I gulped loudly and turned away from his penetrating gaze, busying myself with gathering my purse and drink. This conversation had taken a dangerous turn, and I needed to escape it, this car, and this man, before something was said that couldn’t be taken back.
How had a simple ride to work turned into this? How did we keep circling back to these uncomfortable topics? And why were they making me so itchy? Mason was just a coworker. Someone who looked out for me, traveled to my side of town in the hopes I needed a ride, and knows exactly how I take my latte.
Just friends. Right?
The inside of the vehicle was suffocating, and I wrenched the door open, taking a deep breath of the fresh autumn air, but it didn’t do much to help. I realized then that it wasn’t the air quality that was the problem. It was me and I was suffocating from the inside out.
The hostess recognized Bryson and I, and greeted us with a wide smile.
“If it isn’t our favorite couple! How have you two been?”
Quiet.
Distanced.
Miserable.
“Fine, thanks. I think Bryson made us a reservation?”
She checked her tablet and looked up with a smile. “Yep. I’ve got a reservation for two for Thompson right here. Do y’all want your usual table?”
Our usual restaurant.
Our usual table.
Did it even matter at this point?
“That sounds great, thank you so much.” There was no sense in unleashing my dissatisfaction on the unsuspecting hostess. It wasn’t her fault my marriage was dying.
Those words brought me up short as they passed through my mind for the first time.
My marriage was dying.
It was failing.
We were failing.
I never thought we’d get to this place. If you had asked me three years ago if we’d ever be here, I’d have laughed in your face. We’d been together for six years before getting married and we’d never hit a low point like this.
I’d never feared the end of us before.
We followed the hostess silently, Bryson’s hand resting gently on the small of my back. It was the most he’d touched me in weeks.
When we reached our corner booth, Bryson waited until I slid onto the red leather seat before sitting across from me. I pulled off my pea coat, revealing the plum-colored wrap dress I’d worn for our date night.
Bryson had once told me it was his favorite. I couldn’t even count how many times our night had ended with him slowly peeling it off my body before making love to me for hours.
I watched his face to see if he’d noticed I’d worn the dress, but he was already perusing the menu. Why he bothered, I had no idea. I knew he’d order the lasagna like every other time we’d been here.
Suddenly the game of pretend between us became too much for me to handle.
“Bryson.”
His gaze slowly rose to meet mine. “Hmm?”
Now that I had his attention, I didn’t know what to say. We used to be able to talk for hours, never tiring and never running out of things to discuss. Now, all I had was the menial topics that strangers used in mindless conversations. It was the best I had though, so I went with it.
“How was work today?”
His eyes dipped back down to the menu, and I watched him slowly read over each item. As if he hadn’t memorized it years ago.
“It was fine.”
I closed my eyes briefly before trying again. “Any new and exciting clients lately?” What the hell did that even mean?
His brow furrowed as he met my gaze briefly. “It’s accounting, Mackenzie. None of it is that exciting.” I laughed too loudly, and his frown deepened. “Are you all right?”
My laugh ended on a cough and I nodded before taking a small sip of the water already on the table. “Yeah, I’m great. Just wanted to hear about your day.”
He sighed, eyes still on his menu. “There’s really nothing to report. I went to work, crunched some numbers, and came home.”
I shook my head and gave up, picking up my own menu so I had something to occupy my thoughts until the waitress arrived.
A few minutes later, we’d ordered our usual (like I’d predicted) along with a bottle of red wine at my request. He eyed me curiously but didn’t comment on my choice of beverage.
Bryson’s phone chimed with an incoming message and he pulled it from his pocket to check.
When the wine arrived, I poured a generous glass and peered around the restaurant. Everywhere I turned, there were couples. Some deep in what looked like serious conversations, some laughing, some simply eating, but all of them looked… connected.
My cheeks burned with embarrassment when I realized I couldn’t hold his attention for a full five minutes before something like his phone drew him away from me. I wracked my brain, desperately hoping to come up with something to say, something to pull him into a conversation with me, but was coming up empty.
My phone chimed with an incoming message that I assumed was Mason, but I ignored it. Just because Bryson thought it was appropriate to be on his phone while we were out to dinner didn’t mean that I needed to second that bad habit.
Finally, something came to me.
“So, Bryson, I was talking to my mom earlier.”
He glanced up from his phone for a second before returning his eyes to the device in his hands. “Oh yeah, how’s she doing?”
I waved the hand not clutching my wine glass. “Oh, she’s fine. She wanted to know what our plans for Thanksgiving are. She’s having my brother’s family over for dinner and wanted to know if we wanted to join them, or if we were going to your family’s house.”
Bryson frowned, but didn’t look back up. “It doesn’t matter to me where we go.”
I sighed. “Have you talked to your mom? Is she doing Thanksgiving at her house this year?”
He shrugged. “Haven’t heard from her.”
I closed my eyes and took a deep, steadying breath. “Well, my mom needs to know how much food to buy so she needs our answer soon. Thanksgiving is less than a week away.”
