this until I can get my green card and the baby is born, then you can come back here when you are done this tour and be with Alyssa. Nothing has to change, you have to go away for another year anyway, and she will still be here when you return.”

  I consider what she is saying. I don’t want her to get hurt just because she chose to love someone different than what her parents would want. I could do this. It wouldn’t mean anything. I would explain it all to Alyssa before I left this weekend, she would understand. And then I would ask her to wait for me. Like I always have, because she is the one I will marry for real. She is the one who will have my babies and we will live happily ever after. The way we were always meant to.

  This was me helping a friend. I would be on this last tour and then my life would begin.

  I had no idea how wrong I was.

  Chapter fifteen

  “Okay, the car service is out front now. The moving truck will be at your condo at 8am sharp tomorrow morning, so make sure you check out of the hotel early and meet the guys there. Those men are known for putting things in the wrong spots.”

  Mom reminds me of the delivery service for about the seventh time this morning, I know she’s nervous, hell I am nervous. Today, I move to New York City to begin working at the same fashion magazine that I interned at a few years ago.

  Back before my life was turned completely upside down.

  Maureen Ashley contacted me, and asked me if I would be willing to come to New York and work as one of their columnists. It turns out, that Maureen was starting a parenting magazine. She was titling it ‘Bel Bambino’ Beautiful Baby. It would feature real stories, tips and baby fashion. Maureen was a grandmother 3 times over, and she loved all things baby, she felt that her current fashion magazine was at the top of its game, one of the best in the country and she wanted to try her success with a magazine for parents.

  She wanted a column from a young single mother. One trying to make a life for herself, someone smart, but someone real. She thought of me right away, and I was beyond flattered. I took the job right away.

  I didn’t question her. The pay was amazing, not that I was concerned about that, but making my own money would feel good. Being on my own, away from Sandersville again. Yes it was home, yes being away from my parents would be hard on Evan and I. I needed this though, I needed to not wake up every morning and think of Tyler. I needed to not walk into the kitchen and think about all the times he snuck kisses. I wouldn’t have to worry about him coming back to town and watching him with his new wife and child, while I raised our son that he pretended didn’t exist, on my own.

  This would be good for Evan and me. It had to be, because there was no way I could handle another night like last night ever again.

  When I came home, Mom was still up, doing laundry as usual. She listened to me cry about hearing Jessica’s phone conversation the night before. She was going to have Tyler’s baby. She was going to be married to him, she would be Mrs. Pierce. The man that I loved. It all felt so… Final, and I wasn’t sure how to deal with that. Mom hugged me and asked me if I wanted to bump up the move date to NYC. It was supposed to be two weeks away, but it made more sense for me just to leave now, and save my heart a bit more pain.

  Some would call it running. I’ll call it survival.

  I never saw Tyler before he left again. Maybe that was best.

  Chapter sixteen -present

  The Condo that I am renting is in the SOHO district. Fancy, historical, beautiful. Safe. Everything that I could hope for.

  I have a nanny who will be with Evan during the day while I work, she’s actually a few years older than I am, her name is Leonia and she is from Tennessee. She moved to New York a few years ago, and looks for nanny jobs while she works on her photography career, which she does at night. She’s super sweet and so far Evan just loves her.

  I leave around the time he wakes up. The first few weeks were hard. He’s two, so he can talk and ask for me now, and I was getting phone calls from a laughing Leonia asking me to talk to Evan and remind him I will be home soon. After a while he no longer needs the phone calls, and I get to sit at my cubicle staring at his little pictures that I have displayed everywhere, wishing I was with him at that very moment.

  My job isn’t hard. Again I work on the articles, which take me about 3 days to write at the most. I present them to an editor above me, who checks them over and requests changes either for grammar or to make something a bit more appealing. The first time I had to make a change I was a little confused. I talked to Maureen and she asked the editor to keep it real. This wasn’t supposed to make parenting seem like a full time fairy
tale. The point of what I was doing, was showing parents how as a young mother, I’m making it through. The things I’m learning, the lessons I could share with others. From then on my job was a bit easier, but it was never just as easy as writing an article and it was published the next day. No, we often needed photos and sometimes we asked for expert opinions.

