by A. L. Woods
Those three little words did nothing to abate the worry that percolated within me, flooding my memory with all the what-ifs. I hated that addressed fears from the past reared their heads and ran rampant when things felt uneasy between us, that my default was to venture into dark places neither of us had any business recounting.
But I trusted her when she said I wasn’t the source. Just because she asked for space didn’t mean she wanted out. She was entitled to space. Maybe we’d spent too much time together this weekend, and I hadn’t realized it.
It took all the muscles in my face to manage a smile I didn’t feel before I parroted the words back to her. “I love you, too.”
I stared at the blinking cursor on my screen, willing the words to come. I would need to kick it into overdrive if I had any chance in hell of not only meeting my deadline, but getting it to my editor early. I didn’t think pregnancy, or a baby would allot much free time to get any work done. So far, I’d been unsuccessful for the past four hours.
How did maternity work when you were technically self-employed? If I didn’t put out another book soon, I’d be a one-hit wonder, and that wasn’t an option for me.
I felt confident that Earl would take me back at The Advocate if I asked, regardless of the circumstances of my departure. He was happy to hear from me when word got around town that I was the newest resident.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I leaned back in my chair till it groaned, replaying the day on the back of my drawn lids. Why had I told Sean I needed space? That wasn’t even the word I was searching for, and with such a vast lexicon, I could have articulated a much stronger sentence to communicate what I was feeling instead of using that word.
I wanted time to process the pregnancy tests, but I didn’t want space per se. Space was a trigger word, and I knew better. Strong as he was, he couldn’t mask the hurt that flooded in his face like a deluge, and I didn’t blame him. I was an asshole.
Blowing out a loud breath that made my lips vibrate, I opened my eyes, working my stare across the office. Sean had wasted no time—with Pen’s help—in assembling this room into a space I would love. My repaired antique desk with the ornate gold curlicue sat in the middle of the room on an oversized, plush earth-toned rug. The walls were a soft eggshell blue. An oversized brown leather wingback chair was tucked into a corner, an ottoman sitting in front of it. Custom floor-to-ceiling bookshelves ate up one wall filled to the brim with books, new and old, that I’d acquired over the years. Holly Jane’s reframed childhood photo sat on the edge of the desk, her grin wide and eyes full of delight. The window looked out over the backyard, and in the evening, the sunset bathed the room in soft orange and pink light. On the wall near the wingback chair, Penelope had framed a poster-sized printout of my book cover. An elegant font made up the title for Awake, set against an opaque moon blurred across an inky black cover. Next to that was a framed newspaper article from no other than The Eaton Advocate.
Eaton Resident Pens Bestseller by Karen Chalmers.
The whole interview had been awkward, but strangely cathartic. Now that enough time had passed, I realized that Karen never hated me, and maybe I never hated her. We bore a lot of similarities to one another, and perhaps we’d always just felt threatened by the other. Me by her tenure and pull, and her by my youth and my…well, I didn’t think I had anything else particularly worthy of her envy. It probably didn’t help that I had caught her having sex with the mayor; that had to make her feel like I was a constant wildcard. Such a clandestine detail would have kept me on edge, too.
Thankfully, he lost the election last fall. Last I heard, his wife had left him, and he moved back to Taunton. Now who wasn’t a fit for this town?
Karen apologized in her own way on the day of that interview. It felt weird returning to The Advocate, not as an employee anymore, but as someone they felt worthy of covering a story on. It was an old rags-to-riches—sort of—story, and I’d behaved awkwardly throughout it, but she’d worked with what little I had given her and spun it into something Earl felt was deserving of the front cover. Which was why Karen’s framed article lived on my wall, next to the one I wrote about Sean almost two years ago.
I still struggled to reconcile that the interview had been the catalyst of my new reality. We had gone through more in two years than most couples did in a lifetime, and despite everything I had done to him, and him to me, we remained united in our decision to go through this thing called life together because we loved each other.
