by Kimmy Love
She felt a kick in her belly. Every time she felt her baby move, she was reminded of the miracle happening in her body. She loved how often it changed. She had always been a curvy girl with a flat tummy, so seeing her belly button stretch and her feet swell seemed surreal. It made all of the pain she felt during Oscar’s relationship worth it.
She also wanted to direct her anger towards Lydia. She messed things up the first time between her and Oscar and had tried again that night. Tessa couldn’t help but feel sorry for her, however. How lonely does it feel to try so desperately to get a man back who already has his interests in another woman?
She felt sorry for Lydia and hoped that she would find the peace within herself to leave the couple alone. She remembered what Lydia said about going crazy at the thought of losing Oscar. Tessa definitely understood what she meant. That was why it was so hard for her to accept the challenges of Oscar’s life.
Tessa realized she was gripping the edge of the balcony tight when she saw her white knuckles. Oscar stepped out onto the balcony and walked towards Tessa. She didn’t turn around, but she felt his presence. He walked up and wrapped his arms around her from behind. “I know I haven’t been present enough during this pregnancy. But I will always be here.”
He rubbed her stomach, feeling the life growing inside. She turned her head and he kissed her cheek. Whenever he touched her she felt paralyzed but light, filled with emotion but free from anxiety. He made everything feel so right.
“I just don’t want you to leave,” she said, feeling her throat tighten. “But I don’t want you to think I can’t handle being without you.” She reassured him that she wasn’t to be stepped on.
“I’m not going anywhere.” He turned her around to face him. “You’re my number one. You’re always in my mind. Everything I do, every time I think, you’re there somewhere. I can never change that, Tessa.” He leaned in and kissed her.
She felt better hearing his voice and feeling his lips. He made everything feel right.
“I just get so scared. It’s hard when I feel like I don’t have control. My father leaving, it’s just, it all weighs so heavily sometimes.” She had already caught Oscar up to speed on her relationship with her father during an especially long pillow-talk session. He was very understanding, as he lost his father when he was in college as well.
“I know. I’ll always be here to give you what you need to reassure you that I’ll be around,” he said, pushing her hair back.
“I don’t always want to have to tell you, though. I don’t always know what I’ll need. What I didn’t tell you about my father is that I met him before,” Tessa told Oscar. She had never told anyone this before.
“Oh Tessa, what happened?” Oscar asked. “Or, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“No, it’s all right. It was right after I graduated high school. My sister had looked him up online and messaged him, like I mentioned. He ended up blocking me and her, but one of my friends let me use their account to look up his profile. I found out where he worked, and… Well I decided to go there. While my mom left for work one day, I just drove to New Jersey. I just wanted to see what he looked like.” Tessa pulled away from Oscar’s embrace and walked along the balcony. She looked over the edge and remembered that day.
“He worked at a hospital, third shift. I drove to the hospital and expected I probably wouldn’t see him all day. I didn’t know what I was going to do if I even did see him. But right as I pulled into the visitor’s parking lot, I saw him walk out of a door. I only really remembered what he looked like from pictures my mom had, so I was surprised at how much older he looked. He had some gray hairs popping out, but I could still tell it was my dad. I watched him walk from the entrance to his car in a different parking lot, and once he started to pull out, I followed.
“I followed him to a gas station and decided I should turn around. I didn’t have any business there and what I was doing felt wrong. I decided to go into the gas station to get a drink, and he ended up going inside too. I watched him walk right past me. He even said excuse me, although the aisle was wide enough for the both of us. He gave me a smile and a strange look, but probably because I was just staring blankly at him. He went to the cooler, grabbed a soda, paid, and left, all while I stood in front of the candy bar section.
“I saw him get into his car and decided to follow him just for a moment further. I know it’s weird. I wouldn’t do it again, but I felt drawn to him. He only lived a few minutes from the gas station, and I parked further down the block, so he wouldn’t notice me. I watched him walk into a house. This was early in the morning, around the time most people are leaving for work and school.
“I thought about walking up to the house and knocking on the door. If he was alone, maybe we could have some coffee and catch up. I was his daughter, surely, he’d want to at least see what I looked like, right? Just as I worked up the courage to walk to the house, I saw a woman come out. A white woman at that. She got into an SUV and two younger boys ran out, probably half my age. They climbed into the car and started to pull out. My dad walked them down the driveway and waved goodbye.
“I had just watched my stepmom take my two brothers to school in the morning. I broke down in the car right there. Here I was, crying outside my dad’s house, and he had no idea I existed. He looked me right in the eyes and didn’t even know that I was his own daughter. Do you know how that feels?” Tessa was crying by now. Oscar walked over and grabbed her.
“I just, I don’t want my child to ever have to feel that way. To look into their father’s eyes and feel no love, no compassion. When I read rumors online about our relationship or hear that you might not be there in a time when I need you, I just feel like that girl again, crying in the car. The girl who was brave enough to drive across the state and spy on her father but the girl too weak to see him waving goodbye to other kids that morning.” She leaned into Oscar and he held her tight.