  But I loved every moment of it, and between my job and Evan I was busy all the time, and it kept my mind off anything Tyler.

  I worked in a tiny little office on the floor below the fashion magazine. This level wasn’t all hustle and bustle. It was pretty slow paced. Lots of jokes, lots of coffee drinking and everyone was amazing. There was the lack of stress of trying to compete with other top end magazines. There was no need to worry about strict deadlines, we knew we had to have this thing put together by the end of the month, the other writers always made it work. I was just a small piece of their well-oiled machine. And for the first time in the last 2 years, I wasn’t just the girl who got knocked up and ditched by the hottest guy in town. I was Alyssa Abbot, the writer, the mother.

  I belonged.

  Chapter seventeen

  It felt scary to be away from home at first. I didn’t call Mom for the first month we were there. I couldn’t. I thought that if I called her, I would break down crying and want to move back home. I thought that I would be out of my mind with worry, not knowing how to take care of my son. Even though I knew exactly what I was doing. It felt weird to not have Mom there to help me when Evan was hurting, or sick, or when we had to go to the store. She would always walk with us and tell Evan funny stories so I could focus on what I was doing, she was a huge part of me being able to finish school and survive this hand I was dealt. I missed her.

  But for some reason, since I left, whenever I talked to Mom I thought of Tyler.

  They missed him. They were angry with him, they resented him for Evan and me, but in a small way I knew that they felt like they had lost a son. I knew they put on a brave face for me. I truly never realized they were missing him, until he came back to town.

  Mom and Dad met him for dinner the night after I left. Matt called to tell me. Apparently Tyler had come by the house, he was looking to talk to Matt, looking for me. Matt talked to him, but he wouldn’t tell me what they talked about. Mom came to the door, and Matt said the next thing he knew, Mom was grabbing her purse and she and dad were gone. They came home a few hours later. Mom had a look of relief on her face. Matt pretty much dropped it.

  I knew he didn’t forgive Tyler for Jessica, and I didn’t want him to hold onto that pain for my sake, for Evans sake. If he wanted to be friends with Tyler, I told him he should do that. But Matt told me, there was nothing that Tyler could ever say or do that would ever make up for the last two years, and he wouldn’t let anything or anyone tell him otherwise. He was an amazing brother, but he was stubborn and I knew that his issues were because of me, I knew that if he went to his best friend and talked it out, he would feel like he was somehow betraying me. Part of me liked that, it made me feel like even if Mom and Dad felt the need to make amends with Tyler, I still had two people that were just on my team.

  If there were teams.

  Matt and Stacy. They were my team. Mom was my mom, Dad was my dad, but they loved Tyler too. Unconditionally.

  Stacy. She was another person I loved so very much, but who I felt was keeping something from me. She didn’t come to see me when Evan and I were at the airport. She didn’t say goodbye. I hadn’t seen her since we left the party the night I found out about Jessica and Tyler getting married and having a baby.

  She called me and told me she woke up feeling really sick that morning and apologized for not being able to make it, to see us off.

  I didn’t think twice about it.

  I’d pay for that later too.

  Matt told me he would be staying in LA after he returned. He came back for my graduation and to spend the summer with Mom and Dad. He was cutting his trip short. More information that was being kept from me. Apparently this girl he was seeing, Erica wasn’t ‘the one’ but she was his, just for now. However, he was really liking UCLA, and decided he wanted to stick it out there. I think he needed distance. To be honest, as much as I knew he loved Evan and I, I feel like he needed to spread his wings and he too needed out from under the stigma of a small town family covered in scandal from the teen mother. I got it. I wanted a million things for my amazing big brother. It just felt weird being so far away from him.

  We still talked every single morning. It was the one thing I really needed. A piece of home, my best friend couldn’t talk to me until Eric went to work, so Matt would fill me in on what gossip he learned from Mom the night before.

