Rebel Heart

by Penelope Ward

  “You got a great kid out of it, at least. Owen’s great.”

  “You were great with him. He really took to you. Do you want kids someday?”

  I traced my finger along the top of the beer bottle. “I didn’t think I did. But…it’s complicated.”

  She smiled. “That’s what you said when I asked you if you were seeing anyone.”

  I felt like I should open up a little bit. “She’s…having a kid. It’s just not mine. Happened before we met.”

  “Oh. Wow. Well…that definitely makes it complicated. But I hope you don’t let that stop you from being with her. Because that wouldn’t bode well for the outlook of my future either—being a single mom of a six-year-old and all.”

  I nodded. “It’s complicated.”

  “So you’ve said…”

  I started to think out loud. “I just don’t know if I can be a dad to someone else’s kid. Especially not the guy whose kid she’s having.”

  “I watched you today with Owen. Trust me, you’re a natural. And if you’re worried about DNA, don’t be. Was my father like a dad to you?”

  “Yeah. He was.”

  “You didn’t share blood.”

  “I guess.”

  “Was your biological father like a dad to you?”

  My face answered without the necessity of words. Beth had been there for the years of shit with my sperm donor.

  “See. And you did share blood. A father has nothing to do with DNA.”

  Deep down, I knew she was right. But she didn’t understand my fucked-up situation.

  “It’s...” I went to say complicated, and then realized I sounded like a broken record. “Hard. It’s hard.”

  “Everything happens for a reason, Heath. You’re here to remember my dad. I don’t think you’re supposed to use this time to mourn him. I think my dad’s death is meant to be a reminder to you that you can be a parent without the biology.”

  I took a minute and really gave it some thought. Maybe she was right. As strange as it sounds, I think her dad would want his death to teach me something. That was just the kind of man he was. A good one. A real father figure.

  Looking up, I found Beth watching me. I squinted. “When did you become such a crack psychologist?”

  “You want the truth?”

  “Of course.”

  “Today when you got here, my white shirt was soaked, and I didn’t even have a bra on. My nipples were greeting you, and you didn’t even notice. Earlier, when you had no shirt on, I practically salivated at the sight of your six-pack. It’s been a while. You looked like you were ready to run for the hills when you caught me staring. So I figured out pretty quickly that whatever was complicated—meant complicated love. And even though a part of me is sort of jealous, I’ve never wanted anything but happiness for you. Neither did my dad. So it feels right that maybe he—and I—can help you see things clearly.”

  I stared at her. Shaking my head, I said. “You haven’t changed a bit. Still as good a friend at twenty-nine as you were at nine.”

  Beth leaned forward and took my hand. “Let’s enjoy each other and the memory of my dad this week. Like the old days, like brother and sister. If my mind happens to wander to your six-pack or ass, just ignore it…it’s hormones.”

  I arched a brow. “My ass? I thought you were only checking out my abs?”

  She smiled. “Only when you’re facing forward.”

  “Ommmmm.”

  Sitting in lotus position, with my palms together, I tried my best to follow along to the pregnancy meditation video I was watching on YouTube.

  A very pregnant woman was demonstrating moves being narrated by a man who had a soothing British accent. A pretty beach was the backdrop. I’d never tried anything like this before, but if there was ever a time in my life to attempt it, it was now.

  “Breathe in and breathe out,” he said. “Imagine that your baby can hear all of the positive thoughts emanating from your mind. Send love to the baby through your loins.”

  My loins?

  Gosh, I hoped my baby couldn’t hear any of the negative thoughts going through my mind lately. That would have been detrimental.

  I’d decided to try yoga and meditation as a way to relax, get my mind off all of the stress I’d been experiencing lately, but I wasn’t quite sure if this was working for me.

  The tune playing in the background of the video sounded like a cross between a lullaby and instrumental Chinese meditation music.

