But that didn't mean every cell in my body wasn't absolutely pining for Brandon Sterling.
The sob in my throat rose and fell as I gasped heavily. Go away, go away, go away. With silent mantras, I willed away the memory of his strong, knife-edged jaw line, his unruly, gold-streaked waves, his tender blue expression and bright smile. I willed away the look on his face when he'd said goodbye, the memory of our last fight, the feel of the last time he'd kissed me. I pushed it all down into the back of my heart where I couldn't feel it anymore.
Except, of course, in the pit of my stomach.
The air felt heavier than it should in mid-May. New York had been having a warm spat for the last week and it seemed like all the heat in the house had risen into my room overnight. A drop of sweat ran down my brow, slid down my cheek, and landed on the top of my collarbone, bare under the strap of my camisole. The feel of it caused my stomach to heave again, this time more violently.
"Just get it over with, Crosby," I muttered as I reached down for the plastic basin next to the bed.
Once I emptied my stomach, both of food and painful emotions, I'd feel better, at least for a little while. It would give me enough energy to go to my doctor's appointment, where I'd find out just exactly how far gone I was. Then I'd finally have to face just what was happening to my life.
~
"Well, you're definitely pregnant, hon. As if the constant yakking hadn't already clued you in on that one, am I right?"
The doctor's voice was annoyingly cheerful. I sat sullenly atop the paper-covered vinyl table, shivering in a flimsy hospital gown. When she took a seat on her stool, Dr. Brown's face dropped at my glowering face. She was a lot more cheerful than I'd expected the staff at a free clinic to be, but I was also her first patient of the day.
"I take it that's not good news," she said more sedately.
"Not really," I said, keeping my hands clasped on my lap and willing both the nausea and the welling tears to subside.
Neither obeyed. It was like pregnancy caused everything to come out of me, emotionally and otherwise. I had literally no power to censor anymore. Whereas I had always had a hard time keeping emotions off my glass face, now they seemed to run rampant through every other part of me as well.
I closed my eyes against the tidal wave of grief. I was tired. So, so tired.
"Oh, dear," Dr. Brown said, and immediately scooted over and grasped my clenched fists. "I'm sorry."
She had the good sense to wait a moment while I calmed down. I had to give her credit for her bedside manner. I probably wasn't the only one who walked through her doors with an unexpected pregnancy.
"It's not that..." I trailed off, choking up more. I didn't have to say anything; I knew that. Still, I felt the need to justify my confusion to this woman. "I...the father, he's just not around..."
"Of course, of course," soothed the doctor.
She gave me another squeeze on the hand before scooting back to the small sink to get me a tissue. I took it gratefully and dabbed at my eyes until finally the tears subsided. With a small sniff, I looked to her.
"Thanks," I said. "I'm...well, you can see I'm a mess right now. And I'm supposed to be studying for the bar exam, and I have to start my new job in two months. And the guy, he's...gone. There's...no one else."
It wasn't completely true, but I couldn't ask my seventy-six-year-old grandmother and my father, a newly recovering addict with a maimed hand, to help me bring up an infant while I left to work the eighty-hour weeks of a new associate. They had enough to deal with just getting their shit together. Theirs was no world in which to bring a new baby, and my life certainly couldn't handle it.
It was a thought that just about killed me. It was easier to push away the image of what that baby might look like, but only because I didn't know what it would look like. I hadn't even permitted myself to think about whether it would be a boy or a girl, whether he would be blond or if she would have my red hair. Whether he would have his father's bright blue eyes, or whether she might have my slanted green. Would the baby be ruddy or fair? Tall or dainty?
Because thoughts like that inevitably led to imagining the life that baby might have had, one where Brandon would hold it close, the tiny body so small that he could cradle its head in the center of his broad palm. He would coo, shelter it with his big shoulders, shelter us both...
I choked down a sob and pressed my face into my hands.
