Jack giggles and takes his hand out of his mouth, flinging spit towards me as he points his finger at me. He falls forward, laughing the whole way as he collides with my stomach. I lean back on the sofa and hold him against me. He kneads my stomach and chest as he giggles, and finally head-butts me in the boob.
I laugh. “Already all about the boobs, are you, Jack? Must be instinct.”
Something stirs inside me as Jack giggles again and reaches up towards my face. His tiny fingers brush my mouth and I kiss them gently. I hold his little arm in my hand and give his fingers another kiss.
“He likes you,” Rosie says as she walks back in. I jump and start moving towards her. “No, no, you hold him. It’s nice to have a break.”
I sit back and Jack settles back into me.
“I can’t believe how soft his skin is,” I breathe.
“I know. All these creams and serums and every day I’m reminded of what my skin used to be,” Rosie says wistfully. “It’s so not fair.”
I laugh and shake my head. The baby shuffles against me and I feel that same tightening of my core. I stroke his back, up and down his spine and he settles down against me. Within seconds, he’s asleep. Rosie whistles.
“We should keep you around more often,” she says with a laugh. “I never get him to bed that easily.”
“I’m afraid to move,” I say in a whisper.
Rosie laughs. “Don’t be. You’re really good with him, you know. You sure you don’t want kids?”
“Definitely not,” I say, but there’s no force behind my words. I look at Jack and brush his thin hair off his forehead. Suddenly my ‘definitely not’ feels more like a ‘maybe’.
What if I had a baby of my own? I glance up at Rosie and catch her looking at Jack as if he’s the most precious thing in the world. He is, to her. Her eyes flick up to mine and she smiles.
“Best thing that ever happened to me,” she says. “But don’t you go and get pregnant like I did. I got lucky.”
“You definitely got lucky. Lucas was head over heels in love with you from the first day. And here I am, perma-single. And if I’m not perma-single, I’m pursuing literal criminals.”
Rosie laughs. “He was acquitted, wasn’t he? Or the charges were dropped?”
“Yeah, but then he goes and buys a run-down hotel in my hometown to try to flip it? Come on.”
Rosie sighs and shakes her head. “It’s such a shame. I haven’t seen that spark in your eye - maybe ever. The way you were talking about him reminded me of Harper and Zach, way back in the day.”
Jack starts snoring gently and wriggles as he sleeps. I chuckle and stroke his back. My hand covers almost his entire body and I lean down to kiss the top of his head.
Do I want this?
I shake my head and sigh. Even if I do want this, it’s not like it’s an option right now.
“Just going to have to start back at square one. New York has what, like eight and a half million people? So at least four million dudes? Surely ONE of them is ok? Is that too much to ask?”
Rosie smiles sadly. “You’ll find someone. Don’t worry, Jess.”
“I’m not worried. I’ve always been happy being single! Fuck, I mean I am happy being single,” I say. I look down at Jack. “Sorry for swearing.” I look back at Rosie who chuckles as I keep talking. “I think being with Owen back in my hometown just made me see a different side of relationships. Like, I could see the good side of it. And you and Harper and my friend Sam are all getting married and having babies and what am I doing?”
I sigh and Rosie comes to sit next to me. She puts her arm around me and leans her head against mine.
“Chin up, Jess. You should ask him about it. Don’t just cut him out. Learn from my mistakes with Lucas. Just talk to him and see what he says. If the love is there, it’s worth fighting for.”
“Love,” I say with a snort. “Is that what this is? Doesn’t feel like love.”
Rosie just grins at me and shrugs. Just then, Jack wakes up and starts wailing. Rosie makes motherly noises and grabs him, bouncing him over her shoulder. I stand up.
“I’ll leave you to it. Thanks Rosie.”
“Anytime,” she says with a smile. I lean over and kiss her on the cheek, and then kiss Jack as he screams his head off. I wave goodbye as she turns towards Jack’s bedroom. I can still hear the sound of his crying as I close the door behind me and head out towards the street.
