“Okay, so? Now, that you had her? Was she worth it?”
“Yes,” I say immediately. “Yes, she was.” I would say that to O anyway, even if Brielle wasn’t worth it, but it’s not a lie. Everything in my body says that I’m right. That what we have has been right and good and perfect.
“So now that you know the truth, that Brielle and I are the real thing, you’re going to have to treat her a little better. A lot better.”
O laughs and rolls her eyes, but agrees.
* * *
Before leaving, Brielle’s mother stops by to bid us good-bye. I’m not sad to have her go, but I’m surprised that she’s leaving so soon. I invite her to stay half-heartedly, but she insists that she must go. Luke is waiting for her. She has a plane to catch out of LAX. Our goodbye is short. She thanks me again for the money and shakes my hand. She congratulates O on her pregnancy, tells her to not worry and call her at any time, if she has any concerns. O agrees and, by the tone of her voice, I know that she actually might. It’s odd how well O and Danielle connected. O isn’t one to make friends easily with other women. The closeness that I see between them reminds me of how far apart O is from our own mother. But then again, relationships between mothers and daughters are often difficult and treacherous. My mother barely spoke two words to my grandmother, and I have hardly anything to say to my father.
“What about Brielle? Should I call her down?” I ask.
“Oh no, there’s no need. We already said our goodbyes. It was a pleasure to meet you both!”
After Danielle leaves, I go upstairs to see Brielle. Something doesn’t feel right. I call her name going up the stairs, but she doesn’t reply. I say it again when I knock on her door. But again I hear back nothing.
“Brielle?” I ask opening the door. “Are you okay? Your mom just left.”
Her bags lay open on her bed. They are half full of clothes and she sits on her bed facing the window. She doesn’t turn around, but as I get closer, I can see that she has been crying. Her eyes are puffy. Her makeup is smeared and her cheeks are red.
“What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
She shakes her head, no. She opens her mouth to say something but gets choked up by her tears.
“Why are your bags out? Where are you going?”
She takes a moment to gather herself. She stands up and wipes away her tears. “I’m leaving,” she says.
“What!?” All air gets knocked out of me.
“I’m leaving,” she repeats herself quietly. “I can’t stay here anymore.”
“But why?”
“Ophelia’s pregnant. And now that you know, she needs you. My mom is going to be in
France for awhile, I’m going back home. You don’t need me here.”
I don’t understand anything she’s saying. “What does any of this, of us, have to do with O?”
“What does it have to do with O?” she yells. “Everything! She doesn’t want me here. She hates me. She wants me gone. And now that she’s going to stay here, I’m going to leave.”She breaks down as she yells, but then gathers her thoughts and continues. “Okay, listen. I’m sorry about yelling. But O is pregnant. And she needs you. And she wants me out.”
“I don’t care what O wants,” I shake my head. No, this can’t be happening.
“But I do. She’s going to stay here in her house. And I don’t need to be here.”
I search my mind for things I can say to make her stay.
“What about the debt?” I finally ask. I don’t want to bring it up, but nothing else comes to mind.
“What about it?” Brielle crosses her arms across her chest.
“We have an arrangement here. Don’t we?”
“Oh is that what this is about? You think that whatever job I was doing here is worth a quarter of a million dollars a year?”
“Yes,” I lie.
“Well, in that case, I’m just going to get a real job and pay you back every cent from that.”
“That’s the last thing I want. You know that,” I say. “And that’s going to take forever, anyway.”
Brielle walks over to the closet and starts throwing clothes into her suitcase.
“How about this? Why don’t you just hire someone a little more compatible with your sister to be your servant around here. I bet she’ll like that.”
“Of course, she will!” I close the suitcase. I try to stop her from packing like a little child. I’m pathetic and stupid, and it’s all I can be right now. “But this, this thing between us, it has nothing to do with her. I thought that you liked being here. Liked spending time with me. Was I wrong?”
Brielle sighs deeply. “No, you weren’t.”
“So why are you leaving?”
“Because it’s all getting too much. It’s not just us here anymore. And I need some time to think about everything that has happened.”
I know there’s nothing else I can say or do to change her mind. I’m not here to keep her hostage. If she wants to leave, she has every right to. No matter how much it hurts me. In silence, I watch her pack her bag. She’s no longer tossing them into it mindlessly, she’s folding each one. Her mind is made up. All I can do now is let her go and see if she comes back to me.
Chapter 18 - Brielle
Two Weeks Later
* * *
Shorter days of the approaching winter descended upon my mom’s trailer, wrapping it in a dark cloud. In the past, this place was my space to be myself. It infused me with hope and made me feel as if everything was going to be okay. But not anymore.
I came back home to get back something I felt like I lost. My sense of myself. But this place was no longer my space for solace. It wasn’t home.
As I looked around these two rooms, everything was in its place. The pots and pans were in the bottom cupboard next to the stove. The plates were on the lower shelf near the stove. All utensils were in the broken drawer next to the sink. Mom had cleaned this place before she left, and it was the cleanest I’ve ever seen it. But that wasn’t why everything felt different.
Mom’s not here anymore, I remember saying to myself. This place is all mine for a while. It’s okay to make it my own.
