“Well,” she began, pulling back to look at me. “I really missed you so I took a few days to come for a visit. I figured we could talk wedding shit and you could catch me up on everything that’s been going on here! Like why you’re in grownup footy pajamas at two o’clock in the afternoon,” she finished just as her denim colored eyes completed a full body sweep. “Jeez, babe. You look like hell.”
“And you’re looking like someone who wants to shell out the extra money for a hotel,” I snapped, my hands firmly on my hips.
“Seriously,” she continued, oblivious to my attitude. “What’s wrong with you? Are you sick?”
With a roll of my eyes, I pushed the front door open wider and waved her in, telling her, “I think it’s just some sort of virus.”
Navie parked her rolling suitcase right inside the foyer and reached up to palm my forehead, immediately going into mother hen mode. “Have you been running a fever?” she asked as she tilted my head from side to side, looking at me closely. For what, I had no idea.
“Uh…” I stared down at my tiny, strange friend. “No. No fever. Just some nausea and vomiting in the mornings and early afternoons and some serious fatigue. That’s been the worst.”
A tiny snort-laugh bubbled up from her throat. “If I didn’t know you were Celibate Sally, I’d think you were pregnant.”
“Pfft,” I laughed. “That’s not possib… wait…”
Oh no. Oh, God. Oh, shit. Oh no no no no no no!
“Har? Hello?” Navie waved her hands in front of my face. “It was just a joke, babe. You have to have sex in order to… No!” she finished with an astonished gasp. “You didn’t! You did! Oh, my God! Did you?”
“But… I… that’s not…” I stuttered, trying to wrap my head around what was happening. “It’s not possible. I have an IUD.”
“You did!” Navie shrieked excitedly, her happiness completely at odds with the internal freak-out I was currently having. “That’s so awesome! Are y’all back together or something?”
“But… I have an IUD,” I muttered again, my brain no longer working correctly.
“Harlow,” she semi-shouted, taking hold of my shoulders and giving me a tiny shake. “I was just kidding about the whole pregnancy thing. It was just a joke. If you have an IUD, you’re good. I just got one of those babies put in myself. I was tired of taking a pill every damn day. I’m covered for the next five years.”
“Five years,” I whispered just as my vision started to close in on me.
“Har? You’re starting to freak me out. What’s happening?”
I did a quick mental calculation and discovered I’d had my IUD for six years, all the while praying I somehow messed up the timeline and it was still good. It wasn’t expired. It couldn’t be expired. There was no way.
“Son of a bitch!” I shouted once reality came crashing down on me. “We need to go to the pharmacy. Now!”
The other shoe finally dropped.
Two hours later, I’d drank about thirty billion gallons of water, peed on approximately a dozen sticks, and was currently pacing the length of my bedroom while Navie and Chloe—who I called in for additional moral support—sat on the bed and watched me, wearily.
“They can’t all be right,” I spouted frantically. “I mean, they can’t be!”
“Sweetie,” Chloe spoke in a soothing voice. “Twelve tests, all positive.”
I began shaking my head in objection. “No. No, that’s not right!” I called as I ran to the bathroom where the pregnancy tests were lined up along the sink. My gaze darted between all the pink plus signs and double blue lines and screens that read pregnant like a giant neon sign.
“There was that one that was negative! Not all of them were positive. One was negative! Maybe that’s the right one.”
“Oh, babe,” Navie cooed. “That’s the one I peed on, remember? You were convinced that all the tests were faulty so I took one to just to make sure?
My shoulders slumped. “Damn it. I can’t believe this is happening,” I cried in defeat as I walked back into the bedroom and collapsed onto the mattress between my two best friends. “This is like a bad dream. Or a movie. I feel like I’m in Home Alone, but instead of forgetting my kid when we go on vacation, I keep getting knocked up!”
I shot a murderous look at Chloe as she did her best not to laugh, trying to mask it with a cough that ended up choking her.
“Sorry, sorry,” she sputtered as Navie ran her fingers through my hair.
