Seven Years of Bad Luck

by J. L. Mac

  “No way missy! Your hair is super shiny. Your cheeks are flush. And this…” She pointed to my barely concealed baby bump.

  “You’re pregnant! Holy shit, Kat! Does Ben know?” She folded her arms over her chest and gave me the evil eye.

  “Fine, yes, you caught me Chey. I’m pregnant. And no, Ben doesn’t know.” There was a long pause before a mischievous grin spread across her lips.

  “Well, I guess that makes two of us,” she said with a wink and a smile.

  “What?” I asked utterly confused. All at once realization hit me. “Oh my god, what? You, you’re…oh my God. How? When?” Cheyenne beamed a to-die-for smile and shrugged.

  “I don’t know how except that by some miracle, that less than ten percent chance worked in my favor. I’m three and a half months Kat! The best part, the baby is healthy and so am I. We wanted to wait to tell everyone until after the wedding. That’s why Tucker and I rushed the whole thing.” I held my clammy palm over my mouth and stared at her in disbelief.

  Oh. My. God.

  “Oh Cheyenne I’m so happy for you and Tuck. I’m sorry I have been hiding from you, but I was so scared to tell you. I didn’t want to ruin anything for you two. This is a special time for you with the wedding and all, and I didn’t want to be selfish. Only Aidan knew, and he has been so supportive.”

  “Hey, it’s a special time for you too!” She said as she rubbed my little belly. The water works started and in our pregnant hormonal state, we wept for a bit while we hugged and congratulated each other. After getting Cheyenne dressed in her gorgeous gown, I helped her put on the finishing touches.

  “You look stunning. Really just…stunning.” I wrapped my arms around her for a hug and kissed her on the cheek. “This dress is awesome Chey, I can’t even see your little belly.”

  “Yeah well I can, and let me tell you it’s a good thing that this wedding is an intimate affair because I think I would pass out if I had more than a couple dozen scrutinizing eyes on me at once.” We both laughed. The wedding planner stepped into the bridal suite.

  “We’re ready for you Cheyenne.” I winked at my best friend.

  “You heard the lady Chey. Let’s go get you hitched.” I moved to hand her the bouquet of viking-poms , white daisies, blue delphinium and solid aster wrapped in satin ribbon. Her hand stilled mine.

  “Wait. Um, Kat, you should know that last minute Tucker’s brother couldn’t make it to the wedding, some work related emergency or something. So, uh, Tucker called Ben to fill in,” She said as her eyes stayed nervously askew.

  “WHAT?” I shouted.

  “Kat, please, they have been hanging out and Tucker has become great friends with Ben. It was only natural for him to ask Ben to fill in especially since he is the only friend of Tuckers who happens to have a designer tux or two just sitting around handy.”

  “Dammit. So he’s out there right now.” I stated more than questioned.

  “Mhmm. He’s out there.” My fingers began rubbing in a circular motion on each of my temples involuntarily.

  “The brother that was at the rehearsal last night just had to go?” I asked with closed eyes as my fingers kept working on my temples.

  “That’s what he said, so when we found out Ben was happy to step in.” I groaned.

  “Is his girlfriend here too?” My voice became croaky and annoying to even my own ears. My eye ears. Ms were wide and filling with tears again.

  HORMONES! I screamed inwardly entirely fed up with crying all the time.

  “I don’t know if he brought anyone.”

  Game face on dammit! I took a deep breath while I kept my eyes closed to gather my resolve. “You know what? It doesn’t matter. This is your day. I can manage all my personal drama.” I gave my nervous friend a weak smile and snatched up my own bouquet. “Let’s do this.” When I entered the hallway outside the bridal suite, Ben was standing there looking pensive.

  Oh, he is so handsome.

  My heart melted at the sight of him in his perfectly tailored tux. He hadn’t even noticed that I was in the hall. “Ahem.” Ben’s head shot up, and his eyes locked on mine. “Hello Benjamin.” His eyes passed over me from head to toe.

  Please let him not notice anything different about me.

  “Kathleen. Shall we?”

  “Yep,” I chirped far too excitedly to be convincing. I linked my arm through his and we began walking to our mark. When our arms touched my breathing hitched.

  “Still there,” I whispered barely loud enough for even me to hear. The spark and chemistry was definitely still between us. He was still so impossibly handsome. He still smelled like heaven. I still loved him with the entirety of my existence. Suffocating feelings of depression rushed through me and it took all the strength within me to remain standing.

  This incredible man beside me who happens to be the father of my unborn child will never be mine.

  I swallowed hard and stifled my tears. I knew there would be plenty of time to fall apart later. I would have to wait. Aidan looked nice in his suit and he smiled his signature All-American smile as Ben escorted me down the aisle to our marks beside the altar. Once Ben released me and we both took our places his eyes found mine and didn’t break away through the entire ceremony.