No, I don’t want that. It looks exhausting and tireless. I definitely don’t want that.
But as I walk away I can still smell Jack’s fresh baby scent on me, and I can still feel his impossibly soft skin under my fingers. I think of the way Rosie was looking at him with complete adoration in her eyes, and I can’t help but wonder what it would feel like to have a kid of my own.
Chapter 36 - Owen
After three days of complete silence, the phone finally rings and Jess’s name appears on the screen. I sit down in my office chair and pick it up, hovering my finger over the ‘Ignore’ button. With a deep breath, I decide to not be petty and click the green button to answer.
“Hey,” I say into the phone.
“Hey,” comes her voice. I can’t help it, even hearing that one word, even hearing the hesitation in the way she’s speaking doesn’t stop my heart from beating a little bit harder. I take a deep breath and wait for her to speak.
“So, how are you?” Her voice sounds so forced. I frown and let out a sigh.
“I’m fine. What’s going on, Jess? I thought… I don’t know what I thought. I thought you wanted to keep seeing me, but now I’ve hardly heard from you at all since you left.”
“I did! I do! I mean…” Her voice trails off and I wait. She takes a deep breath and lets it out. It blows into the phone and I wait for her to speak. “I googled you,” she finally says.
My heart drops like a stone. Her words sound so final. I’ve heard it before. Ever since the trial, I’ve been thrown out of restaurants, had backs turned on me, been shut out of the social circles where I used to thrive. And for what? For my father’s mistakes?
“Right,” I respond. “The trial.”
“Yes, the trial,” she spits. “When I asked you why you left New York, you didn’t think being accused of millions of dollars worth of fraud qualified?”
“Why would I need to tell you anything?” I almost shout.
She gasps. “I opened up to you, Owen. I told you things that I’ve never told anyone before. And now your’e asking why you would tell me anything? How can you sit there and tell me that you’re upset I haven’t called you in one breath, and in the next you justify not telling me that you were convicted of a FELONY!”
“I didn’t do it! I didn’t do any of it and it’s been following me around for months. I wanted you to get to know me for me and not run off and look up my name and everything that people said about me and my family.”
“Right.”
“The charges were dropped.”
“Did you know it was happening?”
“No! I swear,” I say. I put a hand to my forehead. “I swear. I didn’t know until the trial.”
“So your father was syphoning millions of dollars into his own pockets and you had no idea?” I can hear the incredulity in her voice.
“No, I swear, Jess. I didn’t know. If I had known I would have done something.”
I can hear her breathing on the other end of the phone but she says nothing. The anger starts to grow inside me as she remains silent. How dare she call me and accuse me of these things! Instead of talking to me like an adult and asking me for my side, she just reads tabloids and accuses me of the same things all over again!
“You’re no angel yourself,” I find myself snarling into the phone. “I’ve heard about how you got into Columbia.”
“Columbia?” She sounds genuinely confused, but my anger doesn’t let me acknowledge it. I keep going.
“Yeah. Columbia. You m
ade me believe you worked and turned yourself around and got in on your own merit. What a crock of shit that was. Yeah, I heard the stories.”
“A crock of shit?!”
“And sneaking around with Mary Hanson’s fiancé, Christ, Jess, it’s like you have no shame at all. You made me believe that you wanted to keep us quiet to protect me, but you were just protecting your own reputation in this town. Well let me fill you in: you have no reputation here. It’s not salvageable.”
I can feel the anger radiating through the phone. “Mary Hanson,” Jess says in a complete deadpan voice. “You’re telling me that you believe Mary Hanson over me?”
“Yes, I do, actually,” I spit out.
“Owen, I don’t even know who Mary Hanson’s fiancé is. The guy I supposedly messed around with behind her back. I got a scholarship to Columbia because I had the best SAT scores in the state. Oh, and fuck you.”
The phone clicks off and I stare at the blank screen. My heart is pounding and her words ring in my ears.