The shrill chime of my cell phone sounded from somewhere in the room, and just like every other time for the past two hours, I ignored it. I knew exactly who it was, and I had no intention of talking to him ever again.
“You’re going to have to talk to him eventually,” Navie said.
“Like hell I will,” I scoffed. “This is all his fault. If that asshole wouldn’t keep getting me pregnant, I wouldn’t be in this mess!”
“You don’t think you’re being just the slightest bit unreasonable?” Chloe asked me, a stern expression painted across her face.
“No,” I grumbled, crossing my arms over my chest and staring up at the ceiling, pouting like an indignant child.
“Well you are,” she replied with a small tug to my hair. “It took the both of you to make this happen. It’s no more his fault than it is yours. You can’t blame him for this because you’re scared. That’s not fair to either of you.” My phone chimed once more at the end of her chastisement.
“Answer it,” Navie coaxed softly.
I looked in the direction of my ringing phone, blinking back tears as I sighed. “Not yet. I’m not ready yet.”
I didn’t know what was going on. But I knew that I didn’t fucking like whatever it was.
“Voicemail again?” Derrick asked as I threw my phone into the locker with a little too much force.
“Yep,” I clipped as I grabbed my duffle bag and slammed the locker door. Something was wrong. I could feel it.
I thought I was finally cracking through that goddamned armor she wore around herself for protection. I thought we were finally getting somewhere. But I still felt her tense up every time I told her I loved her. I was still at arm’s length. It was like she was just waiting for something bad to happen so she could cut and run.
Derrick grabbed up his own gym bag and followed me from the locker room, talking as we headed for the parking lot. “Well, you’ve said she’s been sick, right? Maybe she’s just sleeping, man. I’m sure it’s nothin’.”
“Yeah. Maybe,” I grunted, knowing deep in my gut that wasn’t the case. It was something else.
I clicked the locks on my SUV and pulled open the back door, tossing my bag in just as my phone chimed with a text notification from my pants pocket.
Harlow: Sorry I miss ur calls. Been sleeping. Still not feeling well, will call u tmrw.
That was it. That was all she had to say after avoiding my calls all fucking afternoon.
“That her?” Derrick asked, completely clueless to the fact that I was so pissed I was about to crush my phone in my hand.
“Yeah. She says she’s sleeping.”
He grinned and hit me on the shoulder. “See? Told you. You’re off girlfriend duty for the night, my man. Feel like grabbing some beers down at the Moose?”
I gave some thought to his suggestion and decided it was better to go out with a buddy than it was to go home to an empty house and stew on whatever bullshit Harlow was trying to pull.
“Sounds good.” I pulled the driver side door open and climbed in. “First round’s on you. I’ll meet you there.”
Harlow wanted to wait until tomorrow to talk? That was fine. I’d give her the night. But my ass would be on her porch steps bright and early the next morning. I wanted answers and I wasn’t leaving until I got them.
I couldn’t figure out how my life had gotten so off course.
Pregnant before I graduated high school. Married just shortly after graduation and my eighteenth birthday.
I
t felt like I was living in the twilight zone, not in the Murphy house. The house I was currently living in because his parents—the same parents that pushed us to get married so our baby wouldn’t be born “in sin”—convinced us it was bigger than Grammy’s and would make raising a new baby easier.
I had gone from a happy, carefree teenaged girl to a moody, hormonal, wife and mother-to-be faster than my mind could comprehend.
And I was terrified.
Terrified that I wouldn’t be a good mother.
Terrified that I wouldn’t be a good wife.
Terrified that I’d royally screwed up my life.
But mostly, I was terrified because, since getting pregnant and married to Noah, I was more alone than I could ever remember feeling before.
Letting out a heavy sigh, I looked at the clock on the bedside table from my spot against the headboard. 11:53.
Noah had promised he’d be home by seven. He said it was just hanging out with some of the guys from his old team for a bit. But seven o’clock has passed almost five hours ago and, as usual, I was alone.
