Designed

by Alicia Renee Kline

  “When? How? Who?”

  “I’ll just skip over the how, since it’s obvious you have a grasp on that. It was a long time ago. The baby was Chris’s.”

  “What happened?”

  I shrugged. “I’ll never really know, I guess. I had a miscarriage. Usually it’s due to some kind of an abnormality, but I didn’t have any testing done. I didn’t go to the hospital or anything; it happened in private, in your house. At Christmas, right after you pled out and went to jail.”

  “Why didn’t you say something?”

  The look on his face was sobering. Even though I knew it wasn’t aimed at me directly, his disappointment cut through me. With everything that we’d shared throughout our lives, he couldn’t fathom why I wouldn’t include him in this.

  “Why, Blake? Why couldn’t you have come to me? Why didn’t you ask me for advice? I would have helped.”

  I sighed. “Because I was busy fixing you. You had enough problems of your own. Both of our worlds were crumbling around us, and I could fix yours. As crazy as it sounds, it was simple enough to overcome jail time and legal fees. Everything with you was cut and dried. I could take out student loans and cash advances on my credit cards and pay for your house and your utilities. I couldn’t bring my baby back from the dead.

  “Besides, what would you have done from jail except worry yourself sick about me? I didn’t find out about the pregnancy until after you were gone. I needed some time to decide how I was going to approach it. How I was going to tell him. I needed to sleep on it and figure out what to do. Not in that sense, mind you. But how to work things out so that we could both be involved.

  “What I got instead was the worst news possible. Let’s face it; I’m not the first to have this happen and I certainly won’t be the last. But unlike some people who never find out that they’ve lost a baby, I knew. I had embraced it and become happy about it, and then it was all gone. Even then, my body held on to it, not ready to believe. And I sat and waited for it to happen, until one day it did.”

  “Is that why you wouldn’t talk to each other? Was Chris mad at you?”

  I sighed. “Not exactly.”

  “I just don’t understand. Why would both of you keep this from me? Why didn’t I hear about it until right now? Is it just something that you both ignored so that you could pretend that it never happened?”

  “I ignored it. Chris didn’t know. And I drove the wedge deeper between us in an attempt to save him from the grief and depression that I felt.”

  “So why now?”

  “Because the night you got married, Chris and I talked. And I told him. I ended up breaking his heart all over again, which I never meant to do. And he made me promise to come clean to you. I think because he needs to talk to you about it. He’s conflicted. He basically told me that he’s still in love with the memory of who I was, but that he can’t trust me because of what I’ve done. To be honest, I can’t blame him.”

  “He’s still in love with you,” Matthew clarified. “Even if you’d gone out and committed an axe murder, he’d still be head over heels.”

  “That’s only slightly comforting. A bit disturbing, actually. But what I did feels worse.”

  “Hindsight is always twenty-twenty. You did what felt right at the time. We both gave you a hard enough time about the whole situation; you didn’t want to appear helpless right out of the gate. You wanted to handle it by yourself. To prove that you were capable. And you proved that a hundred times over.”

  “At what price, though? You weren’t there. You didn’t see the way he looked at me. He took me home with him that night, then he announced the next morning that he’d called his boss and picked up an extra shift. Who does that? He had me right where he wanted me and he let me go.”

  “And it pissed you off.”

  I averted my eyes, telling him everything he needed to know. He snorted smugly.

  “So you just expected him to be okay with this? To take you back like nothing happened? To have a bombshell like that dropped in his lap and just pretend like it didn’t matter?”

  “He did call me delusional. You, too, by the way. And whose side are you on?”

  Matthew folded his arms across his chest. Clearly, he was semi-enjoying this. Though there was unmistakable concern etched over his features, he was relishing the opportunity to turn the tables and parent me.

  “There are no sides,” he proclaimed finally. “You’re my sister. He’s my best friend. You guys are the two people who have been with me forever. I’m squarely in the center. Yes, I want you two to kiss and make up but it’s not going to happen overnight. I’ll moderate; I’ll do what I can to assist, but it’s all on you two. And he’s right about the delusional part where we’re both concerned. The younger generation of Snyders is clearly fucked up.”

  I smiled at him until he returned the gesture. Then I scooted myself over until I was leaning against him. He wrapped his arm around my shoulder and let me bury my head into his chest.

  “I spent years telling myself that I didn’t need him, when all along I really did,” I mumbled into his shirt.

  “No, you proved to yourself that you didn’t need him. You became successful all on your own right. You became who you always wanted to be, but you realized that you shut him out in the process. You want him, and that’s the difference.”

  “For someone that’s supposed to be so smart, why do I keep doing things that are so incredibly stupid?”

  “Oh, Blake. You panicked. I can’t say that I blame you. I know just as well as you do that you and Chris were going through a rough patch back then. There were too many outside forces spinning out of control. But instead of talking it out and getting to the bottom of things, you made a quick decision. And you convinced yourself that it was the only way to go. You were scared and overwhelmed and hurting and you internalized all of it and didn’t share.”

