While I wait, I scarf down the food and gulp the water.
Feeling guilty, I tell myself I should’ve saved some food for the boys for dinner. Who knows if Diane brought any more groceries home.
My phone chirps at me, notifying me of unread messages.
Callie, a girl who pretends to be my friend, has sent multiple texts.
Both are photos, and they take forever to load in this apartment without Wi-Fi.
The pictures Callie sent cause butterflies in my stomach, and not the good kind. These are the anxiety-provoking, unsettling ones that cause agonizing pain. In the clear-as-day pictures, Justin is walking with Courtney, and she’s whispering in his ear as he grins.
The next one is of them embracing at his locker.
The next text makes my stomach tumble even farther.
Rumor is Court’s preggo and Justin’s been sleeping with her for a couple months now. Thought you should know.
Is this some kind of sick joke? I wonder.
Justin is attractive and sensitive, and I used to consider him an all-around nice guy. I never would have believed this message a few months ago, but lately, he’s shown another side. Abandoning his pregnant girlfriend and engaging in robbery are not traits that made me fall in love with him.
And why would Callie make something like this up? She has no reason to lie to me. We aren’t close, but we are friendly. I refuse to get close to any chicks, their overblown drama and gossip stupid.
Some guy didn’t call them when he said he would.
They got in a fight with their mom over their allowance.
Their dad grounded them for sneaking out.
Those aren’t real problems, at least not to me.
Angrily swiping out of the picture, I consider my options. Who do I confront? Justin? Courtney?
I call him and am sent straight to voice mail.
I try again.
Same thing.
When I forward him the picture, it is returned as undelivered.
WTF ?
I shoot him a text.
Same thing.
Checking to see that I still have prepaid minutes, I feel my head pounding like the drumbeat to a marching band. This asshole blocked me; he had to have.
Wailing, I unleash a fury of tears, my body heaving. A slap in the face was him being unsure of having a child with me.
But a gut punch is him not only screwing my archnemesis but also knocking her up.
It can’t be true. There has to be some mistake. He couldn’t have been careless with both of us.
Sure, Courtney is cute, if you like ditzy blondes with Daddy’s money and no personality.
And who doesn’t? I roll my eyes.
But she’s the one person who has always put you down, I tell myself, and Justin knows this. He wouldn’t. He just wouldn’t.
Or would he?
I reach in the cupboard for some generic Tylenol, a headache hammering like a mallet on my skull. I take the bottle and shove it in my backpack.
Angrily, I stamp down the stairs, the pair of black leggings I’m wearing practically the only item in my closet that fits, thanks to pregnancy. And Justin.
I leave the house and head to my first class of the day, my phone clenched in my fist.
I’ve never been so intent on getting to school.
When I get there, he’s going to pay for this. And so is Courtney.
CHAPTER 34
Charlotte
I stay in bed longer than usual, languidly reading the morning newspaper, something I still like to touch and feel in my hands. Moving to my belly, I tenderly rub my abdomen, the scar not such a big deal now.
A sense of déjà vu comes over me, like I’m reliving this heartbreak.
In a way, I guess I am.
I fold the paper and rest my head against a pillow, thinking back to my relationship with Jonathan Randall. We were opposites, he and I.
I was an early-morning riser, and he was a night owl. I would start the day perched at our kitchen table with a warm cup of coffee, voraciously reading the newspaper. Jonathan hated anything that meant sitting still. He always had to be on his feet, and he liked building things and using his hands. He claimed he was allergic to the monotony of what he called a traditional schedule or corporate America.
When I met him, it was a chance encounter. Like most couples back then, we met serendipitously, though I shudder to use that word now. This was before dating apps caused people to forgo face-to-face interaction for swipes based on appearances.
Jonathan was installing the ventilation and air-conditioning system in the elementary school I worked at, my first position out of college. I had taken a longer path to finishing my degree than most and had worked in the fifth-grade classroom for the past year.
He was not like the guys I had dated in high school and college. He had lived.
Or, rather, lived in a way that was different from my upbringing.
He was the antithesis of every man I had dated.
And my mother couldn’t stand him, so that made him even more attractive to me.
Instead of pretending to be rugged by wearing flannel and the North Face, he actually was. He rode a motorcycle, hunted deer, fished, and loved taking road trips with no planned destination and nothing but nonperishable food and a map, preferring the outdoors to human interaction. He was quiet and reserved most of the time, until he was not.
When his temper flared, it was unrestrained, as I would come to find out.
He was divorced when I met him, five years older than I, already a father to a child, and had an ex-wife who would rarely let him see his daughter, or so he claimed. She still managed to call him repeatedly and hang up, either sobbing or screaming.
As I shut my eyes, the memories come flooding back.
It was a November day, right in the middle of peak holiday season, squished between Halloween and Christmas. The winter was particularly miserable. People from the Midwest comment every year on how bad the last one was, forgetting during the humidity of the summer months what the next season has in store, but this one stands out in my mind.
Maybe because of what happened.
I remember it clearly: the overcast skies and the below-freezing temperatures, my pregnancy magnifying every ailment. Jonathan and I had only lived together for a few months at this point, and I was about five months along. I went from the overbearing nature of my mother to a domineering man. We shared a small rental, a tiny one-bedroom house with a basement.
Hormonal, I was fighting with him more than usual over nothing noteworthy. Who should wash the dishes, what channel to watch on TV, his inability to pick up after himself.
It didn’t help that I was torn between two men, him and Noah. Except Noah was married.
On this particular afternoon, a Saturday, a vehicle pulls into the drive, tires squealing. I open our flimsy curtains to watch the icicles bounce from the gutter in protest as a car door is slammed.
The front door seems to rattle off its hinges as Jonathan barrels in.
Surprised, I step away from the window. “You’re home earlier than usual. Weather?”
Instead of responding, he yanks me by the elbow toward him. “You wanna tell me something?”
“Huh?”
“I’m not going to repeat myself.”
“What’re you talking about?”
He grabs my chin roughly, spittle flying. “Are you sure it’s even mine?”
“Are you being serious right now? Who am I going to find in this Podunk town we live in besides you?”
“That’s not an answer.”