But these words rang hollow. The person who came back here was a stranger. Her mother was now marrying some rich Swiss guy who she’s never met. She was falling in love with a spoiled billionaire who was a little too used to buying everything he ever wanted. And beyond all that, she, Brielle Cole, was also a stranger. She didn’t know who she was. She didn’t know what she was meant to do here. She didn’t know why she left or why she came back home.
Leaving that night was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. I have been sitting around my mom’s trailer for days now, doing nothing, and feeling no better about what had happened. Thinking back now, I don’t even know what the hell propelled me to leave. On one hand, it was Ophelia. Her cruelty and attitude and hatred for everything that I was. But, on the other hand, it was more than just Ophelia.
It was my mom’s sudden announcement and her ability to just move on with her life. I’ve never seen my mom act that way. For as long as I’ve ever known her, she has been dwelling and living in the past. It’s as if the present didn’t exist. All that existed was her life back then, even before her cancer diagnosis…when my sister was still alive. I’ve spent years trying to get her to move on with her life. To embrace what life had to offer. And now that she has, finally, Idon’t know what to do with myself. I’m angry at her. I’m pissed off. How dare she move on? How dare she be happy?
Agh, what a petulant and spoiled brat I am! I hate myself for these thoughts, and yet it is beyond me to make them stop. They’re like a streaming video that I can’t turn off. They simply come without an invitation and continue until they are done.
When I finally do get a quiet second, my thoughts turn to other things. Wyatt.
Why did I run out on him like that? Because of Ophelia, but she wasn’t the only reason. She was only a pretense.
; I’m also angry. I started to pack my bags for one reason. I was angry with my mom, and I wanted to stop her. I wanted to beg her to stay. But then when I’d realized that that was impossible, I needed to keep going. My anger at her morphed into something else completely. It became anger at Ophelia and, eventually, anger with Wyatt. Why didn’t he defend me more to Ophelia? Why didn’t he take my side? I didn’t care that I was wrong. That I acted like a child, telling everyone the secret that I had no right to tell anyone.
I could’ve used that secret to connect with O. I could’ve told just her and I could’ve opened myself up to be her confidant. I could’ve kept her secret, and she would’ve thanked me for it. But instead, I did something else. I acted like a brat. I thought that he would be mad at her, but why would he be? She’s his sister, and he loves her. He wants her in his life. He’s going to be there for her.
“Fuck you, Wyatt,” I mutter. It has been more than two weeks since I left, but my anger at him and myself has only multiplied. “No, Fuck you, Brielle.”
I’m hungrier than usual. I open the refrigerator and eat a cold slice of last night’s pizza. Nothing too nutritious can satisfy my hunger now.
That fateful night when I decided to leave runs over and over in my head. And then an unexpected thought hits me.
I’m afraid.
There. I finally thought those words out loud. The next step is to say it out loud.
“I’m afraid. I was afraid,” I say. But of what? Of being happy. Of fighting for what I wanted. For staying with Wyatt and seeing where our relationship can go.
“And what relationship is that?” I’m now talking to myself. “You had sex a few times, so what? That hardly constitutes a relationship. Lots of people have sex without much of a relationship. I’m sure that Wyatt has had sex plenty without being in any relationship.”
I say those words out loud, partly because I feel like I have to and partly because I want to make them true. But they aren’t. We didn’t label it or define it, but what Wyatt and I had, had been a relationship. At least the beginning of one. And that was worth a lot. To both him and I.
“And I ruined it,” I whisper.
Another two weeks pass without one incident. I see that I’ve fallen into darkness, engulfed with boredom, but I can’t do anything about it to change it. The world outside is sunny and sparkly. The sky is bright blue without a single cloud, but it doesn’t bring me any happiness. I know I need to get up off the couch and go outside, at least for a walk, but I don’t have the energy. All I muster to do all day is to dial to get some food delivered. Even going to the grocery store seems like a task that’s too big to conquer.
This has to stop, I say to myself. I need to get a job. At least my old one. Then I can start thinking of what else to do with my life. But instead, I just pick up my phone and read the gossip magazines. Cellulite and how to lose ten pounds are the most important problems in the issues, and I’m terrified of stepping on the scale. I feel like I have gained at least ten pounds, if not more, in the last month.
Wait a second. Has it been a month already?
Suddenly, I’m filled with energy. I run over to the kitchen and leaf through the old calendar. It’s three months off, but the year is correct.
“Shit. Shit. Shit.”
My hands grow cold and my fingers get numb. I touch my neck and it feels like a stranger is touching me. I shudder and zip my hoodie.
“No, this can’t be. No. No. No.”
I shake my head. But it definitely can. I grab the keys to the car. On the way to the pharmacy, I pray that it’s not true.
“Please, please, don’t let this be true. This has to be a mistake. We just did it a few times. This can’t be happening.”
I turn up the radio to drown out my thoughts, but they refuse to go away. It wasn’t just one time. It was twice. And both times, we didn’t use any protection. Why? How could I’ve been so stupid??
I’ve never had sex with anyone without protection before! What if he has some sort of disease? What if I have it now?