Shaking my head, I glanced at the time on my laptop. It was ten minutes to eleven at night, and I hadn’t heard him come up the stairs. Conceding defeat, I closed my laptop, then switched off the black wrought iron desk lamp. I couldn’t write like this, not with my secret affixed to me like a scarlet letter. We had made a promise to be honest with one another and keeping this to myself any longer than I had to wasn’t the foot on which I wanted to start off this pregnancy.
He deserved to know that according to two pregnancy tests, I was pregnant.
Ugh…pregnant. That word didn’t taste any better articulated inwardly than it did out loud. After I’d gotten over my initial shock with the second confirmation via the pregnancy test Pen gave me, I left a message on my family doctor’s voicemail. I’d have to go through the process of this again and then get an OB/GYN, and, well, do whatever expectant mothers did.
Opening the office door, I confirmed my theory that Sean hadn’t yet come up to bed. The door to our bedroom in the darkened hall was wide open, moonlight pouring in through the oversized window, lighting up the foot of our bed. He could never sleep when he had too much on his mind, and tonight was no exception. I suspected that with the way we’d left things, his brain was full to the brim with thoughts.
Tiptoeing down the stairs, I followed the faint sound of the television into the living room. Sean was still wide awake, his hair sticking up in all directions, like he’d been fingering it for the past couple of hours. He always did that when he was stressed. He had traded his jeans for baggy gray sweatpants and put on a clean white T-shirt. His bare feet were propped up on the coffee table, his angular features bathed in blue light from the television. A beer bottle sat on a coaster, and next to it, the remains of the label he’d peeled off it.
Sean’s eyes drifted from the television, landing on me. He sat up on the couch, dropping his feet to the floor. He fumbled for the remote and muted the recap of the Sox game. “Hey.”
“Hi.”
“How’d the writing go?”
“It didn’t,” I confessed.
His expression fell, his mouth jutting to the right with contemplation. Before he could utter another word, I moved to stand in front of him, planting one knee opposite his waist, the other following suit until I straddled his lap. His hands instinctively moved to my side, but I felt the nervous quiver in his fingertips.
His jaw constricted, the question resounding loud enough in his head that he didn’t need to voice it aloud. Was I okay?
Heaving a sigh, I fixed his mussed hair with my hands. “I owe you an explanation.”
“That would be nice,” he agreed, his head leaning into my fingers while his thumbs worked back and forth on the small stretch of exposed skin between my raised T-shirt and the waistline of my shorts.
“I don’t really know how to say this.”
A ghost of panic flashed in his face. He drew in a sharp breath through his nose, letting it out through parted lips. “Just say it.” He rocked his mouth from side to side, as if tasting the statement. “Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out.”
“I haven’t been feeling myself lately.” Sean’s tilted head told me he had noticed. “Beyond today, I mean.”
He leaned back against the headrest of the couch; his bearded chin tilted up toward my face. “Okay.” The answer slithered out of him, but I suspected he felt anything but okay.
“Yesterday when I went to fill my birth control prescription at CVS, I grabbed a pregnancy test.” The windshield
wiper motion of his thumbs on my waist immediately ceased, and his dark eyes widened. “I didn’t really think anything of it—”
“You just had your period,” he interrupted, a newfound quake in his voice. “I know you did.” He likely remembered me doing the Advil, heating pad, and couch potato routine two weeks ago. He wasn’t wrong. I just didn’t consider that my light flow was more spotting than an actual period.
“I thought I did, too,” I agreed, nodding my head. “But Pen said that sometimes when you’re…” I trailed off, finding my nerve to test out the word. “When you’re pregnant, your body can fake you out.” She actually provided me with a more technical answer about fertilized eggs and the associated small amount of blood that accompanied them, but the way he was looking at me, I didn’t think now was the time to explain that to him.
Sean gulped. “What does that mean?”
I tucked the loose strands of my hand behind my ears. “It means that sometimes it can look like you’re on your period, when you aren’t.”
His chest rose and fell, his eyes searching mine for answers. “So, did you take the test?”
“I did.”
