Awake (Reflections Book 3)

by A. L. Woods

  It seemed like the test had time to develop like a Polaroid. The two distinct lines greeted us.

  “It could still be wrong,” I squeaked, wrapping my arms around my middle. Pen’s smile was all mischief when she left the kitchen and returned some moments later, flaunting another fresh pregnancy test from under her bathroom sink.

  She made me chug two glasses of water. Twenty minutes later, I was peeing on another pregnancy test.

  And that one was positive, too.

  “Mo’!” Christopher demanded with a squeak. His chubby fists were tight on the chains that kept the toddler swing fastened to the bar. With one hand, I gave him another well-placed and solid push, his giggles soaring high into the sky.

  “You gotta kick your legs, kid,” I chuckled, darting out of his way as he floated backward, catching air. I probably wasn’t supposed to push him this hard, but his giggles had me defying responsibility, which probably would have made me a shitty parent.

  “Mo’!” he laughed, sending me one of his infamous gummy grins, his gold-spun waves fluttering. He had Dougie’s forest green eyes and pale complexion, and Penelope’s flaxen hair and natural affinity for mischief and machination. He knew how to manipulate the hell out of every adult in his life with a single smile. Unfortunately for us, the kid was cute as hell and he knew it.

  Right now, he was keeping me distracted from concentrating on the fact that my fiancée hadn’t acknowledged my texts that she wasn’t feeling well. I would overlook the fact that it seemed like Dougie had waited until we got here on purpose. They were always covering for one another now, and I would have gone back inside and taken her home if I’d known.

  “Anything?” Dougie asked to the right of me, flipping the bill of his Sox hat while leaning against the leg of the swing set. The park was mostly free of kids, which I guess was expected. The sun was setting, and most kids were getting their baths or bedtime stories right now.

  Or I guessed they were, anyway. I didn’t have any experience with this kind of thing.

  “Nope,” I said, ignoring the uneasy feeling ticking through me. “Radio silence.”

  Dougie stroked his chin. “I’m sure she’s fine. They’re probably deep into wedding planning. Pen had a whole itinerary planned out for them. Want me to try calling the house?”

  Yes. Yes, I did. I wanted to know why my fiancée was suddenly quiet when I had fully expected a detailed play-by-play via text message about why she wanted to elope after being inundated for her opinion on cake tiers, flower options, and possible honeymoon destinations for our best friends’ upcoming wedding. And if she was sick, she could have at least told me that, too.

  But she was quiet, too quiet. And when Raquel got too quiet, that meant trouble lurked close behind. Rolling my shoulders, I shook off that annoying familiar sensation that plagued me, trying to reason with myself. I wouldn’t hound her; I’d respect her time with Penelope and not crowd her. That was the foundation of our relationship when we started things up again, and I would not fuck that up because I was being paranoid.

  She was more than likely fine, right? “No, that’s all right,” I heard myself say.

  “It’s probably mild food poisoning from the sushi,” he suggested, snapping his fingers. “Maybe she was shitting her brains out. You know how some people are about talking about that.”

  I couldn’t help but bark out a laugh, catching the back of the swing as Chris made his decline, giving him another shove. “Yeah, I guess.”

  There was a good probability that Dougie was right. Bowel movements were natural, but it wasn’t exactly a topic that came up much between us, if at all. I had been suspicious about the sashimi Raquel had ordered, but she insisted. She went as far as making a performance of popping it in her mouth, making a sound of delight while she chewed happily.

  “Kids take your scruples and modesty, man, even for Pen,” Dougie offered, fishing a wrapped mint he had gotten from the sushi restaurant out of his pocket. Unfolding it, he popped it into his mouth, his tongue pushing it into the corner of his cheek. “One time, Chris shit all over Pen’s lap. She cried for an hour that he was ‘so cute, but that was so gross!’” He erupted into laughter, bending at the waist to clutch his knees, his shoulders quaking. “You shoulda seen her face. It was absolutely priceless.”

