Pushing a stroller with half a dozen toddlers up the steep incline toward the park? That's easy.

Carrying this heavy heart around in my chest? That’s what I'm struggling with.

Dammit—This feeling. Deep and achy and hopeless. It’s what I was trying to avoid. It’s why I didn’t want to get involved with Archie to begin with.

But he promised...

He promised he’d be there for River and me. He promised he’d stay.

Of course, that's what men do. One minute they have you standing on the bow of the Titanic, feeling like you can fly. And in the blink of an eye, they kick you overboard to swim with the sharks. Wait—that’s not how the movie ended, is it?

River has been super cranky ever since Archie left. She doesn’t want to sleep in her own bed. She’s clingy. She does anything for my attention. It’s like she’s afraid that I’ll abandon her, too. Her way of coping with that fear is by acting out. I’ve been extra patient with her, spending more time with her, doing everything in my power to reassure her. It’s all I can do to make it up to her.

Mommy fucked up.

I put my desire for Archie ahead of what was right for our daughter and now, my little girl is suffering. I don’t know if I’ll be able to forgive myself.

As we’re crossing the street into the park, River flings her bottle to the ground and it lands on the muddy sidewalk. She starts to cry.

"Danggit. Fudge,” I mumble as I bend over to pick it up.

I hate wasting even a drop of my hard-fought breastmilk. Pumping was a bitch and a half but I made sure to stock up the freezer before I weaned her. It’s been months, though, and her supply is starting to run low. So, it really hits me hard to have to throw a full bottle away.

I scoop the bottle out of the puddle and toss it into the storage basket at the bottom of the stroller. It's gross. I can’t wait to get back home and sterilize the shit out of that bottle.

Right as I’m about to resume the trek to the park, a fancy sportscar zips by and bumps into a puddle, dousing me with cold, dirty water.

I shriek. Can a girl catch a break?!

This is my breaking point. I am tired. I am done letting life piss all over me. It’s time for me to stand up for myself.

When I see the car pull up at the curb a few yards away, I veer the stroller onto the grass and kick up the brakes before hollering over my shoulder at Ramona. “I’ll be right back. Do not take your eyes off these children.”

"Uh-huh," she mumbles uninterestedly, one hand locked on Sebastian's wrist, the other scrolling the screen of her phone.

God, this chick. 

But right now, I’m just grateful that she agreed to come back to work for me after I fired her. I would have been stuck with a mess on my hands if she’d turned up her nose at my second-hand, recycled job offer.

Anyway, right now, I'm on a mission to give that asshole driver a piece of my mind. I stomp right up to the car. Leaning over the spotless dark-tinted window on the driver’s side, I rap my knuckles against the glass.

My heart stops beating as the window lowers in slow motion and my ex-fiance’s smug face comes into view.

His mouth quirks into his usual boyish grin. “Hi Sophie.”

The overpowering scent of his cologne floats out on the air-conditioned draft and my stomach turns with revulsion. An excessively pretty blonde with the body fat ratio of a mosquito leans around him and gives me a little wave. “Hi there! Boy, everyone’s so nice in this town.”

My insides contract painfully. My nostrils twitch. “Joshua.” I straighten my posture and lift my chin.

“How have you been?” He asks the question casually, like we’re nothing more than good old friends who fell out of touch after college. Is this guy for real?

Screw this.

“I’m doing fantastic. I’m doing. Fucking. Fantastic.” I turn on my heel, headed back toward my tribe of toddlers.

“Sophie. Sophie, wait. Please.” I don’t look back but I hear the car door slam behind me.

When I feel his hand at the curve of my elbow, I spin back around and growl. “How dare you touch me?! After everything?!”

His shoulders drop. “Look—I’m sorry. I’m sorry for the way things turned out.”

Really? That’s all he has to say for himself?

“Thanks for the sentiment,” I say dryly. “Gotta go.” I try to turn away but he touches my elbow again.

I jerk my arm away. I am one more nonconsensual touch away from unleashing my long lost inner ninja. Try me, asshole.

He shakes his head. “We need to talk, Sophie. Like, really have a serious conversation about our situation.”

I stiffen my spine. “It’s been two years, Josh. We don’t have a ‘situation’.”

His chest rises on a deep inhale and he presses his eyes shut. “I love you, Sophia.”

My eyebrow jerks up at the declaration and I hear Ramona spit out a laugh somewhere behind me. I glare at her. “Could you take the kids to the playground? I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Sure.” With a shrug, she grabs the reins of the stroller and pushes it off across the grass.

I turn back to Josh. He’s looking at me with pleading eyes. “We should get back together,” he says. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

A coughing sound sputters from my lungs. “What?”

“We should get back together.” He smooths his hand over his perfectly brushed-back blond hair and glances off in the direction of the playground. “I wasn’t ready before but I’m ready now. I’m ready to settle down.” He watches me like he expects me to break out into cartwheels at the announcement. “You and me and that kid of yours—we can be a family.”