His eyes finally found mine. “Is it?” He reached to scratch at the stubble coming in on his chin. “Time flies, huh?”
I barely suppressed a snort.
Yeah, time flies when you’re having fun. But, when you’re having painfully stilted conversations with your distant husband, it drags its feet like a toddler at bedtime.
Not that I would know.
I took another deep breath. “Well, since you haven’t heard from your mom yet, why don’t we go to my parent’s house for dinner, and then maybe meet up with your family for dessert?”
Bryson shrugged again. “Sounds good to me.”
I tilted my head back and drained my glass of wine, quickly refilling it from the bottle left on the table. Once upon a time, Bryson would have watched my alcohol intake and maybe even commented on how fast I was drinking.
But, that Bryson was gone.
In his place was a man that looked and sounded like my husband but was practically a stranger.
Or, no. Not a stranger. How could he ever be a stranger when I could literally paint every birthmark on his body from memory?
No, he wasn’t a stranger. He was more like a zombie. A soulless, lifeless imitation of who my husband used to be. In the movies, zombies never came back from their catatonic state. I had to hope the same wouldn’t be true for my husband.
Chapter 4
Past
Bryson caught my hand in his as we walked in to the large medical office building. We boarded the elevator and took it to the third floor where the North Carolina Women’s Health office was located. I checked myself in with the front desk and took a seat to wait anxiously in the waiting room.
“Are you nervous?” Bryson asked.
I winced. “A little. Is that dumb?”
He shook his head. “Of course not. And don’t talk about my wife that way.” He grinned at me and I returned it as a nurse called my nam
e from a doorway at the far end of the room.
We stood together and followed behind the nurse who was helpful and talkative as she took my height and weight. When we made it into the exam room, she proceeded to take my temperature, blood pressure, and pulse.
“Everything looks all right, but your pulse is a little elevated. Are you nervous?” The nurse who’d introduced herself as Tracy asked.
I nodded sheepishly. “A little,” I admitted for the second time in the past fifteen minutes.
She patted my hand sympathetically. “There’s no reason to be nervous, honey. You don’t even need to take your clothes off for this appointment!”
She left the room, and I laughed. “She’s right you know. I don’t think I’ve ever been to the gynecologist when I didn’t have to at least take off my pants and underwear.”
“I wouldn’t object if you wanted to get naked,” Bryson interjected.
I rolled my eyes but couldn’t help the smile that spread across my face. “You’re like a horny teenage boy.”
Bryson leaned close until his lips grazed the shell of my ear. “Well, see that’s where you’re wrong, my love.” He nipped my ear lobe. “I may be horny, but I’m no teenage boy.”
I snuck a peek at him out of the corner of my eye. He was right. Gone was the boy I’d met six years ago. He’d been replaced by a larger, more mature and sexier version of the twenty-year-old I fell in love with. I opened my mouth to respond when there was a knock on the door.
A small, middle-aged woman with long brown hair and warm chocolate eyes greeted us. “Hello, I’m Keri Watts, I’m a nurse practitioner here.” She stopped to greet both of us with a shake of her firm, but cold hand. She took a seat on a stool in front of the computer and turned to look at us expectantly. “What are you two here to talk about?”
Bryson and I exchanged a look before I took a deep breath and answered. “Well, we got married a couple weeks ago and want to start trying for a baby right away, so we wanted to know what we should and shouldn’t be doing leading up to that.”
Keri smiled and turned to type a few words on the screen in front of her. “I see, well congratulations. Are you on any form of birth control now?”
“Yes, I’m on the pill but I’m on my blank week and was planning on stopping after this pack.”
Keri nodded. “Perfect. Feel free to stop taking them after you finish your last pill. That’ll be fine.”
I breathed a sigh of relief that we could begin right away.
“Was your cycle regular before you started birth control?”
I shrugged. “Honestly, I wasn’t the best at tracking it, but I know it used to sync up with my roommate’s cycle, so, probably?”
Keri nodded again. “That’s good. Now after you stop the birth control, you might be irregular at first, but within a few months, you should have a twenty-eight-day cycle again. Do you know how to track it?”
I shook my head. “Not really.”
“That’s all right.” She pulled down a calendar that had been hanging on the wall above the computer. “Let’s say you start your period on the first day of the month,” she began, pointing to October first. “No matter how long your period is, you should ovulate between days ten and fourteen of your cycle.” She pointed to the week of the tenth. “That’s when you two need to get busy.”
My cheeks heated, and even Bryson was sporting a small pink tinge on his cheeks, but we exchanged a smile.
“Then,” Keri continued, “comes the two week wait.”
“What’s that?”
Keri ran her finger from the fourteenth of the month to the twenty-eighth. “That’s the time between when you ovulate and when you should get your period. If you don’t have any sign of menstruation by the twenty-eighth day of your cycle, you should take a pregnancy test.”
Butterflies fluttered in my stomach.
Pregnancy test.
Those two words sent equal parts excitement and fear coursing through my veins. It’s strange, as a woman, I spent so many years of my life desperately trying to not get pregnant, and suddenly, it was something I was actively working toward.