“Fuck,” I say under my breath. “Fuck fuck fuck!!”
My hands are shaking as I try to dial her number again. It rings.
“Come on, come on, answer, Jess, please,” I whisper to myself. Halfway through the next ring, it goes straight to voice mail and I hang up, throwing my phone down and putting my head in my hands.
Fuck.
I lean back in my chair and stare at the ceiling, trying to understand what just happened. I mean, I know what just happened - we got into a massive fight. She came out swinging about the trial and I lashed out.
This is the first woman that I actually started to care about, the first woman who held my interest for more than a few hours, the most intelligent and beautiful woman I’ve ever met, and what did I do? I accused her of sleeping around, of sleeping her way into college and I let her open up to me without telling her anything about myself.
I take a deep breath and stare at my black phone. I sigh. I don’t know how to fix this. I don’t even know if I can fix this.
There’s a knock on the door and Joe pokes his head in.
“Hey, boss. Just letting you know - you ok?” He frowns as he looks at me.
“Yeah, I’m fine. What is it?”
“Nothing, I’ll sort it out. You sure you’re ok?”
“I’m fine, Joe.” He nods and turns to leave before I call him back. “Joe, how much do you trust Mary?”
His eyebrow moves ever so slightly upwards. It’s an almost imperceptible movement, and his voice is completely flat. “Trust her with what?”
“If she told you something about someone.”
Joe’s shoulders relax and he let’s out a snort. “I’d trust her about as far as I can throw her. No, I’d trust her as far as she can throw me,” he says with a laugh, running his hands over his belly.
I chuckle bitterly and nod. “Right. Thanks, Joe.”
He grunts and closes the door as he leaves.
I can’t believe I said those things to Jess, that I accused her of all the things that Mary told me. I knew they weren’t true and I still threw them in her face. Of course they weren’t true! I rub my hands over my face and sigh again.
How he fuck am I going to get her to forgive me for saying those things to her? How the fuck am I going to get her to trust me after I hid my past from her?
Chapter 37 - Jess
Block. Delete. Ignore.
That’s the advice I would give any of my girlfriends if they were in my situation right now. But as my finger hovers over the word ‘block’, my whole body is shaking and the tears are streaming down my face.
I thought he was different. I thought he cared about me, but at the first sign of conflict he did exactly what everyone in that fucking town did to me when I was sixteen - shut me out and accuse me of being a whore.
Well, fuck him.
My finger drops down and his number is blocked. Before I can change my mind, I delete his number and flick to every app where we’ve connected. Social media, email, phone. Block, delete, ignore.
He’s shown his true colours, and all it took was a week apart.
What was I thinking?? Of course this would end in disaster. Who am I to think I’ll meet my prince charming and live happily ever after? I was fucking dreaming. Even if he wasn’t a criminal before moving to that town, living there would poison anyone’s mind.
I put my phone down and head to the bathroom. In seconds I’ve stripped my clothes off and I’m standing under a burning jet of hot water. I let it wash over me for a few seconds, standing completely still, until the reality of what’s just happened hits me.
The sobs start in my stomach, and my whole body shakes. They come up and scrape the back of my throat before erupting out of me, making me double over as I cry under the running water.
I cry and cry and cry until it hurts. Everything hurts. My skin is raw from the hot water, my throat is raw from the sobs. My eyes are puffy and my whole body feels swollen. Finally, my sobs quiet down and I wash myself, moving slowly and gently until my pain turns to numbness and my body is clean.
The bathroom is completely steamed up, and I’m glad I can’t see in the mirror. I don’t want to see what I look like right now. I wrap a towel around myself and shuffle to the bedroom, climbing under the covers and huddling into a ball.
My hair will be sticking up in a thousand directions if I sleep on it like this, and my eyes will be swollen shut when I wake up, but none of that matters.
My pain turned to numbness and now all I feel is a crushing tiredness. My bones feel tired, and every movement is difficult. I lay in bed in my towel and wrap the blankets around me, tuck my chin into my chest and hug myself until I fall asleep.