  I joined in on his laughter, but my mind still ventured further into the bedlam of Worrylandia. We should have gone to the all-you-can-eat place in Fall River off of Borden Street, but Penelope wanted to try the new place in town, and we agreed. It was closer, and we had high hopes that Eaton would finally diversify their dining options beyond Four Corners, Old Maid’s Cafe, and a mediocre pizza joint. This had clearly been a flop, and it just further proved why Penelope’s ideas were generally bad ones.

  Okay, that wasn’t entirely true. She was the reason Raquel and I met at all, and I’d be forever grateful for it. The last year had been one of the best ones of my life. We were getting our proper do-over with no bullshit, no lies, no baggage. After we got back together, we committed to doing things the right way, the way we should have to begin with. Sure, we skipped the get-to-know-you in the traditional sense by getting engaged and moving into the house in Heritage Park after I’d pulled it off the market, but we had agreed to make a point of always being honest with one another, to keep no secrets, and we were still taking our time, just differently. We held each other accountable. She made me want to be a better person, and I was going to spend the rest of my life ensuring she knew just how much she meant to me.

  It was of no surprise that our relationship improved dramatically when there were no exterior influences getting in the way. We could concentrate exclusively on ourselves and allow our relationship to develop organically, like I’d always wanted it to. She failed to realize how easy she made it to love her. She had never been hard to love at all; she’d just been holding onto things and shouldering the blame for events that had been beyond her control or mine.

  To reinforce just how serious I was about doing this right with her, I resumed seeing a therapist—and so did she. I never wanted to be in a position where I had to look anywhere but at her for the answers I sought.

  Sometimes, we did sessions together. It helped. It allowed me to understand different parts of her she kept concealed or struggled to articulate because she was afraid of being judged. Of course, I didn’t have it in me to ever hold anything against her, but I could understand how her trauma forced her to build up those walls high to keep her safe—even when she knew she was safe with me. Either way, I encouraged her to continue to go, and she did. It helped her chase the ghosts of her past that still taunted her away, and I think it helped her sleep a little better at night.

  There had been nothing wrong with her; it was the monsters she had kept company with that kept her suspended in her nightmare.

  Therapy for me meant finding closure on the guilt I harbored. I knew my family didn’t resent me for abdicating from the family business, and Trina was more than competent and delighted to be calling the shots, but sometimes I worried that my selfishness might have set them up for failure. Not that anyone implied it would. Ma was more than fine, Maria didn’t need my money, Livy’s tuition was paid for, and Trina, to my knowledge, never missed payroll. Life was good; everything was under control.

  Which is what made this gnawing sensation that something was amiss so bothersome.

  “We’d better go,” Dougie said, tearing me out of my thoughts. He was glancing at his phone, his thumbs moving across the screen to punch out a message. “Pen is lecturing me about how we’re going to mess up Chris’s sleep cycle if we don’t get him home now.”

  I caught the swing, Chris’s laughter filling the park. His chubby fingers flitted; his arms outstretched in my direction. My heart grew three sizes, his smile knowing and eyes round. “‘Ahn!” he squealed my abbreviated name, his little legs kicking in his seat. Leaning forward, he snaked his arms around my neck, while mine fell around his waist, pulling him fre
e from the confines of the swing.

  He let out a contented sigh, tucking his head in the crook of my neck, snuggling deep. I was slow following Dougie across the park and back to the parking lot where the F150 was the only vehicle left. There was no hurry to separate me from my godson. I liked the way the kid felt in my arms.

  Hoisting Chris’s weight further up my body, I moved out of the way when Dougie opened his door. Turning to retrieve the ball of warmth on my waist, he let out a grumble, though his mouth still quirked with a smile. “Ah, shit, he passed out quick. Kid’s too much like his ma, will fall asleep in thirty seconds flat.”

  He held out his hands for the kid, but I shook my head. “I’ll do it.”

  I knew the odds of me ever experiencing the joy of my own kid were zero to none. We’d never actually discussed it, but I inherently knew my fiancée was not the “Let’s start a family” type. She likely thought I didn’t notice, but I could hear the way she held her breath whenever she was in Chris’s presence, and the shuddering relief in her exhale when he left.

