Natalie hadn’t texted me back, and I decided not to pursue it for now. After being cut off when I called her office, I had a feeling she wasn’t ever going to get in contact with me. I was going to have to let it go.
Sighing, I searched my phone for a hotel near the venue, one that wasn’t too swanky but also had room service. I finally settled on a three-star place a block over and pulled my suitcase the whole way. I didn’t mind the walk, having grown up in San Francisco, and I liked being out in the city in warm weather. Northern New Jersey wasn’t quite as bustling as New York City, but it gave me the city atmosphere I craved sometimes after being cooped up in a bus for days or weeks at a time.
When I arrived at the hotel, I checked in before heading up to my room. It was a mid-grade room, no frills, and I stowed my suitcase and picked up the phone to dial room service. I ordered my dinner then took a shower. After I was dry, I climbed into bed with the remote in my hand. Natalie was on my mind again as I watched a show about young businesspeople on CNBC. Would I ever be free of those soulful hazel eyes?
A knock sounded on the door and I jumped up, glad for the distraction. The burger and fries I ordered were mediocre but tasted decent after the fast food we ate almost non-stop while on the road. The two beers I washed it down with were better and once the alcohol was flowing in my system, I picked up my phone again with the desire to call Natalie.
Before I had the common sense to stop myself, I was dialing her number and listened as it rang. I waited for the voicemail to pick up, with the intention of leaving her a message, but a voice on the other end startled me and I sat straight up in the bed.
“Hello?” Her voice was like velvet, deeper than most women’s and smooth. I didn’t know what to say at first.
“Natalie?”
“Yes, who is this?” She sounded tired and ended her sentence with a long sigh.
“It’s Rhys. Rhys Beckett.” I was at a loss of what to say and cursed the two beers I had for knocking me off my game.
“Rhys.” She said my name like a prayer, her voice low and breathy.
I got hard, unable to control my body’s reaction to her with the little bit of alcohol in my system.
“Did I wake you?” I didn’t know why I asked that.
“Actually, you did.” It was a statement, a response, without malice.
“I’m sorry. Is this a bad time?” There was so much I wanted to say to her but for some reason, the only thing I could do was small talk.
“Not really. I’m not feeling well.” She cut the last sentence off quickly and I had to piece it together for myself to understand what she said.
“Oh, I can call back later.”
Ask to meet up with her first, a voice in my head urged me.
“It’s all right.” She sounded unsure but didn’t hang up.
“Do you want to have dinner with me tomorrow night?” I finally managed to ask.
Time stretched on in silence because she didn’t answer me right away.
“Okay,” she said, and I released a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
“Great.” I tried not to sound too enthusiastic, but it was hard after two beers to control my reaction.
We decided on a place and time before saying goodbye. I hung up the phone, feeling lighter than I had a few hours before, and I knew the alcohol had nothing to do with it.
3
Natalie
A date. I had agreed to a date with Rhys Beckett. I must have been delirious from vomiting all afternoon because when I heard myself say yes, I knew it was a bad idea. He caught me at a low moment—I just woke up from a wonderful dream about him, feeling dehydrated and lightheaded from an afternoon of throwing up. I wasn’t in my right mind and every cell in my body was telling me to call him back and cancel. But I didn’t want to. I wanted to see him, even if we weren’t right for each other. Even if he was an on-the-rise rock star who probably slept with a new woman in every city. I wanted one more night before I let him go. Was that so wrong?
Besides, he was only in the area for the weekend. I had an easy out.
A thought niggled at the back of my mind, something I had contemplated just before falling asleep but couldn’t recall now. It had to do with being ill but for the life of me, I couldn’t determine what it was. If I couldn’t remember, it must not have been important.