“I love you and our baby more than I’ve ever loved anything on the planet. You don’t ever have to worry about feeling that way again.” Oscar squeezed her tight and kissed her head.
She cried hard into his chest. That had been one of the worst days of her life. She started out feeling confident in herself and satisfied with her relationship. She ran into her lover’s ex-wife and got bombarded by paparazzi who shouted disgusting questions at her. To top that all off, she realized she’d be heading back to New York alone and she was faced to confront her issues with her father. She just wanted to crawl inside Oscar. Inside his heart where it was warm and peaceful, and she didn’t have to think about the rest of the world.
A place where she didn’t have to think of her two unknown brothers. Two boys that shared half of her and she didn’t even know their names. She didn’t want to think of all the people reading the rumors about her, commenting horrible things about the type of person she was, even though they didn’t know how to spell her name right.
She just wanted to think about Oscar and her baby. When she thought of them, everything else went quiet.
Chapter11
Tessa hadn’t slept much the night before. She lay awake in bed while she felt Oscar slowly breathing next to her. She felt alone when he was asleep, and she lay awake, but felt okay with her situation that night. She needed some time to think to herself and sort out the thoughts that had stormed her brain the day before.
She lay on Oscar’s chest. She loved being able to feel his heartbeat next to hers at night. Even when he was asleep, he would still wrap his arm around her and pull her in close. She found it more difficult to get comfortable every night as the baby grew larger and larger, but when she was sleeping next to him, she was able to relax a bit.
She still hadn’t been able to sleep well that night. Her day had been an emotional roller coaster. She had to confront so many of her fears at once that she felt exhausted, like she had been hit by a bus. Part of her felt good, however, knowing that she had gotten so much off her chest with
Oscar the night before.
Each and every time they had to have a small argument or confront an issue together, she felt so much closer to him the next day. It was scary for her to feel so close and so connected with a person. It was still one of the greatest feelings she had ever experienced, despite being terrified by it all.
Before she knew it, the sun was rising. She had drifted off to sleep a few times, but each moment she thought she was finally asleep, she’d remember something from the day before that made her awaken. She remembered the paparazzi flashing their lights in her face. Realizing Lydia had invaded her privacy and released something so personal to them. She felt sick at the thoughts speeding through her mind.
Having Oscar sleeping peacefully next to her could only help so much. Before she knew it, his alarm was going off. Even though it was a Saturday, he was still going to meetings every day to make sure the opening was running smoothly. He easily could have hired someone to replace him at the opening. He could have hired a team of people, in fact.
Instead, he chose to go himself, really showing that he was doing everything he could to prove he was a good, dedicated man to the company. It was this that made Tessa love him all the more. She pretended to be asleep when Oscar finally turned the snooze off his alarm and crawled out of bed. He leaned over and gave Tessa a long kiss on her forehead. She opened her eyes and saw him looking down at her.
“Sorry, go back to sleep,” he said, kissing her cheek again.
“It’s okay, I was kind of awake already.” She was feeling self-conscious about her morning breath, but he didn’t seem to care.
“Get some sleep, beautiful girl. I’ll try to make it home early today,” he said as he kissed her one more time and headed for the bathroom. She rolled over and threw the blankets over her. She felt so comfortable in the bed that she thought she might never leave. She started to drift away again but Oscar hopped back in the bed, squeezing her from behind and kissing her neck. He smelled so good lying right next to Tessa. She could smell all the soaps and lotions he just put on during and after his shower. She felt so comfortable that she didn’t even mind his cold and wet hair tickling her face. “I don’t want to go!” he said.
“I love you, Tessa. Have a good day.” He kissed her one last time on her cheek.
“You too,” she whispered, closing her eyes. She heard him leave and tried to drift away again. She still had no luck, so she decided that lying in bed the rest of the day wasn’t an option. She needed to get out, but she thought about the paparazzi that had followed them home the night before. They’d probably still be waiting for her to leave, ready to snap a photograph. She decided there was a way around this and enlisted the help of Josiah to make sure she would make it out of the apartment building without her picture being taken.
*****
“I just grabbed a few styles because I wasn’t sure exactly what look you were going for,” Josiah replied, pointing down at the kitchen counter where he had laid out about five different wigs for Tessa to try on.
“Wow, Josiah, this is great. Do you think it will actually work?” Tessa asked.
“It’s worth a shot,” Josiah replied. “When I got here, it looked like about three guys were waiting for you to come down. There’s a security guard out there, but that doesn’t seem to be deterring them away at all.”
“Well, hopefully this will work.” Tessa picked up a long brown wig. It was stick straight, and different enough to her own hair that she hoped no one would tell.
“Look, I really don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go without any security though. Oscar would kill me if he found out that I was doing this for you,” Josiah responded. “You know we could get a few guys to drive you around wherever you wanted to go.”
“I really don’t want to have to do that, Josiah. I’m leaving soon, and I want to be able to enjoy this city with my last few moments as just a girl, not a mother. Soon enough I’ll have a little baby always with me that I’ll have to take care of. I don’t want to have to do the same for a team of security guys, okay?”