“And?” he rushed out.
I couldn’t help it. My eyes filled with tears spilling over the perimeter of my lashes.
“Baby,” he breathed, then shook his head. “I mean, Hemingway.” He clapped a hand to his forehead. “Raquel, fuck—”
He could call me whatever he wanted; I didn’t care.
“I’m sorry,” I blubbered. “Birth control is ninety-one percent effective, but there were a couple of instances where I didn’t take my pill at the same time. I fucked up. I’m so sorry.” I didn’t want him to have to change his plans with the restaurant because of me. I didn’t want to be the reason he had to put things on hold because I’d been careless. This was my fault.
Sean’s hands moved from my waist to cup my cheeks. “Why are you apologizing?”
“We didn’t talk about this; I don’t even think I want kids.” Saying that out loud made me cry harder, the wail reverberating throughout our living room, my upper body shaking against his. “I didn’t mean for this to happen,” I said, snuffling. “There’s so much going on as it is, and now…”
“Shh, shh,” he soothed, his thumbs catching the errant tears from my eyes. “We don’t need to make any decisions today, okay?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean…” He gagged, like he was having a hard time not choking on his words. “If we decide that this isn’t…that it isn’t what we want, then we’ll look at our options.”
“Look at our options?” I echoed with disbelief. Was he suggesting what I think he was?
Sean held my gaze, and I saw it there. If I didn’t want to do this, if I wanted to terminate this pregnancy, he would support me…but in doing so, I would hurt him terribly. The unspoken loss tangled with the latent vision of desire in his face. Perhaps he thought I never witnessed the envy that colored his expression every time he watched Dougie with Chris. He never expressed it, but I knew being a dad was the one thing he always wanted, and I thought I would be unfit to give him that…until today.
“You know I would never make you do anything you didn’t want to do, Raquel.” He rubbed the exhaustion from his eyes, averting his gaze from me when his hands went to the backs of my thighs. “No matter how badly I—”
“Say it,” I whispered, placing my hands on his cheeks, losing myself to the friction of his beard against my palms.
“No, it’s not fair to influence your decision based on what I want.” He peeled my left hand from his face, scissoring his fingers with mine. “I’m fine if it’s just you and me for the rest of our lives.”
But he would always feel like he missed out on something, I knew. He was sacrificing his desire to appease what he misinterpreted as my wish to end my pregnancy. I shouldn’t have expected anything else from him, because he prioritized what I wanted above all else, always. Plus, after what had happened with Trina and their ma, I knew he would never bully me into doing anything I didn’t want to do, and yet, I wanted to hear him say he wanted this baby.
“But being a dad is something you want, I know it is,” I tentatively broached. “You want to have a baby.”
Unbridled surprise settled in his face. “I feel like you’re tricking me into answering this in a way that’s going to backfire on me.”
“I’m not. I just want you to answer the question honestly.”
Sean fidgeted beneath me, taking another slow and meditative inhale. “I’ve always…I’ve always wanted to be a dad.” He stared up at the ceiling. “When I met you, I knew I wanted to experience that with you and only you. I used to come up with little scenarios in my mind about what it would be like to have that life with you.”
“And?”
“And, what?” he asked, laughing through his nose.
“And what was it like?”
His brows knitted together, his lips compressing into a narrow slash. “Let’s not do this, Hemingway.” His grip tightened on my thighs. “I don’t want to recount those kinds of things.”
If they weren’t going to happen, I finished for him in my head. I wasn’t trying to be callous, I just wanted to hear his version in hopes it would give me the reassurance I needed that I wouldn’t ruin another human being.
Frowning, I chewed on the inside of my cheek. I guess it wouldn’t be fair for him to have to relive his fantasy version of our life together if he thought I was going to terminate my pregnancy. Not that I ever even considered that, it just didn’t change that a lot was happening fast, and… “I’m scared,” I admitted aloud.
“Scared about what?” Sean questioned, an ache that hadn’t existed in his tone before coming to life.
“About fucking a kid up.”