But a mysterious illness is not the most important thing on my mind.
When was the last time I had my period? I try to remember. I count the days, but I can’t quite remember. All I know is that it definitely wasn’t this month.
Fuck!! I scream and shake myself grabbing onto the steering wheel.
“No, no, no. This isn’t happening,” I whisper to myself. I try to calm myself down, but nothing works.
I get home from the pharmacy in a daze. There were like a million different pregnancy test brands at the pharmacy. How the hell are you supposed to choose one? I couldn’t, so I bought three different ones. I read the instructions. They are not too difficult, only three steps, but I still have trouble understanding. Eventually, I take one into the bathroom and pee on the stick. I leave the stick in the sink. I have to wait three minutes for the results to develop.
Three minutes. Doesn’t sound too long, but it also sounds like an eternity. I turn on the television, but all the channels annoy me. They are too loud and too bright. The shows are too stupid.
I need a drink.
I search the cabinets for my mom’s not-so-secret stash. I find a bottle of wine and pour myself a glass. This will calm me down. I put the glass to my lips and take a sip.
Shit!
I spit it all out.
What if I’m pregnant? I can’t have a drink while I’m pregnant!
Agh! I scream. I’m not much of a drinker, but I hate how when the craziness of the situation finally calls for a drink, I can’t have one!
“That’s fucking perfect!” I say. I put on the kettle instead. Tea. Soothing, calming tea. It will put me at ease. At least, a little bit.
I listen for the kettle to get louder and louder until it gives off one last puff and turns off once and for all. I take a moment to choose just the right kind of tea bag. Ginger tea is one of my favorites, but before I left I bought another kind of tea, Jasmine green tea with orange. I’ve yet to try it.
I rip off the foil and place the tea bag into my cup. The timer on my phone goes off. Three minutes are up. The results of the pregnancy test are up, but I can’t look at it yet.
That’s funny, I smile to myself. For the last hour, I’ve acted like a crazy person rushing around – running to the car, speeding to the pharmacy, speeding back home – all in an effort to find out if I’m pregnant or not in the shortest amount of time. And now that the test is done, I need more time.
I bring my tea cup to the kitchen table and sit down. I can’t look just yet. My whole life is about to change completely, if the result is positive, and I can’t bring myself to face that quite yet.
The tea is boiling hot, but I take a sip anyway. I dunk a biscuit into the tea and take a bite.
Well, this would definitely explain why I’ve been so hungry and lethargic.
When I’m done with my cup of tea, I walk over to the bathroom. “Be brave. Either way, it’s going to be okay,” I say to myself.
I walk over to the sink and pick up the pregnancy stick.
“You’re pregnant.”
The words are in blue, and they stand out against the whiteness of the pregnancy test. I thought that I would throw the test down and sob and cry if I saw that I was pregnant. But I don’t. Instead, I feel calm and at peace. I’m not terrified or upset. I’m fine.
Wow, I’m actually fine.
I smile at myself in the mirror.
“I’m pregnant, and I’m fine,” I say.
I go into the living room and sit down on the couch. I wait for my head to get flooded with thoughts of incompetence and all sorts of doubts, but nothing comes. My mind is clear. Free. Empty. Happy, perhaps?
Chapter 19 - Brielle
That night I called the only person I could think of. I haven’t spoken to Tara in years. We went to high school together, but after high school she moved a few towns over, and we fell out of touch. From social media, I know that she has been married since we were 1
8 and has a ten year-old stepson. Her husband was a teen father, and he now works as a volunteer firefighter while she stays home and takes care of their son.
I don’t know what else to do. I pick up the phone and dial her number. I need someone to talk to, and I just hope that she answers.
Two hours later, Tara is sitting across from me in my living room. She’s exuberant and red-cheeked and here. Actually here.
“I can’t believe you came over so quickly. It has been so many years and still…” I say.
“Yes, of course, I’m here for you, honey. I’ve wanted to reach out to you for so long. I’m happy to be here,” she gives me another hug.
I told her what happened. I told her I was pregnant and a brief overview of what I’ve been doing with my life and my situation with Wyatt. But tonight, I cover the details. She listens carefully hanging onto each word.
“So, that’s pretty much it,” I say when I get to the end of the story. “Would you like anything else to eat?”
Tara is much bigger than I am. She was always a heavy girl, but now she’s quite large. But despite that, she’s beautiful. Her kindness oozes from her, and I wonder how every single person she encounters doesn’t fall in love with her.
“No, I’m fine,” she says. “So what do you think you want to do? About the baby?”
I shrug. I don’t know.
“Either way, you should probably tell Wyatt.”
I nod. I know she’s right. “I don’t know.”
“What don’t you know? You don’t think he’ll take it well?”
I think about that for a moment. “I actually have no idea how he’s going to take it. But shouldn’t I know what I want to do before I tell him?”
“Perhaps. But you know, it’s not just your decision entirely. Besides, he might be very supportive about either decision you make.”
“But what if I don’t want to keep it and he does? What then?”
She shrugs. The very thought of that sends chills through my body. Can I really have this baby just for him to raise it? But what if I don’t want to have it and he does? Does that give me the right to get rid of it?
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