“I know what you mean but—” Josiah started to say.
“But nothing. Oscar doesn’t need to know about every little thing I do. Got it? You owe me one from the paint spill thing anyway,” she teased.
“I’ll leave you to it then,” Josiah stated as he took the remaining wigs besides the brown one, tossed them back into the bag he brought them in, and headed out through the elevator. Tessa grabbed the wig and walked towards the mirror in her bedroom. She slipped on the wig and suddenly transformed into a different person. She had also applied some extra heavy makeup that day. She was pretty talented when it came to using a brush, so she had managed to make herself look a bit older than normal. She would fit in perfectly as an affluent Greek woman just going shopping for the day. She was wearing her fanciest clothes and had really done up the jewelry. She hoped that a woman who looked so desperate for attention wouldn’t receive any at all from the paparazzi.
She was also a bit scared of the woman that she saw in the mirror before her. Was she destined to look like this as she got older? Would she and Oscar end up together and she would turn out like Lydia, always compensating her insecurities brought on by the media attention by wearing too much jewelry and too many layers of cover-up? Tessa snapped a quick picture of herself to use as a reminder to never wind up like the woman she saw in the mirror before her. She added a big hat just to be extra careful and headed for the elevator.
Once she was on, the doors closed in front of her, showing her reflection once again. She couldn’t help but laugh, thinking about how her outfit might actually help her pull this trick off. The doors opened to the lobby and her laughter quickly faded. She went to the front of the lobby and was just about to open the door when she made eye contact with a paparazzi through the glass door. She stood there, frozen. He looked away, probably not recognizing her, but she still couldn’t help but feel scared. She turned around and decided to call it quits.
Then she realized she didn’t want to have to live her life in fear because of these men. She just wanted to do a little retail therapy after a stressful day and before heading back, where she’d be thousands of miles away from all of the interesting boutiques tucked away in Athens. She took a deep breath and decided she still needed to make it out of that apartment complex. Maybe the front door just wasn’t the best option.
She saw a door in the lobby labeled “Employees only.” Surely there would be an exit through there, right? She walked over to the door and reached for the handle. It wasn’t locked! She looked around and realized no one noticed, not even the doorman or security guard standing in the lobby. When she opened the door, she saw a long hallway with several doors attached.
They were likely manager’s offices or breakrooms, so it wasn’t that big. She hurried all the way to the end and there it was! An exit! She pushed open the door, scared she might set off some sort of alarm, but much to her luck, nothing happened. The door opened to an alley and she was immediately hit in the face with the smell of garbage.
Though it was certainly unsatisfying, it was a much better fate than if one of the paparazzi had noticed her. She adjusted her top, making sure her baby bump was still well hidden, and headed down the alley to the street.
When she emerged on the sidewalk, she looked back towards the entrance of the apartment building. There were a few guys standing outside with cameras still, but none of them noticed Tessa at all. She had done it! She felt so free.
She remembered how just a few months ago, she could walk out of her apartment at any time and no one would care. Was Oscar right? Would they eventually go away? Or would this be her life every day moving forward? She didn’t want to have to think about that. Instead, she decided to pop into a child’s store that was right next to the apartment building. She drove by it almost every day but hadn’t gone in just yet. Her and Oscar had both agreed that it was best if she avoided stores like that just in case she ran into someone that e
ither of them knew. She wasn’t agreeing to that anymore, certainly not today.
She opened the front door and was immediately filled with bliss. She started to look around at all of the adorable little clothes, shoes, and other things all made specifically for babies. She couldn’t believe that something so small was how everyone she knew and loved had started. She thought about what Oscar might have been like as a baby. Was he fussy or calm? Was he shy or vocal? She didn’t know much about how she was as a baby, either.
She hoped her baby would be a little calmer than Maverick was as a baby. He was pretty fussy. Tessa would watch him for Jade over the summers, but as soon as she left, Maverick would cry. He would cry pretty much the entire time until Jade got home, too. Tessa didn’t want this for her baby, but she was prepared to accept the chance that he might be. It amazed her that she could know so little about the tiny thing that was living right inside her own body.
“Geia, pós eísai?” The sales woman approached Tessa.
Though she could understand that the woman had asked her how she was, Tessa still responded, “Sorry, I don’t speak Greek.” Tessa could understand a few sayings here and there, but instead of trying to embarrass herself by reciting a different language, she just tried to make everyone aware that she didn’t speak anything other than English very well.
“Ah, I speak a little English!” she said. “I’m Alexa. Can I help you find anything?”
“I’m just browsing today,” Tessa replied.
“Are you pregnant?” Alexa asked.
“Yeah, actually, I am expecting,” Tessa said. She hadn’t told anyone besides her mother and sister, Maria, and Oscar. Josiah was the only one besides these four who knew, and Oscar was the one who had told him. It felt good to not have to pretend she wasn’t, for once. She understood why it was important to keep her pregnancy a secret, but she still wanted to be able to tell everyone that she was a mom-to-be.