  Kids scared her, and it was one of those unspoken concessions I knew I had to make when I chose her. I wanted her more than I wanted a kid; I’d gone to hell and back for her. Sure, I desired a family about as much as my ma wanted to see us have one as her only hope for grandchildren. I was one of four. It was in my DNA to desire the massive get-togethers and raucous household that mirrored my upbringing, but I wanted Raquel more. I didn’t think I’d ever consider regretting the undiscussed decision we had made and believed we’d find fulfillment in other things.

  Maybe we’d adopt a dog or something…or get a goldfish.

  The absence that greeted me when I settled Chris in his car seat set off an unshakeable ache of yearning inside me. I didn’t understand the sense of longing I felt when I clicked the belt of his car seat in place. I’d done this very thing dozens of times before—held him, played with him, changed him, fed him. We had babysat for them when they needed to run an errand or went for their monthly date night.

  So why did seeing him just as he was right now stir my paternal instincts?

  “You good?” Dougie asked from the driver’s seat. I could feel his eyes on me from the rearview mirror, but I didn’t look up to meet his stare.

  Raquel and I would not have kids.

  And even though I knew that was what she wanted, acknowledging the presence of that reality made me sad. Moving a tendril of Chris’s hair across his forehead, I swallowed the lump that formed in my throat. “Yeah,” I said. “I’m good.”

  We had each other, and that had to be enough.

  Raquel looked pale when she closed Pen and Dougie’s front door and approached the idling Wrangler as if she were walking to her own funeral. She ambulated at a tortoise’s pace, the summer evening breeze brushing her dark shoulder-length hair out of her face. Ashen or not, it was unfair how pretty she was. Her freckles had deepened this summer, the constellations more prominent across the bridge of her nose, new ones sprouting on her cheeks.

  Naturally, Penelope attempted to slather her in sunscreen at any opportunity she had, but Raquel always shrugged her off.

  The passenger door opened, her watchful gaze falling on me. “You okay, baby?” I asked, sending her a gentle smile.

  Her eyes bugged, her lashes nearly touching her brows. My smile collapsed, watching as her grip on the door loosened, her hand falling to her side as if it weighed a hundred pounds. “Raquel?”

  Her throat constricted, her lips thinning into a tight line. “It’s weird when you call me that.” Her posture straightened, her gaze hardening. “I can tolerate Hemingway, would prefer Raquel, but baby needs to go.”

  “All right,” I said, holding her wooden expression. Tension flooded me from the one-eighty her mood had taken since this afternoon. It felt as though a barrage of shrapnel had fired in my direction, but I kept my face even, trying to dig through the fast-sprouting vines of mystery that enshrouded her. I didn’t know where the shift in personality had come from, or why the sudden change of heart on the term of endearment. “I’m sorry.”

  A flicker of guilt lit up her face at my apology, but it extinguished just as quickly. Instead, she nodded her thanks, climbed in next to me and slammed the door shut behind her. I waited till she buckled herself in before edging the Wrangler out of Dougie and Penelope’s driveway. It didn’t escape my notice that she opted to not drop a kiss on my cheek in greeting the way she usually did.

  If anything, it appeared she was trying to avoid contact. Raquel pressed against the edge of her seat, as close to the door as possible, her temple flush against the glass of the window. Normally, I would have placed my hand over her knee by now, or rubbed circles with my thumb over the fleshy part of her thigh, but I got the impression she was determined to create as much distance between us as the Jeep’s cabin would permit.

  “Are you feeling any better?” I broached. “You didn’t answer my texts.”

  “I’m fine,” she replied, her lids dropping shut. “Just tired.”

  “If you weren’t feeling well, you could have told me and we could have gone home,” I said, drumming my fingers against the stitching of the steering wheel. “I know how uncomfortable it is to…” I trailed off. “You know, at other people’s houses.”