  I silently begged him to let me be heartbroken in peace. My pleas went unanswered. The wedding was perfect. The way Tucker and Cheyenne looked together warmed my shattered heart. Ben watched tears of joy and sadness roll down my cheeks as Tucker kissed his bride. Once the ceremony was over, everyone commuted to Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek. It was a last resort venue. Cheyenne only agreed to book it because I insisted that it was fine with me. That it was irrelevant that the Rosewood was were the black tie he blackball was and that was the night that Ben and I had given in to the pull between us for the first time. I lied like the lawyer I should have been. It hurt like hell to be at the Rosewood with not one fleck lingering in the air of the closeness and magic that we had experienced that night. It bit at my heart. My soul ached the moment Cheyenne had even mentioned it to me.

  It was a high end place, and with their wedding being rushed, her options were very limited, so I insisted that she book it. The reception was outdoors. Cheyenne and Tucker’s fifty person or so guest list made the magical, outdoor setting possible. There was no ne

  ed for a sea of tables to be scattered everywhere. There were only two wide long tables for guests, and a small intimate table the bride and groom at the head of the two large tables. There was a fair size bamboo dance floor. The area was flanked by massive old oak trees. Outdoor lights were strung in a random pattern from tree tops on one side of the dance floor to the other trees, opposite the floor. The lights hung above the bamboo floor with a scattering of Japanese paper lanterns that appeared to be floating over everyone. The warm lighting was dim enough to give the reception a romantic cozy feeling. Flowers matching Cheyenne’s bouquet were simply everywhere. There were so many flowers. It made the atmosphere smell divine. Of course, the sweet smell of the flowers only reminded me of my favorite scent and how his manly clean fragrance was far more preferred than any perky pink flower.

  I settled into my seat next to Aidan and watched on as Cheyenne and Tucker had their first dance as man and wife. They melted together to the sweet notes of Song Bird by Eva Cassidy. Ben’s eyes burned holes in me throughout the evening, and I did my very best to keep myself together. Thankfully the night passed in a flash, and I went home, put on the coziest pajamas I could find and fell to pieces with thoughts of the love I’d lost and my favorite scent.

  Chapter 31

  Allergies

  Cheyenne and Tucker opted out of an extravagant honeymoon for reasons I found out just before she walked down the aisle. Hers was considered a high risk pregnancy, and she was discouraged from travelling. So, instead of flying off to some exotic island resort they simply drove a couple of hours away from home to a really great lake cabin for a few days. Cheyenne couldn’t be happier to be in some quie
t cabin with the dream man that turned her life into a fairytale. The moment they returned from their mini-honeymoon she dragged me out of my hole for some shopping and babbled on and on about how they fished on the lake for hours every day and cooked only what they caught and made love nonstop and blah-blah-blah. I nearly got ill a few times with what I was calling happiness induced anaphylaxis. Cheyenne being my best friend allowed me my peeved scoffs and eye rolling while she recounted her honeymoon. It was yet another reason why she was irreplaceable to me. She understood that I was in love and heartbroken. Though she knew that the subject was a sore spot, she never forgot to ask me every damn day when and how I was going to tell Ben about the baby that was groawing at a steady rate within me. I always discounted her meddling and told her she’d be the first to know what the plan was when I came up with one. I never came up with a plan.

  Sunday, October 27th, 2013. Day 158 since my first day at the firm.

  Nearly a month had passed since the wedding and I had not seen or heard from Ben again. The only people I saw on a regular basis were Cheyenne, Tucker and Aidan of course. I had become a recluse, but my tiny circle of friends were all very understanding and patient with me. Or so I thought. I was still living off my savings and had yet to see any type of return from the stocks or moderate investments I’d made. I suppose if I had the emotion or mental capacity of a normal person, I would have become worried, but depression has quirky way of making all emotions other than utter sorrow, disappear. The only thing I had found slightly comical in my state of melancholy was the fact that I single handedly kept up tradition by making sure my birthday the following month would be awful as always.

  I managed to get the holy grail of all pregnancy books at Book Ends. Somehow I kept my emotions under control while I walked through the quaint little store that still smelled of new books, coffee and complimentary cookies. I walked past the cook book section and my resolve to not cry slipped slightly but I stifled the tears away and kept moving. I paid for my book, declined the bag that the cashier offered and just stuffed my purchase into my landfill purse. I drove back to my desolate apartment, determined to forget about Ben for the remainder of the day. I was sprawled on my couch staring at the same smudge on the wall that had been the focus of my attention for weeks.

  My phone rang, and I saw Cheyenne’s picture flash across the screen. I groaned and swept my thumb over the ignore button. I had no desire to talk about the things Cheyenne wanted to talk about. She only had a few conversation topics to pick from lately. Newlywed life and how happy she was, her pregnancy and how ecstatic she was to be a mom and then there was the third topic. Cheyenne’s third favorite thing to discuss was my pregnancy and how once I told Ben about the baby he and I should kiss and make up. Her words, not mine. My phone immediately began ringing again.

  “Ugh. Dammit. Don’t want to talk Chey,” I mumbled while ignoring the call once again. The phone began ringing, yet again.

  “Hello?” I clipped out.

  “Kat! Listen. Are you at home?” Cheyenne sounded panicked, and it made my senses go on high alert. I sat up straight and located my keys with my eyes in preparation to go to my friend.

  “Yes. What’s wrong?” Cheyenne sniffled into the phone and my heart sank.

