Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 90951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
I cry and cry, fighting to keep my sobs quiet, so the driver won’t be freaked out.
He’s just trying to earn a living. He shouldn’t have to deal with a stranger’s emotional meltdown in the back of his Chevy Malibu.
Icry on and off for most of the next week, not entirely sure why, but finally deciding that Blue was probably right. I must still be grieving the loss of my old life. This certainly feels like grief. All the sadness and regret and pain I pushed away to focus on surviving the initial break-up with Kai and the band comes pouring out in waves.
At first, I try to hide it from Clover, my roommate, but eventually, I give up and tell her that I’m in the depths of despair. That I just need to cry it out.
She agrees that I have to let it happen, so…I do.
I let myself lie on the couch and watch mindless television and cry.
I let myself eat nachos for lunch and dinner two days in a row, while I listen to the playlists I made for Kai back when I was young and full of big, romantic dreams, and cry. I let myself go through my keepsake box from my years with the band and ache for the good times and the bad times and the people we all were when we first started making music, and cry.
Then, I pack everything away, take a three-hour bath, and emerge feeling lighter than I did before.
I get a haircut and some highlights to add streaks of sunshine to my brown hair in honor of the arrival of spring. I buy Baylor and Charlotte a gorgeous engagement present—crystal wineglasses from Italy that will be beautiful with the pasta alfresco they make with the vegetables from their garden—and realize I am happy for them. I just needed to let go of the past.
I’m ready to let go now, so ready I’m not nearly as freaked out by those two lines on the pregnancy test as I probably should be. Even a year ago, an unplanned pregnancy would have been a nuclear bomb detonated in the middle of my life.
But now?
Now, it feels like a wonderful—if slightly terrifying—surprise.
I’ve been longing for someone to love, and the universe has come through for me, just in a different way than I expected. But I’ve always wanted to be a mom, and the fact that my baby’s father is a kind, gifted, genuine, hard-working man with a heart of gold is a gift.
This baby is a gift!
I hope Blue will feel the same way, but I’m not really surprised when I corner him at Elly’s baby shower to spill the beans a few days later, and he seems more shocked than pleased. It’s big news. Big, serious news. I get that, I do. But I also have no intention of ending the pregnancy.
So, I assure Blue that he can be as involved—or uninvolved—as he wants to be, kiss him on the cheek, and head home to await his call.
I know he’ll call. I’m sure of it.
When two days pass, then five, nine, in radio silence, I’m a little surprised, but I never doubt that he’ll reach out for a “let’s figure this out” conversation as soon as he’s had time to process.
When the letter arrives via courier two weeks later, it feels like a slap to the face. The envelope holds a note assuring me that it’s best “for everyone” if he’s only involved financially and anonymously, and a check for fifty-thousand dollars.
Fifty-thousand dollars.
As if I don’t have more than enough money.
As if a check was ever what I’d wanted from him.
I don’t know exactly what I wanted, but a package that makes me feel like some kind of blackmailing Jezebel certainly isn’t it.
Ihead for the airport early the next morning.
I assure Clover that I’ll keep paying my half of the apartment’s expenses until I’m ready to come back, and then, I fly away. I fly with my baby growing inside me and fresh wounds on my heart. But as soon as the wheels leave the tarmac, I know it’s the right choice.
I spent over a decade with a man who didn’t understand what I wanted or needed. I don’t need another relationship that makes me feel sad or wrong or ashamed.
Maybe I don’t need another relationship at all.
Maybe all I need is myself and my little one and the chance to give my love away to someone who wants it. Needs it.
Babies all want love, after all, and I have more than enough to give.
Chapter Three
BLUE
She’s sinking.
Vanishing.
Slipping beneath the surface of Hawk Lake, where the water turns dark thirty feet down, and catfish the size of dogs drift along the muddy bottom.
Someone must have pushed her in, and now she’s being sucked away from me.