  Some of the things that came out of the narrator’s mouth made me crack up. “Send peaceful vibes to your infant…imagine a beautiful light flowing up into your vagina and traveling to the baby.”

  Into my what?

  For some reason, all I could think about was what I imagined Rush would be saying if he were here. He would totally be making fun of this.

  “I’ll travel through your vagina, alright. Like a fuckin’ rocket.”

  “Let your love flow into the baby as you position yourself into downward dog.”

  There was Rush again: “I’ve got lots of love to give you—doggy-style.”

  I just kept hearing Rush and laughing, and that made me totally unable to concentrate on what I was supposed to be doing.

  Well, of course, I was hearing the old Rush, the one who wasn’t broken by the horrible twist of fate we’d encountered, the one who still talked to me.

  Maybe I couldn’t get Rush out of my mind because I had no idea where he was or what he was doing. He’d check in on me through Oak but still hadn’t told me what he was up to or when he was coming back. In the meantime, I had no choice but to just continue on with my life, trying to write during the day and then working my shifts at The Heights at night. The only good thing was that my writing was really taking off. Not sure if that was because mental anguish spawned creativity or what. But I was seriously kicking ass with my story, and that was literally the only consolation about this entire ordeal.

  “Embrace your child and imagine running through a field toward it.”

  For some reason, when the man said that, all I could picture was running through an open field with my baby and Rush by my side. I just couldn’t imagine going through this journey without him, couldn’t foresee life without him. Whenever I imagined anything pertaining to the baby, Rush was always there. That was going to be a hard habit to break.

  That evening at work, I wasn’t feeling any more relaxed despite my best attempts earlier in the day. I’d stare down the hallway toward Rush’s office as if he was in there. His presence was everywhere, especially here. Being at The Heights was always the hardest part of the day to get through. Rush’s stamp was all over this place.

  Oak made a point to come up to me during a slow period. “Hey, Gia. How are you feeling tonight?”

  I shrugged. “I’m okay.”

  God, that was such a lie.

  “You sure about that? You seem really down. But I get it.”

  “I miss Rush,” I confessed. “Has he checked in with you?”

  Oak flashed a sympathetic smile. “Not today.” He paused. “But I think he was heading to the Grand Canyon, right?”

  “The Grand Canyon? He’s out west?”

  Oak’s face dropped. “Shit. You didn’t know he was out in Arizona?”

  “No. I had no idea. What is Rush doing in Arizona?”

  “Me and my big mouth.” He shook his head. “I shouldn’t have said anything, but I didn’t think it was a secret. He went to a funeral out there. A man he was friendly with when he was younger died. Name was Pat.”

  My heart was beating out of my chest. “Oh my God. The guy who was like a father to him growing up.”

  Oak nodded. “It was sudden. A heart attack.”

  My heart broke for him. For that to have happened in the midst of everything else seemed so unfair. Then my heartbeat really started to accelerate because I remembered the whole story he told me about Pat…and his daughter. Beth. I definitely always remembered her name. The one he’d slep
t with. Pat was her father. They were good friends before they ended up sleeping together. So, if he was in Arizona…he was with Beth.

  My roommates had accumulated a lot of stuff over the summer that they couldn’t bring back with them or that they couldn’t store in the City, stuff like boogie boards and surfing gear. So the following day I organized a rummage sale for those items in the house that they couldn’t take with them.

  They agreed to let me keep a percentage of the profits in exchange for standing outside all day hawking the stuff. I needed money now that I’d be moving home and would soon be unemployed.

  Earlier in the week, I’d hung up fliers around town advertising the sale. I added a lot of my own personal belongings to the mix. I had more shoes and clothes than I knew what to do with, and now that the baby was coming, I needed to downsize. So I rounded up a bunch of stuff I wanted to add to the pot. The less I had to take back to the City with me, the better.

  Putting two outdoor tables together side by side, I laid all of the items out. Some of the bigger things, like surfboards, I propped up behind my chair.