Rolling out of bed, I stumbled to the bathroom to run myself a bath. I was still in half of my work clothes; my skirt and jacket discarded, my white button-down open and hanging from my shoulders, and my underwear and bra sweaty from a fitful nap. I peeled everything off, tossing them into a heap on the floor to send out with my laundry later in the week. Every part of my body ached—my stomach from heaving, my back and neck from leaning over the toilet, and my legs from being curled into a ball in bed for so long. I wasn’t this sick in a long time and I hoped I could bounce back from it quickly.
Once the tub was half full, I sank into it, moaning as my muscles released when the hot water enveloped me. I stayed mostly submerged in the water for a long time until it began to cool and my stomach growled with hunger. Hunger was a good thing because it meant I was kicking the bug.
Reluctantly, I let the water out, stepping from the tub and toweling off before padding back into my bedroom. I stood there, looking around for a moment, with the plush white towel wrapped around me. The energy to get dressed and get food was nonexistent, but I managed to pull on a tank top and an oversized sweatshirt, panties, and leggings. I ambled into the kitchen and put on a pot for tea, then ate a few saltine crackers because I had no food in the apartment and I was afraid to eat a whole meal.
When my tea was ready, I took it and a few more crackers into my office and curled myself into the plush leather desk chair to catch up on everything I missed while I was down and out. My eyes roamed around the office as I tried to focus on my laptop screen before falling onto the calendar across the room. I squinted my eyes to see the dates better, my brain whirring as a thought pressed against my sick-addled brain. It was the same thought I had before I fell asleep, and looking at the dates on the calendar brought it all back. The vomiting, the exhaustion, and the fact that the calendar was telling me I was two weeks late for my period.
Horror and denial made me shake my head so fast dizziness and vertigo forced my eyes closed. Behind my eyelids, visions of Rhys and the alley next to Madison Square Garden bombarded me. We hadn’t used a condom and now I was two weeks late.
Am I pregnant?
The three words rang in my head like a gong, making me close my eyes again and rest my head on the seatback. I couldn’t be. This couldn’t happen. I had a company to run, a life to live. I didn’t want children. And I especially didn’t want a child with a man I barely knew and fucked in an alley on one of my lowest nights.
No, no, no.
I had to take a test, now. Jumping from the chair, so fast it slid back on the wheels and slammed into the wall, I hurried from the office. There was a Duane Reed on the corner where I could get a test and get this all over with. I told myself I was being cautious, that I had a stomach virus and not a baby inside of me. It would be negative; I just had to get to the drug store and take the damn test.
Another flash of horror made me freeze in my steps to the closet. What if someone saw me in the store buying a pregnancy test? That was an easier problem to solve though than an unwanted pregnancy. I pulled a baseball cap and hoodie from the closet, though it was probably eighty degrees outside, and slipped my feet into an old pair of UGG boots from my college days. A glance in the hall mirror confirmed that I was unrecognizable after adding a large pair of sunglasses to my get-up. With a nod at my reflection, I stepped from the apartment on a quest for answers, though on some level, I knew I wasn’t going to get the one that I wanted.
* * *
Pregnant.
The word stared back at me in pink, taunting me, mocking me, and making my eyes cloud with tears. This wasn’t happening. Not now. Not when I was finall
y getting my life back together. Not after five years of picking my depressed and anxious ass off the bathroom floor of life. I couldn’t be pregnant.
There are ways to take care of this.
The words came to me as if from an outside source, and I nodded my head. I would take care of it. It would be over quickly. Neatly. No one would have to know.
But I would know, I thought, as the tears finally began to fall down my cheeks, landing with a plop on the offending pregnancy test.
“What should I do?” I sobbed the words out loud because I never thought I would be alone, still married to a man who hated me, and pregnant with someone else’s baby.
I stayed that way for a while, sobbing on the bathroom floor, no closer to an answer. It would seem that at twenty-five, I would have some idea how to handle an unwanted pregnancy, but the truth was, I never thought I would be faced with the choice. I wanted to go back six weeks and never step foot into that alley, so this wasn’t a possibility. But time travel wasn’t an option and here I was, pregnant and in a heap on my bathroom floor.