  She glanced at me for the first time since getting in the car, frowning. “What?” Her brow arched, and after a moment, it dropped with understanding. “Oh. Right.”

  Dougie was wrong. She wasn’t sick, and I didn’t buy that she was just tired, either. I wracked my brain, retracing my steps for the day. Did I fail to do something I said I would? Had I said the wrong thing? Did we miscommunicate something to one another? No, I was sure I was in the clear—so, what was making her act so strangely?

  “Did I do something?” I asked, flitting my stare from the road to her, catching her as she wilted in her seat, falling quiet again.

  Raquel crossed her legs at the ankles, her hands knitting together tightly enough that the pads of her fingers strained against her knuckles. “No.”

  “Did something happen?”

  My jaw clenched when she made an ambiguous sound in response.

  A few minutes later, I turned onto our street, suddenly resentful of how close we lived to Dougie and Penelope. It would be harder to corner her in the house and pry an answer out of her. I didn’t understand why she was slipping into old habits. It had been months since she gave me the I-don’t-want-to-talk-about-it routine; I didn’t know how to process this about-face.

  My headlights lit up our half-circle driveway as I edged in, blanketing the front of our house in a bright spotlight, the shadows from our garden beds dancing on the exterior. Raquel didn’t wait for the car to be in park before she ejected her seatbelt and flung open the car door.

  “Hemingway,” I called. She didn’t look at me when she slammed the door shut behind her. What the fuck was happening? Killing the engine, I shot out of the car, trailing after her as her legs ran up the steps of the porch. Her hands were shaking too hard to get the key into the lock. Whatever was plaguing her, it was bad. I loomed behind her, witnessing the tremble working its way through her body.

  My hand went around the hand that held her keys, my fingers tightening around hers to still her. “What happened? Can you tell me what I did?”

  She lifted her eyes to me, cowering. “You didn’t do anything.”

  I didn’t believe her, not even a little. “I would believe that if it didn’t seem like you were running away from me.”

  “I’m not running away, I just need a little space, Sean. I can barely breathe.” When I blanched, she cringed. Releasing her hand, I reeled back, my hands falling to my side.

  Space, space, space.

  Was I the reason she couldn’t breathe? How much space did she want? Thirty-one hundred miles worth of space? Sleep on the couch and rack my brain over what I did space? What were we talking about here?

  She pivoted, taking a single, uncertain step toward
me. Her features crumpled together, her expressive brows drawn inward, a hand clutched to her chest. “That’s not what I meant, I—”

  “It’s cool,” I interrupted, even though it wasn’t. She was the last person I wanted to hear that ugly word from, but if that was what she desired, I had to respect it. She heaved a sigh, turning her back on me to try the door again. The lock released this time, and we stepped inside, the cold air a welcome reprieve from the summer humidity. Our house had smelled like lavender all summer long, courtesy of Raquel pruning the wild bushes outside and shoving the freed stocks into vases littered in different rooms throughout the house.

  I just hoped the purported calming effect would do something positive about her behavior.

  Raquel tossed her bag onto the bench by the front door, her keys following suit into a catch-all bowl on a skinny console table by the front door. She scratched at her forehead, nursing her bottom lip between her teeth. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “It’s fine,” I maintained, already emotionally patching the holes the wayward bullets had penetrated.

  “It’s not,” she said with a grimace, shaking her head. “I just have a lot on my mind, and I need to work through it.”

  Well, I’d already gathered that. “And you can’t let me in?” I tested.

  “Not yet,” she said on an exhale. “But when I’m ready, I will, okay?”

  I fought the urge to wrap my arms around her, to remind her I was here, and whatever was tormenting her, we’d get through it together. My shoulders sagged, but I nodded with begrudging acceptance. “Okay.”

  Old habits die hard.

  Her mouth lifted a little on the right in what I thought was a smile that didn’t quite take. She turned for the stairs, placing one uncertain foot on the first tread, her right hand clinging to the bannister. “Sean?”

  “Yeah?”

  Her bottom lip trembled with the threat of crying. “I love you.”