"You really don't need to justify your emotions, honey," the doctor said, offering a kind hand on my shoulder while I got myself under control. "Not to me or anyone. Now, have you decided what you want to do?"
I hiccupped back the remaining sobs, somehow managing to keep my emotions in check. The tears were still threatening to fall, but I looked away from the doctor's kind face and focused on the gray steel trellis from the construction outside the office. I needed to remember where I was. Not in a kind, loving relationship with a man I desperately loved, but a single, jobless, daughter of a disabled garbage collector, the previous mistress of a man who couldn't really be mine. More than one future depended on my choice here today. I needed to take care of the people who were already in the world first.
"I have," I whispered. My voice sounded weak and insubstantial. "I want to...but I can't have this baby right now."
Dr. Brown waited a moment before nodding.
"Are you sure about that?" she asked gently.
Was I? Blue eyes––or were they green?––bloomed inside my mind. I shook them away.
Unable to look at the doctor directly, I just clutched at the edge of my hospital gown and nodded shakily. "Yes. I think so."
Smoothing a professional yet kind expression over her plain features, the doctor nodded and stood up. "All right. Let's talk about all of your options. Then you can decide."
I nodded again. "Okay," I whispered. "Okay."
~
When I returned to the house, a reminder card was in my purse for my appointment on Thursday. The doctor and I had gone over all my possibilities, and she suggested I wait until our appointment on Thursday to make my final decision.
The thought of it hurt my chest. Everything hurt about this situation. There was literally nothing good about it. If you had asked me two months ago what I would have done in the event of an accidental pregnancy with Brandon, I would have been terrified, but I probably would have wanted to keep it. Those were the days with Brandon that seemed so easy, when our rhythm, even one that involved fighting and fucking, always involved making up again. They were the days where even our fights had a rhythm to them, complemented by the ease of the rest of the time we spent together.
But that was before my family's life exploded with my father's latest gambling addiction.
That was before Brandon got wrapped up with the mobster who had nearly killed my dad for his debts.
That was before he lied to me about it.
That was before I knew he had a wife.
That was before he had all but called me a whore just for wanting out of a shitty situation.
How could I possibly bring a baby into this mess? What kind of care could I or anyone else be expected to give it? What kind of care would it get from its parents, two people who had functionally been raised by people other than their parents, two people who would both be working eighty-hour-weeks, two people who didn't even speak to one another anymore?
What kind of life would that be?
I was met by the blare of the TV and Bubbe's sharp voice chattering on the phone in the kitchen. The old brown Victorian house seemed to sag a little under the hotter-than-usual May weather, and the sun shining through the front window was producing a greenhouse effect indoors that made the smell of dried potpourri and stale coffee stronger than usual. My stomach lurched again, but there was nothing to lose. I held onto the door, waited for the feeling to subside, then entered.
I dropped my keys on the small entry table with a loud clink.
"It's at three o'clock, Erica," Bubbe instru
cted as she turned from the kitchen table to glance at me. "Yes, in the temple basement. It's Rachel's turn to bring the knishes, so you might want to bring something else, if you know what I mean."
My grandmother, ever the imposing presence in her five-feet of glory, waved a hand out to catch my attention as I was walking toward the stairs.
"Hold on, Rachel," she said before putting her palm over the telephone receiver. "What did the doctor say, bubbela?" she asked me. "Did you tell her how sick you've been? Did she test you for cancer?"
I rolled my eyes and braced myself against the doorway as another wave of nausea rolled through me. Like the last, this one thankfully just kept going.
"Bubbe, I told you, it's just mono. She did some bloodwork to be sure, and I have to go back on Thursday for the results."
I hated lying to my grandmother, who could read my transparent face better than most, but I had to hope that the misery I felt superseded any other tells.
Bubbe squinted for a moment, the movement causing her stiff dome of hair to move slightly, all at once. She looked me up and down, as if trying to determine the credibility of my story. But that was the thing about my grandmother. She wasn't buying what I was selling, but she was willing to wait until I was ready to tell her the truth. Or not.