  I hadn’t spoken to Mom since the week after I left, since I found out she and Dad had dinner with Tyler. She was angry with me for not talking to her, but Matt said she was trying to understand why I needed space. She told him that there were things I needed to know about Tyler, but I figured if they had been that important he would have told me them himself. Instead I learned about his awesome life plans through a phone call I wasn’t meant to hear. I was starting over, so everyone had to deal with the ways I chose to do that, especially her. I didn’t want my parents to have to choose between Tyler and I, which is why I never provided an ultimatum. I just kept my distance until I was mentally in a better position to deal with the fact that he was apparently back in their lives. I didn’t plan on not talking to my parents ever again, it had only been a few weeks, I just needed to collect my thoughts first.

  In the month that I had been gone Tyler had redeployed. This time to a more intense battlefield. I worried about him. But I tried to brush those feelings aside. He wasn’t mine to worry about. I prayed for him, but then I made it my life’s mission to not think about him again.

  I actually did amazing with that.

  Chapter eighteen

  When I was 8 years old, I had my first article published in our local newspaper.

  When I say newspaper I mean a 15 page news flyer that went around our small Georgia town, once a month.

  It was what you would get if a gossip rag, as Mom called them, and the New York Times got together and had a baby.

  It was filled with the local ‘who’s who’ and the ‘what’s happening where.’ We had news articles that were always covered in Savannahs newspaper, but Sandersville, had their own news from time to time. Someone would get arrested for a bar fight. Someone would break a record for running a 5k. It was a little of everything, every month.

  I wrote a story about my 2nd grade teacher. Mrs. LaRue. In Sandersville, the teachers moved up with us in elementary school. She started kindergarten with us, and the plan was she would follow us through to third grade. But a few weeks into my 2nd grade year, she went on sick leave. It turned out that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. I was devastated. She was one of my biggest supporters when it came to my writing. She always told me “Your stories will change lives one day, Alyssa. Never give up.” She would give me extra writing assignments at night for homework, because she knew I loved them. I loved her. And then she died the summer before I went into third grade.

  My article was sad, but it was also filled with light only an 8 year old could muster up after the death of someone so amazing. I told the town how her story would be the one to really make a difference and that as a teacher she is the one who changed lives, I told them what a difference she made for me. Her daughter came to our home after her service and cried, hugging me telling me how much she appreciated my kind words. She told me that her mom had a small scrap book of some of the pieces her favorite students had written over the years. The last 10 pages of the album were filled with works of mine.

  Mom and Dad gushed to anyone who was willing to listen to the fact that their little girl had done something so sweet, that their child had been published. They bought 100 copies of the paper and clipped and decorated the article to be included in the back of our family Christmas cards. They were
always my biggest supporters.

  Mom kept scrap book copies of things over time. Articles I would write about the school cafeteria, my distaste for the former school uniforms. I even wrote a review for the new restaurant in town.

  Which is why I was less than shocked, but cried all the same, when I took a glance at the family website one stormy afternoon.

  The page was originally used for buyers and potential buyers of Dad’s products, but Mom had put a family and employee touch on it several years ago after she deemed it “too stuffy”, when the internet was starting to become a household necessity. She created a section for family news. Not just our family, but the employees families as well. Stories of children graduating high school, losing first teeth, prom and getting married. Mom thought it was important that our family business show that we value family first and foremost.

  My articles for Bel Bambino were always right on the first page of the site.

  Baby Love

  September 16th 2013

  By Alyssa Abbott

  Today, my son Evan fell in love. We were sitting on a bench in Central Park, enjoying ice cream cones purchased from one of the many street vendors lining the area. I was feeling a bit worried that he was going to ruin his new overalls with the melting chocolate treat. He was dripping left and right, and couldn’t seem to move his little tongue fast enough to catch all the drips.

  I gently reached for a napkin from my overflowing mom purse. You know, those expensive designer purses that you buy, because they are top of the line, and instead of using them for your own belongings, they end up filled with everything your child might need on a 2 hour Saturday trip to the park. Pain reliever, wipes and of course 5 shirt changes. Normal things.

  When I gently wrapped his cone with the napkin, the two year old apple of my eye became angry and tossed the cone onto the ground. Splat.