  “I didn’t want to hurt anyone.”

  “I know. And Chris knows that, too. It’s just going to take some time.”

  “He said he’d call me. I haven’t heard from him yet.”

  Matthew sighed. “I know you want an easy resolution to this, but it’s not going to happen. If the two of you care about each other as much as I think you do, you’re both going to have to work at it.”

  “How can I work at it if he won’t talk to me?”

  “Trust me. He’ll come around. You’ve waited this long. Just be patient a little while longer.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For not telling you sooner. For keeping all of this bottled up inside and not trusting anyone with it. For suffering all alone. I don’t know how many times Lauren tried to coax it out of me, but I just couldn’t tell her.”

  “That sounds vaguely familiar.”

  I shook my head. “No, this isn’t another you and Lauren thing. You still haven’t told her everything.”

  “And I doubt I ever will. It’s not material to our relationship, and she doesn’t want to know. She can be persistent when she wants answers, but she’s silent on my past. I was speaking more of her coming over to the house before she decided to run away. How she tried to get me to show my hand and I wouldn’t.”

  “Still different. She was nearly engaged to someone else. It wouldn’t have been appropriate to declare your feelings and fall all over her before she’d broken up with Eric. Chris and I were in love. We’d created a life. And I couldn’t tell him. I swore up and down that our relationship was solid, but I wasn’t mature enough to trust him. It wasn’t your fault that we broke up - it was our own. The whole disowning thing just instigated things.”

  “Do you want me to tell Lauren?”

  That’s why I loved him. He asked the tough questions of himself before I could voice them on my own.

  “Would you?”

  I felt him nod.

  “Thank you.”

  “I’d do anything for you. You know that, right?”

  Unspoken wa
s the vow that he’d not only inform my ex-roommate, but also smooth things over as best he could with Chris.

  And though I’d never asked for help before in my life, I clung to that promise like he would deliver. I only hoped that he could.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  My shop was situated right in the heart of downtown Fort Wayne, nestled in a strip of connected office buildings. Amidst the different locally owned boutiques, restaurants and lawyer’s offices - though not my father’s; he had a swanky space in a high rise a couple streets over - it was a blink and you missed it kind of place. Interior design wasn’t exactly a walk in kind of thing; the people that requested my services and actually met me there knew exactly where they were going and that was only because they’d been on the receiving end of my detailed driving directions.

  But there was still something affirming about seeing my name on the signage out front as I pulled my truck into its reserved space in the small alley behind. Snyder Designs. It had a ring to it, though one that I’d debated long and hard on using. Even if I had been disowned, it was still my name. And secretly, I hoped that my father had at least driven past merely out of curiosity and the sight of it had gutted him. Yes, that was me, the child that he’d discounted as high maintenance and needy, with her name on a building.

  The property belonged to me, both the storefront and the small apartment above. I’d purchased the building well before I’d bought my house, but never considered living above where I worked. I’d also never rented it out, preferring to store odds and ends up there instead. I wasn’t keen on becoming an honest to goodness landlord and the extra living area had come in handy on a few nights when I’d still been living with Matthew. As much as I’d prided myself on staying out of Chris’s way, over the years there’d been a handful of times that I’d pulled up the drive to find the Civic parked in front of my brother’s house. Rather than risk confrontation, I’d turned tail and run, sleeping on the futon I kept up there and slinking back home in the wee hours of the morning to freshen up.

  I wasn’t running anymore. Just when I’d stopped, Chris had disappeared.

  And yet it was like a giant weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I hadn’t realized how much the burden of carrying around that secret had hunched me over, practically to the point of my knuckles dragging the ground. I’d come clean, and most of the people that I knew had accepted it and moved on. The world hadn’t ended. The sun had still come up the next morning.

  More importantly, the jealousy I’d bitten back had become less noticeable, easier to swallow down and ignore. Funny how Matthew telling Lauren about my miscarriage had dissipated all that. I had no clue what had been said, only knew that she’d been told. The look in her eyes when she’d seen me in person the next time had thrown any spite out the window. She’d been nothing but concerned, wrapping her arms around me and holding on for the longest time. We’d cried together, then dried our collective tears and gone on with life.

  I knew in the back of my head that the pain would never truly vanish; it merely became easier to bear. Not having to be in hiding helped that immensely. If only I would have realized that sooner - that it didn’t have to be something that I kept to myself - I could have saved the added anguish of the previous decade. Torment was definitely more bitter when it was of the self-inflicted variety.

  Matthew was right: I didn’t need Chris. I wanted him more than I was willing to admit, but that I could deal with. People wanted things all the time that they never got. I was no different.

  I’d booked a couple of big clients since the wedding, which was why I was hanging out at my shop more than usual. Though I could work from home for smaller projects, I much preferred to spread out in my workspace downtown for the bigger ones. There I kept all my fabric books, my wallpaper samples, carpeting swatches and the like. To brainstorm, I tended to throw several binders down on the large desk I had in the back room, flipping through pages until I pieced together a vision.

