Me: Exactly like that.
Me: My sister’s excited. She wants to meet you. She’ll be a little crazy and I apologize in advance for that. She’s protective and pregnant so she’s also hormonal.
Ashley: Are you saying I’ll be hormonal?
Me: It’s a guarantee.
Ashley: Not gonna even try using the kid gloves on me, huh? Just telling me like it is straight from the start.
Me: You’ll learn I’m not a liar, Ashley. Even if it’s over something to make you feel better.
Ashley: That’s a concept I’m not used to from the male species. Might be kind of fun to learn what that’s like.
Me: Ashley?
Ashley: Yes?
Me: It’s going to be okay. And that’s not a lie. It will be hard and difficult at times and probably scary, too. But it will all work out in the end and be okay. And I’m here for you. Always.
Ashley: Even if you hadn’t just told me you weren’t a liar, I would still believe that.
Me: Good. Now, get some sleep.
Ashley: It’s 8 p.m.
Holy shit. It is. My gosh it feels like the last few hours have lasted ten.
Me: Gotta get used to those early bedtimes. LOL
Me: Actually I didn’t realize it was so early.
Ashley: It does feel like it’s been a long evening, right?
Me: For sure.
Ashley: I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Nik. Thank you for being so great about this. I don’t know what I would have done if you had… well, acted like I was lying. That was my biggest fear.
Me: We might not know each other all that well but I do know that like me, you’re not a liar. We’ll learn the rest as we go.
Ashley: Yeah. We will. Night.
Me: Night.
Chapter Seven
Ashley
I place my cell on the end table in my living room and lie back on the couch, one leg bent, one stretched out, and my hand on my still-flat (well, mostly) stomach.
And proceed to break down in tears.
There’s no way I should be given this kind of responsibility. A baby? How am I supposed to care for a baby when I can’t even be smart enough not to get pregnant by a complete stranger? And how in the heck is Niko so calm about the entire thing? Why isn’t he freaking out along with me? Maybe he waited until he got off the phone with me to have his panic attack.
Part of me hopes that’s the case because I don’t know how I feel about him not being at least a little nervous about the fact that we’re going to have a baby together.
My cat, Frank, jumps up onto the couch and curls up on my chest, purring and nestling in. I feel like I’ve heard before that there’s something to do with cats and toxic poop that’s not good to have around babies. Does that mean I’m going to have to get rid of him? Surely not, right? There’s no way that every expecting parent abandons their cats. Maybe it’s because of the litter box? Or maybe I can’t get close to the litter?
As I lie here, I start do to a mental list of things I need to do around the house to make it baby-proof. Which reminds me I probably need to go to the doctor and start taking prenatal vitamins.
The questions I have about this pregnancy could make a list a mile long. I have no idea what I’m doing. No wonder people read that book What to Expect While You’re Expecting like it’s a bible. I’m completely clueless about all the rules. What happens if I eat something on the no fly list? Does my baby pop out with a third arm hanging out of his or her butt? What if I take the wrong vitamins or don’t get the exact amount of sleep I need to help develop the baby’s brain?
The what-ifs have the potential to break me as the anxiety overwhelms every part of my being. Soon I feel myself breathing heavy.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Breathe in.
Now what? I forgot how to breathe! What am I doing? Breathe. That’s something I’ve been doing my entire life but now it seems like a monumental task.
I realize what I’m doing and exhale, throwing the cat off my chest and swinging my legs around so my feet are hitting the floor. I lean over, letting my head fall between my knees and count to ten. Breathing in and out slowly.
Before I can think better of it, I’ve hit a button on my phone and it’s ringing in my ear.
“Hello?”
“I’m a mess and need your help.”
“I’m here. I told you I’d always be here for you.”
“I know that’s what you said, but you can’t blame me for not exactly believing you.”
Zachary sighs heavily on the other end of the phone. I haven’t heard from my ex-boyfriend since the night he broke things off.
“You called me, Ashley. There must have been part of you that believed me. What’s going on?”
“I’m pregnant.”
And for lack of a better term, there’s a giant pregnant pause coming from Zachary. I wish I could say that his panic didn’t make me a little giddy, but that’d be a lie.
“Relax, it’s not yours.”
“How can you be so sure? We just broke up like a week ago.”
“Uh, it was over a month ago and you and I hadn’t had sex for two months before that,” I remind him. “You were too busy having sex with other women, remember?”
Another heavy sigh and a deep level of regret that I called him in the first place.
“Are we going to hash this out all over again? If you’re so sure it’s not mine, who else’s could it be? It’s not like you’ve been dating.”
“Checking up on me? Your little spies must not be very good.”
Is it possible to hear a snarl through a phone line? Because I’m pretty sure I just did. “Cut the shit, Ashley. What’s going on?”
I sigh, too, and explain, “The night that we broke up, I met someone.”
“What the fuck?! You fucked some random stranger?”
“Listen here, you judgmental ass,” I reprimand. There’s some truth to it, but I’m not the one who was a cheater and sleeping with other women, plural, while committed to another person, so he has no place to judge me. Besides, he and I were together for years and he wasn’t able to bring me to orgasm once. I’m not sure why that’s relevant here, but it’s still amazing to me that one night with Nik, and he brought me to a place that Zachary never could in the two years we were together.
“Sorry,” he grumbles.
“You know, I was having a scary moment and for some unknown reason I decided to call you. I thought maybe you’d be able to help me stay calm.”
He’s silent and I wish I could reach through the phone and flick his earlobe to gain his attention.
“Just forget I called,” I tell him and prepare to hang up.
“Wait! I’m sorry, okay? I just… I didn’t expect this call, you know? It’s a little shocking. I wasn’t… I don’t know, okay?”
“You weren’t, what?”
“I don’t know!”
“Sure you do. You just don’t want to say it out loud.”
“Maybe that’s it. But this is a surprise for sure and I don’t know how I feel about it.”
“You’re telling me,” I mutter. Standing up, I walk to the kitchen and fill up a glass with water and take a sip.