My patience is running so very thin by this point. “Just get out of my face, Josh. Climb back into your testosteronemobile with your manicured stick figure and go drive off a cliff. Because—newsflash. You are not the father of my child.”

He shrugs a shoulder dismissively. “Well, that was sort of obvious to me because we didn’t have sex for like a month before the wedding. But…” he gives me a magnanimous smile. “I forgive you, Sophie. Besides, nobody else knows I’m not the kid’s father. We can make this work. Let’s just call it even and get back together.”

Is this conversation really happening?

“Josh, why don’t you tell me what’s really going on?”

He grunts roughly. “Nothing’s going—”

“Joshua!”

His shoulders slump in defeat. “My parents are getting divorced. My dad has his new 20-year-old girlfriend and he hasn’t been answering my calls. My mom is too fucking depressed to even press ‘send’ on PayPal transfer to my account—”

“You’re doing this for money?!” This is incredible.

He tries to reason with me. “You don’t understand. I have zero influence right now, Sophie. Zero. But a baby…that would make my mother so fucking happy—”

I throw up a hand over my shoulder as I walk off. “Goodbye, Josh.”

He comes chasing after me like the shameless shit he is. “I’d split the money with you, of course. We just have to pretend the kid is mine. No big deal.”

“Joshua. Seriously. Get lost.” I continue my march across the grass. “I can’t believe you’re even making me this crazy proposition right now. You stood me up on our wedding day. You left me standing there like an idiot. Why should I do you any favors?”

He sighs roughly. He looks off into the distance. “I didn’t know myself back then. I was lost. And I just had so many different people chirping in my ear. That made it hard to make any decisions, to think straight. I mean, there was Alina—”

“Alina?” I glance back and jerk up a brow.

His bleached teeth sink into the corner of his lip. “One of the strippers from my bachelor party—”

I heave a sigh. “Seriously, Josh?”

“I’m trying to come clean, Sophie. Hear me out.” He rolls his shoulders back, the way he does when he’s trying to ease tension. “As I was saying, I was in bed with Alina. And she was putting serious doubts in my head…” He adopts a high-pitched imitation of a female voice. “‘Oh why do you wanna get married? Marriage is a trap’, ‘Oh, look how good your skin is. You’re gonna age so well’, ‘Oh, what’s the rush to settle down? You’re gonna regret it later’. And then Francie—”

“Who’s Francie?” I whisper.

“Francie was the other stripper. Gosh, follow along, Sophie.” He shoots me a look of irritation. “Francie, was like, ‘Men don’t go through menopause. You can get married anytime. You don’t have to rush into anything’. You see, I was taking advice from the wrong people.”

“Evidently.”

“But that doesn’t change the fact that I love you and we belong together.” He bats his blue eyes at me pleadingly.

“You don’t love me,” I say on an exhale. “You never loved me. For three weeks before our wedding, you didn’t even touch me. Not once.”

He flinches. “That’s because I had chlamydia. It was a stubborn strain and the antibiotics—”

My mind is spinning. “Get out of my face. Just go.” I thrust a finger in the direction of his car and the Barbie doll waiting inside of it. “I would rather rattle a tin can outside of the Quickie Stop on Cumber Street than get dragged into this scheme with you.”

At that, his repentant facade snaps right along with his patience. “Stop being difficult, Sophie. Just stop. Your pride is blocking your decision-making faculties right now. Open your eyes. You’re as desperate as I am and you know it. You ruined your life by getting pregnant by some random random. Now, you’re pushing around a grocery cart full of snot-faced kids for a living and you have baby food in your hair. God, when did you become such a basic bitch?” He paces and shoves his hand into his hair. “This is your chance to redeem yourself, to take your place in the Davies family dynasty.”

I think back to Clara. Elegantly-dressed and reeking desperation. That’s not a privilege. It’s a prison. “This conversation is over.” I step up to the edge of the playground where the children are toddling about. I lean my weight against the empty stroller as I watch them.

How did I ever think I loved this man? I legit hate the fact that he even exists right now.

His perfect forehead pleats with frustration and in that moment, I’m almost certain that he’s wearing cream foundation. “Look—we need to move past this. I’ve made mistakes. But I’m back to give you your happy ending.”

Pursing my lips, I pull in a breath. Then I turn to face him. “I’m confused about a lot of things, Joshua. Hardly anything in my life makes sense.” He nods in understanding as I bend over and rummage around in the bottom of the stroller before straightening to face him. “But there is one thing that is crystal clear to me...”

He steps closer and runs his fingers across my cheekbone. “What’s that, baby?”

My patience snaps and two years of repressed anger comes spilling out. “There is no happy ending for me that includes you.” I swing the bottle up to his face and squirt the dirty breastmilk at his smug grin.

His high-pitched shriek fills the air as he brushes wetness from his hair and face. A string of obscenities pours from his mouth as he sprints back toward his waiting car.