“This all make sense?” Keri asked, snapping me out of my thoughts.
Bryson looked a little lost, but I understood the process well enough, so I nodded.
“Good,” she responded before replacing the calendar and taking another peek at her computer. “Now this is your first pregnancy, correct?”
All the happy thoughts that had been circling my brain halted in their tracks before shriveling up and falling to the ground. My heart pounded, and my palms began to sweat as I tried to open my mouth and answer Keri’s question.
It was a simple question, really. She was looking for a yes or no answer.
But, the answer was anything but simple.
Bryson squeezed my hand three times in a silent show of love and I took a deep breath that I released slowly. His quiet declaration brought me back into the room and I remembered I had him by my side. I wasn’t alone in this.
“No,” I said softly. “This isn’t my first pregnancy.”
Keri frowned and began scrolling through my file on the computer.
There was no easy answer as to what happened with my first pregnancy, so I used the line that was the safest. The easiest to confess.
“We lost it. It was ectopic.”
Keri’s warm brown eyes met mine, the sympathy in them unmistakable. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”
I gulped loudly.
I didn’t deserve her pity. I didn’t have the right to be sad about it. Because no matter what anyone tells me, I know where the responsibility lies. That baby wasn’t making it past the few weeks it had one way or another.
When Keri saw that I wasn’t going to respond, she turned back to the computer and pressed on. “How was it terminated? Did you have to remove the tube?”
I shook my head. “No. It was early enough that they were able to treat me with methotrexate.”
Keri nodded. “That’s a very good thing for any future pregnancies.”
A weak smile spread across my face. “That’s what they tell me.”
Keri shot a look my way before returning to her computer. “Well, now that’s out of the way, I suppose you want to know what you can do in the meantime?”
I sighed with relief. This was why we were here. “Yes, please.”
“Do you take vitamins now?”
I nodded. “Yes, I take a women’s daily vitamin every morning.”
“That’s good. I’d recommend swapping them out for a prenatal instead. I could write you a prescription, or you could just pick them up wherever you buy your vitamins now.”
“Are some prenatals better than others?” Bryson spoke up.
“Not really. As long as you’re getting between six and eight hundred micrograms of folic acid, you should be fine.”
“Okay. Is there anything else we need to know?”
Keri abandoned the computer and turned to face us. She looked down at our entwined fingers and smiled. “Have fun with it! This is an exciting time in your life. Don’t let it become a chore.”
I smiled and nodded, letting out a sigh. “Okay, I think I can do that.”
“Do you two have any more questions for me?”
We glanced at each other and then back to her. “I don’t think so.”
Keri stood and held out her hand for each of us to shake. “Then I think we’re done here. Good luck and don’t forget to enjoy yourselves!”
We said our goodbyes and then were led through the maze of hallways back to the front desk where we checked out. I boarded the elevator feeling optimistic and excited for the journey ahead of us.
It wasn’t until we got back to Bryson’s car that the storm cloud that had been hiding in the corner of my mind made an appearance.
Over the years, I’d fought hard to forget what happened five years ago, the first time I got pregnant. But now, with our wedding just behind us, and his parents already a
sking for grandkids, and us actively trying to conceive, all those old thoughts and feelings were swimming to the surface.
Bryson started the car while I looked out the window, trying to collect myself and stuff the thoughts back into the drawer I’d kept them in all these years. But, I should have known he wouldn’t let me off the hook that easily.
“Hey,” he said softly, resting a warm hand on my thigh. I realized then how cold I was. It was October in North Carolina, which meant we were still in t-shirts, but I was so cold I was almost shivering.
“I’m fine, Brys.”
I didn’t need to look over to know he’d raised a brow in disbelief. “I know you well enough to know that’s not true. Talk to me, Mack. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
I hunched my shoulders and pulled deeper into myself. “You don’t want to know what I’m thinking.”
His hand squeezed lightly before cupping my face and turning it to meet his eyes. “I do. I always want to know what you’re thinking. Especially if it’s self-destructive lies that I need to banish from that pretty head of yours.” I rolled my eyes but couldn’t help the twitch of my lip. He smiled wide knowing he’d chipped a piece of the ice away from my heart. “Now, tell me what you’re thinking.”
I sighed harshly and without my permission, a surge of anger swam to the forefront and I unleashed it on Bryson.
“You wanna’ know what I’m thinking, Bryson? I’ll tell you. I’m feeling like a shit human being. Like I don’t have the right to try to have a baby because I gave up the last one I had like it was nothing.”
He frowned. “You didn’t give anything up–”
“You know what that medication they gave me was for, right?”
He sighed. “Yes. I know it was used to medically abort the fetus.”
“Baby, Bryson. It was a baby.”
“No, Mack.” His voice was harder now, like he was getting angry too. “It wasn’t a baby, it was a fetus. You were only a few weeks pregnant. And you didn’t have a choice. You know this. It was ectopic. If you hadn’t medically aborted, you would have had to have surgery. You could have been seriously injured.”
Trying Page 3