The Murphys were at some charity benefit in Jackson Hole and planned to stay the weekend. I’d been excited at the prospect of being alone with my husband for what felt like the first time since getting married. I’d planned a big, elaborate dinner that was currently wrapped in Tupperware, sitting in the fridge. I wasn’t all that good of a cook to begin with. Grammy used to say I was kitchen-challenged, but I’d waited on Noah for so long that most of what I made had scorched to the bottoms of the pans.
Blinking back the tears I felt burning my eyes, I turned my gaze from the clock to the framed photo sitting next to the lamp. Lifting it up, I held it in front of me as my free hand rubbed a circular pattern on my belly. When I first saw that little pooch, I’d been amazed, it seemed my baby bump had popped out overnight.
I hadn’t been able to stop touching it.
I rubbed and rubbed as I stared at the picture, my heart splintering in my chest, just a bit as I studied Noah’s. I’d studied that picture hundreds of times over the past couple of months, and every time I felt something in my chest crack.
It was our wedding picture.
The only one we’d taken that day.
We were standing outside the courthouse, me in an ivory, knee length dress with a bouquet of white and peach colored roses, Noah in an ill-fitting suit he’d gotten for a football banquet our senior year that he’d already managed to outgrow. We were both smiling for the camera. It wasn’t the fact that neither of our smiles met our eyes that hurt, it wasn’t even the fact that his arm around my shoulders wasn’t holding me to him tightly like usual. It was what I saw in his warm, whiskey eyes that killed me.
Fear.
Regret.
And worst of all, resentment.
We were too young to have gotten married. Neither of us really wanted that, but we wanted to make his parents happy, and we convinced ourselves that we loved each other and it was the right thing to do.
We were wrong.
We weren’t happy. There were no talks of the future anymore. No mention of NYU or University of Ohio. There was no planning on what we were going to do or where we were going to go once the baby was born. It was like we were living in a holding pattern.
The future remained a topic we shied away from. All the while, Noah tried to dull the pain of the loss of his bright future by partying. He was hardly ever home. If he wasn’t at the gym or working his part time job at the lumber yard, he was with his friends doing God-knows-what. Being a typical eighteen year old boy with no responsibilities.
Meanwhile, I was stuck at home—well, Noah’s home, actually. It had never come to feel like mine. I felt like I wasn’t allowed to go out because I was pregnant. It was for that very same reason that I’d lost the majority of my friends. Chloe was really the only one who stuck by me once the truth came out. I was no longer fun. I wasn’t cool. I was the knocked-up high school student that no one wanted to be around for fear that my pregnancy would somehow magically rub off.
I had Gram, I had Chloe, I had Ethan—even though we weren’t telling him about the baby just yet—and I had Noah, or at least I did… once.
As I looked at the picture I couldn’t stop the tears that leaked out and fell down my cheeks. That picture was the perfect depiction of my and Noah’s after.
After our happiness ended.
After everything good in my life faded away.
After our dreams had gone up in smoke.
God, I hated after. And with the more time that passed, where I sat at home, alone, I began to hate Noah.
He wasn’t the only one feeling resentment. Yet, I was the only one whose life seemed to be affected by the most recent changes. He was still going out, hanging with his friends, acting the part of Pembrooke’s golden boy destined for greatness. I was so angry at him for how he had seemingly abandoned me that I took the passive-aggressive route and refused to take his last name after our so called wedding. It was pathetic, to say the least, but it was one of the only ways I knew to stick it to him and his parents.
Placing the picture face down on the nightstand, I clicked off the lamp and slid further under the covers, trying to shove down my anger and sadness long enough for sleep to pull me under.
I woke with a sharp, blinding pain slicing through my abdomen.
Fumbling around, I managed to find the switch for the lamp and turned it on. It was well after two in the morning and I was still alone in my and Noah’s bed. Another wave of pain hit, and I did my best to breathe through the cramping as I threw off the covers and swung my legs over the side of the bed.