  Volume was slow. Cars that happened to drive by would stop, but the majority of the time the people wouldn’t buy anything. Every ten minutes or so, someone who’d seen one of the fliers would walk over.

  A little after lunch, a flurry of people showed up all at once. I sold off all of the larger surf items to one buyer, and I was left with about half of the other things. The small crowd also left behind a mess on the table of the items they’d rifled through that I needed to clean up.

  My back was turned away from the street as I reorganized the clothes and small goods on display.

  “What’s all this?”

  His voice vibrated through me.

  I turned around so suddenly that it made me a little dizzy.

  My heart nearly stopped at the sight of him. Rush had never looked so amazing. Maybe it was the absence, maybe it was the pregnancy hormones, but it took everything in me not to leap into his arms. The recognition of his scent was both beautiful and painful all at once. I longed for him but wouldn’t allow myself to move toward him.

  Feeling off balance, I muttered, “Rush…”

  “Hi, Gia.”

  The Rush who’d left a couple of weeks ago was a total wreck. The Rush standing before me no longer had red eyes and a pained expression. I wouldn’t say he looked happy, but he looked at peace, like the time away had somehow changed something in him. What exactly that meant for me, I was still trying to figure out.

  Blowing out a shaky breath, I said, “You’re back.”

  “I am.”

  My eyes were working overtime, scrolling up, down, and across him for any signs that he’d been with someone else, that he’d fallen for another woman, or that his heart was no longer mine—as if you could tell those things by just looking.

  He was wearing a jacket I’d never seen before. I wondered if he bought it in Arizona. His hair was no longer mussed from running his fingers through it. He didn’t smell like cigarettes, either, so I was happy to know that he probably hadn’t fallen off the wagon on his travels out west.

  “I’m so sorry to hear about Pat.”

  He squinted like he was trying to figure out how I knew. “Yeah. It was unexpected.”

  “Oak told me that’s where you’ve been.”

  “He did, did he?”

  “I know you didn’t want me to know where you were. He accidentally let it slip.”

  God, I couldn’t stop staring at him. I wanted nothing more than for him to touch me, hold me, kiss me…anything. I couldn’t recall my physical need for him ever being as strong as it was in this moment. I would have been completely fine with forgetting about things for a night and just going inside my place and taking all of our frustrations out on each other. But of course, that was fantasy; the hard stare aimed at me right now was reality.

  “It wasn’t that I didn’t want you to know. Where I was in relation to me and you is irrelevant. I needed to get away, get into a different headspace that wasn’t based on anger. And I needed to do that apart from you. Unfortunately, Pat died in the midst of it, and my being away became mostly about mourning him and only partly about clearing my head.”

  I continued staring at him, my body profoundly aware of his presence, yearning for him to touch me.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I am. His death definitely knocked the wind out of me, though.” He looked down at my stomach, then back up at me. “Are you alright?”

  I shrugged. “Hanging in there.”

  He looked at all of the items still strewn on the table. “Why are you selling this stuff?”

  “It’s almost the end of the summer, and we’ve all accumulated a lot of junk. Plus, I needed to downsize.”

  Rush sucked in his cheeks. “Downsize? Sounds like I wasn’t the only one who did a lot of thinking while I was gone.”

  I looked down and nodded. “I’ve decided to move back to Queens.”

  “And your mind’s made up…just like that? No discussion?”

  “I need to do what’s best for us.” My hand automatically went to my belly. I’d been doing that a lot lately—rubbing and not even realizing I was doing it.

  “And that’s running away? Because fucking running away solves everything, right?” he said bitterly.

  “I’m not running away. I’m just doing what I feel I need to at this point in time.”

  We stared at each other. After a long time, I took a deep breath and said, “Can you tell me you want to be with me? That you can accept the hand we’ve been dealt and move on?”

