Regardless of the people I’ve been foolish enough to love who never loved me back…and the one person whose love I’ve been too terrified to accept.
Regardless of the unfulfilled dreams and the lost years and the dizzy days of empty longing.
Regardless of being used, always used, accepted only for what I can give but never for who I am.
None of that matters. And yet it all matters. Every single bit of it.
The choices I made, everything I’ve ever gone through, have all led me here. It’s clarity, an awakening, a fucking energy bolt spiraling up my spine.
Countless self-help books preach it; they stress that the present moment is all we have and blah, blah, blah. It’s something I’ve always known, though it was merely on an intellectual level. I never truly understood it, felt it at the core of my very being, until…now.
Holly-hell and oh-my-god and freaking hallelujah!
All of this sudden awareness provides an out.
A glorious, wonderful, dreams-fulfilled out.
And it’s up to me to take it or leave it.
I can keep on living the same way I’ve always lived, surviving from one day to the next, sedated by wealth and numbed by drink. I can continue to hate myself, make damaging decisions based solely on self-loathing. I can continue on with Hollis or run back to Nicholas, and whatever fresh hell the future brings will be no one’s fault but mine.
Or. Or, or, or…I can dare. Step out of my comfort zone and fucking dare.
Ford.
I think of Ford, and something flickers in my abdomen. Though, this time, it’s not nausea from the flu or acid reflux due to an empty stomach. Instead, it’s a happy little wave, a tiny ripple of joy, fluttering, fluttering, fluttering.
Holy shit.
• • •
The only way to achieve perfection is to embrace imperfection.
I drown Hollis’s laptop in the bathtub before I leave. Of course, I know this will only stall the story and not prevent it. But I feel better all the same. Granted, I also open the room’s one gummy window and empty everything from his suitcase into the grimy alley below. So that helps.
I may be awakened now, but I’m still human.
For a brief moment, I consider sticking around, wait for him to return so I can tell him exactly what I think of him. But I’m not sure I could do it without tears. Without a tremor in my voice that would give away the initial pain I felt when reading his words. It’s clear that Hollis presumes to have godlike power over me, and I don’t want to feed his ego any more than I already have. No, it’s just better if I walk away, not give him the satisfaction of a confrontation. He’d only just put it in his book, anyway.
One thing bothers me, though. And as I urinate in the toilet and then swirl his toothbrush around in my waste, I can’t help but wonder…how did he know about the abortion? And all of my failed attempts to get pregnant?
I briefly wonder if he’s been watching me for years, just as closely as I’ve been watching him these last weeks, but quickly realize it doesn’t matter. If the only material he has to write about is me, if I’m the only fucking muse in his life, well…that’s just plain sad.
Um, can you say loser? I mean, get a life, right?
I’m high as a kite as I walk across the hotel’s lobby and through the front doors. On the way to the parking lot, I pass a bum wearing some of Hollis’s clothes, and I cock a finger, give him a wink. “Lookin’ good, buddy,” I say as I pass. He just stares at me, too stunned by my compliment to respond.
Look at me, spreading sunshine and shit.
I rest my hand on my lower stomach and skip, skip, skip the last few steps to my Navigator. My phone buzzes as I get behind the wheel, but I don’t look at it. There’s something I need to do first. Something that’s more important than anything else.
I need to make sure. I need to make sure before I talk to Ford.
Because…because…because.
I still haven’t checked his texts. I’m sure he’s ticked that he hasn’t heard from me yet. Or, at the very least and probably more likely, just worried. I’ve never really seen him get angry, not in all the weeks we’ve been together. And now, with this new possibility brewing deep in my belly, I don’t want to go to him until I know.
Because I’m about to do something radical, commit to him in a way I never thought I could. I’m going to dare to believe that…I’m good enough for him.
I cried after my abortion.
For days.
Curled up in my bed in Nicholas’s guest room, I wept for the life I ended, for the child whose cry I would never hear. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t ready to be a mom, was sick of caring for so many others that I didn’t have it in me to provide for yet another needy soul.
For some reason, my heart still broke.
And I couldn’t understand. I didn’t understand. Because I’ve never been one to judge. Never been one to takes sides, figuring a woman should be able to do with her body as she pleases. But all I knew at the time was that I felt empty, hollow, as if a piece of me had been cut away. I mean, I was used to giving up parts of myself for others. But this was different. This was on par with losing an entire organ, one that wasn’t vital for survival, but affected the overall quality of life just the same.
In a way, I suppose I’ve always associated losing the baby with losing Hollis. They were entwined in my mind, father and child, and maybe that’s why I thought getting him back would somehow repair the damage, curb the longing I could never seem to quench.
Nicholas was there, of course. Filling my head with what he thought I needed to hear. Now, I realize he was merely placating me. Prepping me for his needs, for a life with him. He consoled me by speaking of the children we’d have together, his children, and not the one he talked me into giving up.
But the joke was on him, because we never had any.
Couldn’t have any.
Until now.
I can’t wait to get home to do it. I take the test into the private bathroom at the grocery store, peel open the box with shaky fingers, and pee on the stick while hovering over the public-use toilet. And then, placing the test on the back of the commode, I pace the five-by-five-foot square space, back and forth, back and forth, feeling the soft tug of my soles against the sticky tile while I wait. It only takes two minutes (not even three like the box says!) to tell me what I know, what I know, what I already know.
And then the room tilts. The tacky floor tilts, and I grab the sink, the slick porcelain sink, and stare into the mirror, stare into forever…right into the very heart of the universe.
I
am
pregnant.
“You’re the only person I’ve ever loved enough to lie to.”
— November’s Night, Hollis Thatcher
When I pull around the bend in our street and see the vehicle in the driveway, my heart leaps up into my throat. My first thought is Nicholas, and that he’s not supposed to be back yet, not yet, not for a few days. And even if he decided to surprise me and arrive home early (something he’s never done before), he’d never come here.
Would he?
I can barely remember the last time my husband visited our lake house, the last time he spent more than a night under its roof, and the thought of seeing him so soon after learning what I’ve learned instantly throws me into fight or flight mode.