"All right," she said with a short nod, then turned back to her friend on the phone.
I pushed off the doorframe and wandered into the living room to sit next to my dad on the couch. Even though I needed to be studying for the bar, I wasn't going to be able to do that until I was sure I wouldn't vomit all over the test materials. And I wouldn't be able to take anything for the nausea until I had decided whether or not to take the other pill that would bring it all to a halt.
Dad's eyes were trained completely on the TV while he held the remote with his right hand. His left hand, the one that had been crushed by a couple of thugs looking for him to pay a bad debt, still bore the dark, ugly scars from his most recent surgery to repair the extensive damage to the nerves. It was wrapped with a soft splint while it healed.
He had been at home on disability for the last two months and likely had at least three or more until he would be clear to go back to work at the sanitation department. It was pretty hard to lift garbage cans when you didn't have use of one of your hands.
His injury also prevented him from pursuing his main love: playing piano with his jazz quartet. As far as I could tell, he spent the majority of his time sitting right where he was in his favorite spot on the old plaid couch, watching the morning news, sports, and then flipping to old reruns of classic TV shows in the afternoons.
Right now, he was watching The Today Show. His piano, the gorgeous Mason and Hamlin upright that was usually covered with sheet music and Dad's scratched-out compositions, stood against the wall behind us, gathering dust.
"Hey, kiddo," my dad said distantly. "Feeling better today?"
Fantastic. Just trying to decide which painful, life-altering path to take.
"A little," I said. "Did you do your physical therapy this morning?"
"What? Oh, yeah, sure I did."
Dad's eyes didn't move once from the TV, where some pop star was gyrating her way across an outdoor stage. I glanced over at the small shelf where Bubbe kept the daily mail. The rubber exercise ball that Dad was supposed to use to strengthen his muscles and break down scar tissue was also gathering dust. The sheet of exercises his physical therapist had given him had been used as a coaster many times over, and currently had three different coffee mugs clustered over it.
I looked back at my dad, but before I could say anything, another wave of nausea hit me, and this one wasn't going away.
"I'll be back," I choked out before sprinting out of the room and down to the hallway bathroom.
Dad didn't move an inch.
As soon as my knees hit the cold black and white tiles of the bathroom floor, the sweat started to build on my forehead. The nausea didn't fade until I had heaved for about a minute, losing the last remnants of the ginger cookies. I laid my cheek on the fuzzy pink seat cover on the toilet and sighed. The room smelled strongly of Lysol and the scented candle Bubbe kept on the top of the toilet bowl.
I took a deep breath. Then another. I wasn't going to vomit anymore, but the nausea wasn't subsiding completely. There was only one thing left to do, and I really didn't want to do it because I knew I'd still feel shitty, even if in a different way, by the end.
"Fuck it," I muttered to myself as the nausea rose again.
I closed my eyes and let my mind wander where it really wanted to go: back to that bright, warm room that smelled like almonds and sunshine, where a pair of strong arms held me tightly and blue eyes gazed into the depths of my crushed soul. Where my heart (and stomach) felt light again.
It was just for a minute, I told myself even as I fell deeper into my daydream. But that was the problem. It was never just a minute with Brandon Sterling, even in my dreams.
~
Chapter 2
The pills were small and white. On Thursday morning at eleven, Dr. Brown gave me the mifepristone, misoprostol, and a prescription for both Zofran, an anti-nausea med, and Percocet, for the pain that would probably start later that day. The first pill was inserted, along with an IUD, by the doctor while I lay on the paper-covered bench, my bare legs in stirrups under the fluorescent lights. I stared up at the ceiling and counted the beige tiles to keep myself from crying.
It didn't work.
On the way home, I stopped at a Duane Reade and picked up an industrial-sized carton of maxi pads, per Dr. Brown's advice. It was a gorgeous spring day: New York in the full green of late spring and early summer. Birds chirped from all the trees planted on my sidewalk, drowning the everyday drone of cars on the busy streets. The air was balmy enough that most people walking around wore shorts. White, puffy clouds punctuated the sunshine, and every so often, a stray butterfly would wisp through the air.