My phone chose this most unfortunate time to ring, loudly and in my ear, from where it was discarded on the cold tile where I was curled up in a ball. I should have ignored it, or switched it off, but being a workaholic, I picked it up and saw one of two names I didn’t want to see at that moment flash across the screen.
It was my dad.
Sighing, I contemplated tossing it across the room, but I knew my dad wouldn’t let me off the hook that easily and his next step would be to show up at my door. That was an outcome I really didn’t want.
“Hey, Dad,” I croaked into the phone, clearing my throat.
“Natty, what’s going on? First, you leave work early and now you sound terrible. Do I need to stop by? Should I send Carla over with something for you?”
Carla was my childhood nanny and dad’s current housekeeper/maid/et cetera.
“No, no. Don’t come over, I don’t want you to catch whatever it is that I have. We can’t both be out of the office tomorrow for the big meeting.”
I made the spur-of-the-moment decision to take another day off while I decided what to do.
“So, you’re going to be out tomorrow too?” The disapproving tone I was so familiar with was shining through his initial tone of concern.
I sighed again, trying to keep it together for a few more minutes.
“Yes, I need to take off tomorrow. I’ll do what I can from home, but I don’t want to spread this virus through the office unnecessarily.”
“All right, call Carla or me if you need anything. I may send her over tomorrow morning, just in case. Feel better, hon.”
He hung up, without waiting for a response or rebuttal from me about Carla. I had less than twenty-four hours to get my shit together and decide what I was going to do. Otherwise, this whole mess could blow up in my face, especially since I made a date with Rhys for tomorrow night.
4
Natalie
Morning dawned with less clarity than the night before. I rolled out of bed feeling like a used dishrag, aching as if I had done an intense boot camp-style workout. My stomach rolled as my feet touched the floor and I booked it to the bathroom, making it to the toilet just in time.
After the episode of morning sickness was over, I rested my head on the cold tile floor where I had spent a good portion of the night before. My stomach rumbled in a different way, hunger clenching in such a way as to cause another tumble of nausea to rip through my already sensitive belly. I had never felt so awful in my life, and added this to the list of reasons why I never wanted to be pregnant again. If I made the choice to terminate, this would all be over.
But if I made the choice to terminate, would I be able to live with myself?
No closer to an answer, I dragged my exhausted and weak ass from the floor and padded into the kitchen. I kept little food in the apartment, besides crackers, cheese, coffee, tea, and a secret stash of chocolates for bad days. Crackers and weak tea would have to do because nothing was going to make me leave the apartment in this state. What if the nausea hit while I was on the street? I couldn’t be seen puking in public. It wasn’t worth the risk.
Grabbing a sleeve of saltines and my mug of black tea, I made my way to the sofa, the only comfortable piece of furniture in the house besides my bed. My interior designer hated the damn thing, but I was insistent my couch be comfortable, and I was never more grateful for my own stubbornness.
I snatched the remote from the coffee table and flipped through the channels until I found the morning news station I wanted to watch. It droned on in the background as I sipped my tea, munched on the stale crackers, and scrolled through the thousands of unanswered work emails that had accumulated since the day before. The list of needs, wants, and demands from people at the company never ceased, not even when I was ill. A headache pricked behind my eyes and I rubbed my forehead to try to ward it off from becoming a full-blown migraine. Stress and lack of rest were catching up to me from work, but if I didn’t run the company, who would?
My father wanted to be involved but didn’t want the day-to-day stress of being CEO any longer, and after running the company for the last year and half basically on my own, I could see why. It was a relentless business to be in right now in the city, and the weight of it all was pressing down squarely on my shoulders daily. This was why I couldn’t have a baby right now.