He leveled his stare on me. I suspected he wouldn’t force me into this if I didn’t want it, but I didn’t think he would make it this easy for me to back out. I didn’t consider that he wouldn’t even try to paint an image of what things could be like despite my prompting him.
I wanted that image for me, for us. I hoped it was merely worry and anxiety that was tingeing everything in a wash of gray. “What if I’m bad at it…at being a mom?” I couldn’t stomach the possibility of repeating the cycle, of perpetuating the very pattern I’d worked so hard to destroy. I had hated the idea of kids for years because they changed people, but also because of the underlying fear of the past repeating itself. I always believed that if I didn’t conceive, didn’t have a family, I could spare another human the curse of my legacy. I didn’t want to taint a baby with my poisoned heritage.
Sean stilled, his spine growing ramrod straight under my hold. His hands were firm on my shoulders, pushing me back slightly to regard me. The look of hope that bloomed in his eyes didn’t escape my notice. “Does that mean you’re considering this?” Sean asked, failing at concealing his elation.
I sniffled loudly; my nod so faint that I couldn’t be sure my head moved at all. “If your sperm beat the odds of the pill, then I think it deserves a chance, right?” We needed some levity, and damn it, I was going to be the one who brought it.
Whether or not he wanted to, his smile ate up the real estate of his face. A joyous laugh shot out of him. “Hemingway,” he said, drawing me closer and tipping my head forward so he could slant his lips over mine. Every unspoken emotion and thought poured into the intensity of that kiss. He broke the kiss to brush the tip of his nose against mine, struggling to contain the smile. “You’re not going to be a bad mom.”
“What if it’s in my genetic makeup to be a terrible at it?” Let’s be real—Pauline was hardly an outstanding role model. I knew rocks with more substance and maternal instinct.
And sure, I’d encountered some great moms in the past year. Sean’s ma was doting, albeit overbearing at times to her adult children. Sunday lunches were mandatory, and she always sent us home with too much food. Rosa still called me three times a week. Paul had f
orced her—translation: convinced her—into retirement and kept her holed up in a plush condo overlooking the beach in Santa Monica. She was the closest thing I had to a mother. That woman expected nothing but the best from me, never tolerated my behavior or toxic coping mechanisms. She encouraged me to get better. She made me want to be better back then. Both Rosa and Connie loved me in a way I wasn’t accustomed to, and initially, it had taken some adjusting to accept their unabashed affection. But would their influence be enough to act as a proper template for me?
Or was I doomed? I didn’t think any of that would help me avoid becoming a facsimile of Pauline.
“No.” Sean pressed his lips against my mouth. “It’s not.” He ran his thumbs along my jawline, speaking in a hushed whisper. “You’re not like her, Raquel. You’ve never been like her. Yes, DNA ties her to you, but that doesn’t make her you. You extracted her strength and her resolve, that’s it. We get to adopt from our parents the parts we value and shed the things we don’t like, but you’re not her. You’ve never been like her, ever.”
“But, how do—”
He placed the pad of this thumb against my lip, zipping it shut. “I know, because I see,” he said, gazing up at me. “I watched you with Aidan, I’ve seen you with Christopher. You hold your breath because you’re scared you’ll pollute them, but you won’t, Raquel; you can’t. You’re the first person Chris runs to when he sees us. Why do you think that is?”
“Because he knows I’m terrified of him.” Seriously, I didn’t think this differed from an animal being drawn to the person allergic to them. That kid was fully aware he had the upper hand.
“No,” Sean said gruffly, shaking his head. “It’s because he can feel that you’d keep him safe no matter what, that you love him.”
Pen said kids were perceptive, so maybe Chris realized that despite how much I feared that he would catch the broken parts of me like an airborne disease, I adored him. “I do love him,” I confessed. Which was more than I could say about my ma. “But what if none of that is enough for our own kid? What if they figure out that I’m…” I paused as his grip tightened around my thighs, deep lines appearing between his brows as he waited for me to finish my sentence. “That I’m no good.”