  His face had been hard, revealing his anger at hearing about me downsizing in anticipation of my move back. But when I asked that question, his features softened. That told me his answer: he felt bad that he couldn’t bring himself to tell me to stay with him. The trip might’ve done him some personal good, but apparently the internal debate he’d been having didn’t come out in my favor.

  Rush looked down. “I wish I could, Gia. I wish I could.”

  I sat out front with the unsold goods until long after dark. When Rush left hours ago, I took a seat in a beach chair that I should’ve been trying to sell and didn’t get back out of it. If someone had a question, I answered from the chair, not even bothering to get up. If they wanted to pay, they had to bring me the cash. His short visit had drained all of my energy.

  It took everything in me to force myself to get up and pack everything that hadn’t sold. Most of the stuff I just tossed into boxes, figuring tomorrow I’d sort out which of my roommates had given it to me to sell. I folded the tables and dragged the bigger stuff into the garage.

  I wanted nothing more than to plop down on my bed, but I’d been sitting in the sun outside all day, and then dragged the boxes in while it was humid tonight, so I was pretty sure that I could use a shower.

  In the bathroom while I undressed, I noticed a little spotting in my underwear. That had happened to me before, and my doctor had said as long as it was light, it wasn’t that unusual. So I tried not to get alarmed, even though it sort of freaked me out. But after I washed my hair, I looked down and noticed that the water running down my leg had a pinkish tint to it.

  Scared, I rinsed off and grabbed my cell phone, calling the doctor while dripping in the shower stall. It was late, so an answering service picked up and said that the doctor would call me back. By the time I dried off and wrapped myself in a towel, my cell was already ringing.

  “Hi, Dr. Daniels. Thank you for calling back so quickly.”

  “What’s going on, Gia? The service said you’re having some bleeding? Is there any cramping with it?”

  “No. No cramping. I had a little spotting and then when I went in the shower, I noticed the color of the water coming down my leg was pink.”

  “Did you do anything out of the ordinary today in terms of exertion? Any heavy lifting or anything?

  “I moved some boxes around…but I didn’t really do
that much lifting. I mostly just dragged things.” God, I hope my stupid tag sale didn’t hurt the baby.

  “Okay. Well, one drop of blood can turn a good amount of water pink. And a small amount of spotting is somewhat common, especially early on. So don’t get yourself too frantic over it. But we should probably bring you in to get checked out. My office is closed, so why don’t you meet me over at South Hampton Hospital in about an hour? Go to the Emergency Room, and just tell the nurse that you’re meeting me. She’ll set you up with an outpatient admission and check your vitals if you get there before I do.”

  “Okay, Dr. Daniels. Thank you. I’ll see you soon.”

  As soon as I hung up, I raced around like a lunatic to get dressed, even though the hospital was only a ten-minute drive. He’d said not to panic, but that was as good as telling an ice cube not to melt in the sun.

  After I was dressed, I picked up my cell to call Rush. My finger hovered over his name in my contacts, and then I remembered Rush and I…we weren’t…whatever we were anymore. I needed to do this alone. But I was also afraid to drive, in the off chance that the bleeding became heavier. So instead, I dialed Riley.

  “Hey. Where are you?”

  “I’m on my way home from a beach volleyball tournament. About three blocks away from the house. Why? What’s up? Do you need something? Some ice cream and pickles, maybe?” she teased.

  “No. I need a ride to the Emergency Room.”

  “Everything seems fine.” Dr. Daniels snapped off his rubber gloves and stood at the end of the exam table.

  I took my feet out of the stirrups and sat up. “So the bleeding is normal, then?”

  “The normal production of hormones when you’re pregnant can sometimes cause changes to your cervix, making it softer, and on occasion more prone to bleeding. You’re actually still spotting a little, so I’m inclined to say that’s all it is. If it were a larger amount of blood, I’d be more concerned. Your sonogram looks okay, but I’m troubled by your blood pressure. It’s a little on the high side tonight.”

  “I’m really nervous…and…I had some stress today.”