Climbing to my feet, I snatched my phone off the bedside table and hit Noah’s number. Three rings then straight to voicemail. I did this again and again, only to have the same results.
“Pick up, Noah,” I choked past a sob. “Please pick up.”
“You’ve reached Noah. I can’t take your call, but—”
“Shit,” I hissed as I flipped the switch in the bathroom, illuminating the entire space is harsh, white light. Standing in front of the mirror, I barely gave my pale, clammy complexion any thought as I lifted my t-shirt up and pulled at the waistband of my shorts and panties. I knew what I was about to find.
With a broken sob, I held the phone up once more, the screen blurry from my tears. I didn’t bother with Noah again. He’d stopped being my rock, the shoulder I could lean on months ago. Standing in a cold bathroom with the phone to my ear only solidified that.
“Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?”
“Yes. This is… this is Harlow P-prewitt. I think I’m h-having a m-miscarriage. Can you please send an ambulance?”
“Shit!” I gasped, my dream having pulled me from a restless sleep.
“It was just a dream, it was just a dream,” I told myself as I breathed deeply. Once I got my bearings I realized it was already morning. The sun was shining through the bedroom windows, filling it with a warm, peaceful glow that didn’t go with my racing heart.
There was a light knock on the bedroom door. “Harlow?” Navie called. “You awake?”
“Yeah,” I answered, dropping my hand on top of my still flat belly, wondering how long it would take for it to pop out. Strangely enough, after my bout of sanity the night before, I was actually looking forward to that happening. “Be right out.”
“Okay,” she hesitated. “Uh… you might want to hurry.” There was a long pause that she followed up with, “Noah’s here.”
In the light of a new day, it wasn’t lost on me that I’d been a complete asshole the night before. Chloe was right, it wasn’t his fault. I just needed some time to marinate on everything that was happening. Those pregnancy tests, on top of everything that was going on with Ethan and my constant second-guessing when it came to my romantic life, were the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Now that I was thinking rationally once again, I felt like a douche for blowing him off.
As so
on as my feet hit the soft rug that lay across the wooden floors in the bedroom, my stomach roiled. Well, at least I knew why I’d been feeling like shit for a while. Morning sickness was a bitch.
I couldn’t bring myself to look in the mirror and get a glimpse of the disaster that was my dirty, tangled bed head as I opened the door and headed down the stairs.
Noah stood at the foot, just a few feet inside the front door, looking far too handsome for someone with so much anger rolling off of him. Navie was at his side, smiling way too happily so early in the morning.
“Hey,” I said, making my arrival known. I had barely placed my foot on the bottom step when he spoke.
“Why the fuck are you blowing me off?”
Well, looks like it was now or never.
I held my hands up in a placating gesture. “Okay, just calm down—”
“Fuck that,” he snapped. “Why the fuck have you been blowing me off. I want an answer, Harlow, and it better be really good, or so help me God, I’m gonna tan your ass.”
“Noah!” I shouted just as Navie began giggling like an idiot. Heat flooded my blood—and not just from embarrassment. “You’re going to wake Ethan up!”
“No worries,” she chirped jovially. “He left earlier. Said something about ranch chores? I’ve been up for a few hours,” she turned and explained to Noah. “Still on New York time.”
“Okay, then. How about you give me and Noah some privacy so we can discuss things?” I mumbled with big eyes, hoping she got the hint. Luckily, she got it. Unluckily, she didn’t care.
“Oh, no. Nuh-uh. No way am I missing this.”
“Navie,” I warned.
“I feel like I’m in an episode of Dynasty or something. That was set in the mountains, right? This could totally be Dynasty.”
“I’m officially ending our friendship.”
“Bitch, please,” she scoffed.
“Seriously.”
“Harlow!” Noah barked, clearly done with my and Navie’s little exchange.
“Fine!” I huffed as I threw my hands in the air. “I’m pregnant!”
Wildflower (Colors #4) Page 16