The headache intensified and I groaned, slipping down on the couch to a laying position. I flipped the TV off, putting an arm over my eyes and closing them. My brain wouldn’t shut off, which was likely not helping with the migraine, and my stomach roiled again with nausea as the pain in my head increased. I curled into a ball again, one hand on my head and the other wrapped around my middle. This was unreal.
I was so lost in my agony and feeling sorry for myself, I didn’t hear the door open.
“Dios mio, what’s happened to you?” Carla’s voice cut through my pain and I jumped up too quickly to a sitting position.
My stomach lurched again from the movement and my head screamed.
“Carla, I didn’t hear you come in.” I tried to sound better than I felt, but it didn’t work. The misery I was in showed through my words.
“Cariña Natalia,” Carla said, as she sat down next to me on the couch and put her wrist to my forehead, just as I remembered from when I was a child.
Tears pricked at my eyes as I longed to tell Carla about the reason for my suffering, but pride and embarrassment made me hold my tongue.
“I think it’s a bug,” I muttered, the weight of my lie pressing me further into the couch.
Carla shook her head. “You don’t have a fever, mija. Lie down and I’ll make you some soup, and you can tell me all about it.”
Carla pushed me back down onto the couch and I sank into it without protesting. I needed someone to take care of me right now, even if I didn’t want her to know why. She puttered around the kitchen, pulling items from the reusable shopping bag she brought with her and within thirty minutes, the smells of chicken noodle soup wafted to where I lay on the couch. The smell made my stomach growl and I pushed myself to sitting, despite the vise of pain around my head.
“You need to eat. You are looking too skinny,” Carla said as she handed me a bowl of steaming soup.
I nodded and began to eat. There was no use arguing with her. When I was a teenager, she was on me constantly for being too skinny and it was because of her I was able to overcome the slight eating disorder I developed when I was fourteen. Carla was the only mother I knew, and I was always so grateful my father found her when he did because I wasn’t sure what I would have done growing up without her.
All of this made it harder for me to keep this secret from her. Carla gave me “the talk” when I was twelve and got my period for the first time. She took care of me when I was sick and reprimanded me when I was a brat. How was I going to fool her into thinking I was only sick?
I slurped my soup carefully, ca
utiously, afraid it would all come back up if I ate too quickly. Carla watched me with her all-knowing eyes, scrutinizing me to determine what was wrong.
“Have you called the doctor?” she asked once I finished nearly the whole bowl and handed it back to her.
I shook my head, my headache subsiding. “It’s just a little virus.”
Carla’s eyes bore into me, willing me to tell her what was wrong. I looked away, unable to meet her eyes.
“You can tell me what is going on, mija. I won’t tell your papa if you don’t want me to. You know that.”
She rested her hand on my thigh and tears clogged my throat. I was unable to talk for a minute as I swallowed around the lump in my throat. I wanted to tell her. I had to tell her. Someone had to tell me it was the right choice to end this before it was too late.
“I’m pregnant, Carla.” I sobbed out the words, my voice hoarse, before putting my face in my hands.
“Aye, no,” Carla said as she wrapped her arms around me tightly. I leaned into her, taking the strength she was offering because I had none of my own. “You will be okay, Natalia. You are a strong woman, far stronger than your own mother was when she had you.”
She patted my back as she said the words and I slowly calmed down with her even, soothing tone. We didn’t talk about my mother often, my father refused, but what I did know about her was that she died of cancer shortly after I was born. Carla told me when I was in my rebellious teenage years, refusing to eat dinner so I could have the thigh gap my friends had, that my mother didn’t sacrifice her life for me to live so I could starve myself to death. I didn’t know what she meant until she explained because my father never told me anything about my mother’s death.
Shortly after finding out she was pregnant with me, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. They told her to terminate the pregnancy because she needed chemo and radiation, which would have killed me anyway. My mother refused, only agreeing to the treatment when I was considered full-term enough to deliver but by then, it was too late. The treatment didn’t work and she wasted away while Carla cared for me.
One Song: book two in the one series Page 3