When I wake up, everything aches. I move slowly, checking the time on my phone before heading to the bathroom. It’s seven pm, which means I slept for three hours. The steam on the bathroom mirror has long since cleared and I stare at myself in silence.
I wasn’t wrong.
My eyes are so swollen I hardly recognise myself. My hair is almost dry, with a flat patch on one side of my head and frizzy curls on the other. I sigh, turning the tap on to cold water to wash my face.
I head to the kitchen and pour myself a glass of wine from a half-empty bottle before shaking my head and chuckling bitterly. I am the typical depressed woman, drinking wine alone in her apartment after crying in the shower and then napping. I’m still wearing my towel.
I knew the guy for a week, for fuck’s sake. It’s not like we were married. It’s not like he cheated on me, or abused me. It just didn’t work out. I had my cry and now I should just move on.
Still, the thought of Owen makes my chest ache. I bring my glass of wine to my lips and close my eyes as I swallow. I can almost feel the touch of his arms around my body, and the taste of his lips against mine. I can almost feel the way he would brush his lips against my neck or the way he’d pull me closer and sink his fingers into my body.
Almost, but not quite.
I open my eyes again and stand up a bit straighter before finishing my wine in one gulp.
This isn’t me.
I knew the guy for a week, and now it’s over. He said all the horrible things that everyone in my home town used to say to me, and that’s unforgivable. I moved away for a reason, and I’m not going to let the promise of good sex and some cuddles drag me back there.
The bottle of wine is almost empty, so I dump the rest of it into my glass. I pull some sweat pants on and wrap a comfy sweatshirt around my body, and then curl up on the sofa with my wine. I put on a movie and settle in to my couch.
It’s hard to get comfortable. The pillows are either too lumpy or too hard or too small. I remember lying in the grass with Owen after we made love and my chest squeezes, but I shake my head to forget it.
I’ve spent many nights alone in this apartment with a glass of wine and a movie, and I’ve been perfectly happy. It’s no different now.
> As I struggle to get comfortable, I admit to myself that it is different. It’s completely different. I may have spent lots of time alone, but this is the first time I feel truly lonely. There’s no one to wrap their arms around me, or to stroke my hair, or to kiss me on the temple. There’s no strong chest to lean against, no other heartbeat to listen to as I drift off to sleep.
There’s just me, my wine, and my movie, and it’s starting to feel like it’s not enough anymore.
Chapter 38 - Owen
She’s blocked me everywhere. That’s as clear a message as I need. She’s moving on. Whatever we had, however great that week together was, it’s over. She’s gone, and I’m here, and that’s that. It was a fling, and we both need to move on.
Even if I wanted to reach out and talk to her, to explain my past, to apologise for saying those things to her, I can’t. I don’t know where she lives or where she works, and even if I did, what would I do - show up at her work and beg her to talk to me? If that’s not creepy than I don’t know what is. This isn’t some Hollywood rom-com.
The weeks go by and the hotel gets busier and busier as we move into summer. The first couple weeks, every time I lie in bed I see her face beside me. Every time I grab something from the shed, I see her standing there in her blue dress. Every time I hear the birds singing, I remember the day by the river when I started falling for her.
How can one week feel so long? I feel like I’ve known her my whole life, but she just appeared and then disappeared just as quickly.
Business is booming, and the townspeople seem to have accepted me, or at the very least they tolerate me. The bar is busy every weekend, and the hotel gets more and more people every week. Everything is going well, profits are through the roof. It’s more successful than I could have imagined, but it still feels stale.
This isn’t my town. This isn’t my home. Even if it was, I can’t seem to shake Jess from my mind. Everywhere I turn, something reminds me of her. I can hardly look her grandmother in the eye. The other day she gave me advice for the front flowerbed, and I couldn’t focus on what she was saying because I was too busy thinking of Jess.
Knocked Up... Again! Page 11