  Oh God. The baby.

  “Chey,” I prompted her to speak. She let out an exhausted sigh.

  “It’s Ben.”

  My Ben?

  My voice began to tremble as I spoke. “What’s wrong with Ben?” Cheyenne paused, giving away nothing. My heart constricted further and my stomach churned queasily. “Cheyenne!” I demanded her to tell me the awful news I could feel coming.

  “He-Ben’s, I don’t know if you know, but he never dropped the thing with Murray. He was attacked, Kat.” My hand involuntarily went to my pregnant belly.

  “Is he…” Dead? I whispered, unable to even say the awful word aloud.

  “I don’t know much more than that. I’m on my way to get you. We have to get to the hospital to find out if he is hurt bad.” Cheyenne hung up while I sat on my couch looking catatonic as Cheyenne later described it. Her words sank in, my heart began beating wildly.

  My stomach turned, and I was very close to being sick. I knew without a doubt that if Murray had arranged for someone to attack Ben he would certainly be hurt badly. I recalled the injuries I endured and I grimaced imagining Ben with those types of injuries. I would be destroyed if I lost Ben. I knew I didn’t have him physically but, emotionally? I had him. In my heart, Ben was mine, and I was his. I made the mistake of letting circumstance dictate my life, and in the process, pushed away the man I loved; the father of my unborn child. With the time and space between us I realized how much I was really capable of missing a person. I physically ached for him most days and the nights were always far worse. I ached to feel him, to see him, to smell him, to hear him breathing beside me. Sometimes my chest felt so heavy with grief and loss I thought that filling my lungs with air was an impossible task.

  It hurt to breathe, to think, to exist without him. Distance and time always has a way of putting things into perspective for the misguided. Misguided was merely one way to describe me. When I was with him before, it was easy to get lost in the bad things. I was enraptured with those bad things. I was trapped in my past and I allowed my irrational need for revenge to destroy the future that was practically kicking down the door to my heart. I was so occupied with the wrong things that I missed the signs that told me I didn’t need to be my old self and I didn’t need to finish anything when it came to my abduction and the people involved. Ben had fallen for the current me.

  He wanted the current me. Not the me I was before seven years of bad luck erased who I was. He made it clear that he saw glimpses of who I was before and he wanted me just the way I was when we met at that book store. I wished every moment of every day that I could go back in time to change things instead of being disgusted with myself for ruining the very best thing that had ever happened to me. With Ben out of my life as if he were never really there, all the bad from my past that loomed over me got swallowed up by pure and absolute longing. I knew I'd rather long for him for the rest of my life and never have him again thahim again to have him and be stuck were I was with an agenda that only included what I thought I wanted not what I needed.

  I waited for Cheyenne to show up and I prayed that when I arrived at the hospital to see the man I loved, the heart in his chest would still be beating. Cheyenne burst into the apartment that we use to share together.

  “Let’s go,” she ordered. I stood from the couch on my shaky legs and numbly followed her. My mind raced thinking of all the horrible scenario’s that might await me at the hospital. I couldn’t bare it if Ben died without me telling him exactly how sorry

  I was for being so dumb and how much I loved him. Cheyenne drove like a mad woman while I sat beside her trying my best to pull myself together. I was so lost in my own head that I hadn’t even noticed that we came to a stop in front of Ben’s house and parked beside Tucker’s truck. “We gotta run in and get Tucker he’s been working on something for Ben. I tried calling him but his phone is off. Hurry,” Cheyenne rambled. I grabbed my purse, leaped from Cheyenne’s car without hesitation and trailed behind her to Ben’s door. Without knocking she strode right in and I followed. “Tuck?” she shouted through the foyer.

  “In here,” Tucker’s deep voice boomed from the sitting room. We walked to the sitting room and just before we entered, Cheyenne turned to face me. She grabbed me by my shoulders and looked me squarely in the eyes.

  “I love you, Kat. You can be pissed but you’ll thank me some day.”

  What?

  Without further explanation, Cheyenne stepped behind me. She gripped me by the shoulders and steered me into the sitting room where I saw Tucker sitting across from the most beautiful sight I could have imagined.

  Chapter 32

  Pieces

  There he was. My Ben on his sofa with his head in his hands and he loo
ked like the most beautiful, disheveled, out of sorts, man that I had ever laid eyes on. He was wearing pajama pants that I could see hung lazily off his hips. He wore a white undershirt that had seen better days. The stubble that had grown to a suitable beard appeared to be at least a week old. His hair was disorderly in the most delectable way. My fingers ached to run through his thick, wavy, chocolate brown locks. Ben dropped his hands from his head and looked up at me while I stood motionless doing all I could to not faint.

  “Not hurt,” I mumbled.

  “Sorry,” Cheyenne and Tucker said in unison as they slipped from view. A second or two later I heard the heavy front door open and shut. Ben and I stared at each other for what felt like ages. Finally he spoke.font>

  “I had no idea they did this. Tuck just told me what they had done when you walked in the door.” He put up his hands defensively. I continued staring in silence. “But you came,” Ben stated looking somewhat puzzled.