  In the middle of one such session, my cell phone rang. I marked my place in the book I was searching through, then went to answer it. I knew it was a personal call; it had rung there first. I had the business phone ring over to my cell if it wasn’t answered right away, but the landline in the office hadn’t made a sound. With Lauren’s due date rapidly approaching, I felt a bit of excitement as I rushed to pick it up. Could a baby be about to make an appearance?

  “Hello?” I answered breathlessly, right before the call would have rolled to voice mail. In my haste, I hadn’t bothered to check the display. It had to be one of two people anyway. The thought of Lauren being on the other end preempted my instinct to assume it was my brother and include the “dork”.

  “Blake?”

  The voice on the other end was so unexpected that I stood stupidly in the middle of my workspace, my mouth opening and closing a couple different times with no sound coming out. My pulse quickened, my head spun, and I was instantly taken back to my fourteen year old self as if it was the first time he had called to speak only to me.

  “Chris?” I winced even as I said it. Of course it was him. How stupid could I be? For someone who played the field as well as I could, he’d been able to throw me off my game all too easily.

  “Are you busy?” he asked instead of verifying his identity.

  I twirled a piece of blue hair around my finger as I made myself wait to answer. No need to sound desperate. After what seemed like a reasonable length of time to consider, I responded in the negative.

  “Where are you?” he pressed.

  “At my shop.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  I glanced over at the clock on the wall in front of me. It, like many of the things here, had been chosen not for its practicality but rather for its look. Nowadays, people didn’t wear watches or look at clocks; they consulted their cell phone or laptop instead. Still, it was functional and it was now indicating to me that it was a quarter to one. My stomach growled in sudden recognition of the fact that I’d only had a cup of coffee all day.

  “I could be,” I allowed.

  “Then let’s have lunch. I’ll be there in a few.”

  “Okay.” There was nothing left to say; I was dumbfounded. Stupid enough to begin absentmindedly rattling off the driving directions that I had given to clients so many times. He graciously cut me off.

  “I know where you are,” he said simply. Then he disconnected the call without another word.

  I stared at the phone in my hand for a split second before I made a mad dash to the bathroom. Everything was in order, not a hair out of place, yet I still primped like I was getting ready for the prom. Outwardly, I looked the picture of ease, but on the inside I was ready to throw up.

  “You are fine, Blake.” I said to my reflection. “No big deal.”

  The pep talk didn’t work. I ignored the churning feeling in my core and the cold sweating that accompanied it and headed for the sitting area at the front of the building.

  Even though I didn’t have clients stop by on a regular basis, the foyer of the place was still decorated to the nines. I was all about first impressions, and if someone’s initial walk into my world revealed bare walls and peeling paint, I might as well have gone out of business. For that reason, I’d turned the space into a contemporary setting, complete with clean lines and some abstract artwork. Two straight backed black chairs and a matching loveseat were arranged against the taupe walls. Bamboo flooring rounded out the look - horribly expensive, but in my eyes well worth the splurge. I couldn’t go cheap in my showroom. Even if no one else noticed, I did and it was damn nice.

  I flopped down on the couch, then popped back up seconds later. Maybe I shouldn’t look like I was waiting for him. Perhaps I shouldn’t act like my train of thought had left the station the second that he called, even though it had. I could scare him off by appearing too eager for his arrival. Besides, I wasn’t positive how long it would take for him to show up. A few minutes could mean different things to differe
nt people.

  With that in mind, I headed back to my work area. I tried to remember what vision I’d been working on moments ago. Flipping through the sample books did nothing to jog my memory. Good thing I had plenty of time to work on it later. Corporate clients never intimidated me under usual circumstances. But today wasn’t exactly normal anymore.

  The chime I’d installed on the front door alerted me to his presence. I grabbed my purse from my desk, took a deep breath, and walked back out front to greet him.

  His back was turned to me, allowing me a moment to ogle him from afar. He’d come from work, still dressed in his paramedic gear. Again, I swooned a little, taking in the way his dark hair brushed the top of his collar, the way his muscular tanned arms extended from his short sleeves. Two times now I’d seen him in his uniform and both of them had me wishing I could walk up and strip it off of him.

  Some things never changed.

  “Hi,” I said after a moment.

  He jumped slightly, spinning around. I’d caught him off guard. Considering the turmoil coursing through my own veins, it was only fair.

  “I always wondered what it looked like in here. Now I guess I know.”

  “And?”

  “It reminds me of your brother’s house a little. But different. I can definitely tell there’s similarities, but somehow it’s not the same. Yet it still screams that you’ve had your hand in it.”

  “Is that a good thing?”

  “I never doubted you were incredibly talented. This just proves it.”

  Heat rose to my cheeks and I turned slightly so he wouldn’t see. Pretending it had always been part of my plan, I motioned to the rest of the space. “Want to take the tour?”

  Chris fell into step behind me as I led him around the storefront, then back into the workspace that most people didn’t see. Rattling on about design and functionality was second nature to me and I ran through my script automatically while I composed myself internally. I knew he didn’t care about what I was saying, but he hung on every word.