Everything about it made me feel sick.
Still nauseous from the craze of hormones surging through me, I stumbled into my grandmother's house, ignoring Bubbe's questions about how the doctor's appointment had gone and whether they had given me something for the nausea. I pulled myself up the stairs, and lay in bed, waiting for the hours to tick by while cramps slowly built in my belly.
That afternoon, while Bubbe was out with her mah-jongg group and Dad had gone down to the club to meet with his band, I inserted the second pill. An hour later, the bleeding started. Contractions came and went, and I stumbled back and forth between the bathroom and my room throughout the day, hazy from the Percocet, clutching my belly every time the muscles pulled together.
Twelve hours later, it was done.
~
"How are you feeling?"
I stretched out on my bed, holding my cell phone to my ear while I stared at the ceiling. I watched as a lazy cobweb twisted limply in the dank, airless space.
"Fine," I said. My voice was groggy, like I hadn't used it in several days.
"Maybe I should rephrase," Jane said. "What are you feeling?"
Wrapped in an old terrycloth robe that I'd had since high school, I shrugged, even though she couldn't see me. It wasn't a question I wanted to answer, because thinking about what I had done just made me hurt in a completely different way that the Percocet couldn't cure.
"Nothing, really. I just feel...numb. And really tired."
"Is the cramping better now?"
I turned so I was curled on my side. The clock on my bedside table now read ten a.m. Jane, knowing what was going on, had stayed up with me through the day and into the night, picking up every time I needed to cry, needed to yell, needed to whimper, or just needed to be silent with someone else there.
"Yeah, it's pretty much done now," I mumbled. "I...I could tell when it happened."
Jane was silent. We both knew what I meant. She had been calling every hour since I'd gotten home from the clinic, worried that I didn't have the support system recommen
ded for going through the procedure by myself. At first, I'd fought it, but no one ever tells you that an abortion is going to be painful enough that you'll want to have someone there to help. No one tells you how much it might hurt, inside and out.
"Does your grandmother know?" she asked again.
I sighed. "I don't know. Maybe."
That was the truth. I had tried to hide as much of the evidence as I could, and I had told Bubbe and my dad that the mono was acting up again. But the ginger cookies stopped appearing next to my bed, and Bubbe had been giving me awfully sad looks when she came upstairs to check on me.
"What about...you know who? Are you going to let him know what happened?"
I rolled my face into my pillow. There was that ache again, not in my belly, but in my heart. It wasn't the first time she'd brought up his name in the last twelve hours without actually saying it. At one point, when the pain was at its worst, I had cried into the phone that this was all his fault, that I missed him, that he should be here, but I'd expressly forbidden Jane to contact him at all. I didn't want him to know about this, ever.
"It's probably for the best," Jane said when I didn't respond. "You don't need any more stress."
"Yeah."
It was all relative. Just a different kind of stress.
"Did you see the Forbes profile I sent?"
I groaned. "Jane! I'm trying not to think about Brandon!"
I had, in fact, seen the magazine cover while I was waiting in line at the pharmacy. A full-page spread of Brandon's patented, thousand-watt smile had been kind of hard to miss. Luckily, I had been much too sick to do anything more than glare at it with equal parts longing and hatred. Extreme nausea will do that to you.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Jane said. "I just wondered if you had read the article. He sort of mentions you."
I flipped over onto my side. "What?"
"I'm sending it again."
With energy I hadn't felt in several days, I swiped my laptop off the ground and flipped it open on the mattress. I pulled up my email and opened the link that Jane had sent.
It was a puff piece, a typical rags-to-riches story that highlighted Brandon's many accomplishments in the financial and legal world. Most of the Q&A-style article consisted of fairly generic questions about his secrets to success, daily habits, things like that.
Legally Mine (Spitfire Book 2) Page 2