Kara
The sound of the familiar ringtone from my phone breaks the spell I’ve been under for the last…well, I don’t know how long we’ve actually been laid here. I reach over for my phone and see Zoey’s face on the screen. I answer the phone to a panicked sounding Zo. She’s always so calm that it’s weird to hear her flapping about anything.
“Zoey, hey, calm yourself down. I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”
“She’s on her way. Ohmygod, what am I going to do?” Her words are rushed and I feel my heart rate pick up speed.
“Who’s on her way? Slow down and breathe.”
I hear a scream down the line and the sound tears right through me. My best friend is practically the most unflappable person I know, and hearing her in distress is an awful thing to experience.
“Thea. She’s on her way right now.”
There’s another scream and I rush to grab my things from the ground. I see Reid already packing away the hamper and racing round to collect everything we brought with us.
“Zo, honey, calm down and remember your breathing. You’re not alone, are you?”
“Yes. Brock’s just left work, but he was on a course.” She pauses to let out a long moan before continuing, “So he’s not in town. He’s about an hour away. Thea can’t wait.”
“Zo, we’re coming to get you. We’ll be there in about ten minutes. Ring your midwife, tell her what’s happening, and we’ll be with you soon, I promise.”
“O…kay,” she moans out.
I hang up the phone and bring Reid up to speed. We jump in his car and head to Zoey and Brock’s place as fast as we can. I know Brock is her birthing partner, but from the sound of it, Thea may not be able to hold on that long. Trust the daughter to be just as impatient as the mother.
We’re at Zoey’s house in just under ten minutes and I let us in with the spare key she gave me a while ago. When she said that Thea would be here soon, I didn’t expect her to mean today. She mentioned having what she thought was Braxton Hicks, but now I’m certain they were actual contractions.
Walking in to find her in the lounge, I see her sat on the armchair with her phone in her hand. She’s talking to her midwife by the sound of it.
Reid and I don’t know what to do with ourselves. We’re stood around looking like spare parts. I wish I knew what to do, but I’ve never had a baby, nor had to help anyone who has.
Zoey puts the phone down and asks us to take her straight to hospital. I grab the hospital bag that she’s had packed for the last few weeks and Reid helps her to her feet.
Getting in the car is a bit difficult. We get Zoey seated in the back with her head in my lap. She’s sweating as she pants her breaths out the way she’s been told to.
Once we arrive at the hospital, Reid jumps out and goes to fetch a wheelchair. We get Zoey out of the car and sat in the wheelchair before rushing her up to the maternity ward. The nurses take us straight through to a delivery suite and everything seems to happen at warp speed. I’m sat holding Zoey’s hand, while Reid stays outside to wait for Brock.
***
“She’s so beautiful, just like her mommy,” I utter as I look down at baby Thea, who’s wrapped in a pink blanket in my arms.
Brock had arrived just in time to see his beautiful baby daughter come into the world. I’d waited outside the room with Reid until we were told we could come in and have a few minutes with mom and baby.
Reid said all the right things, but looked a bit uncomfortable. But then I suppose that’s what men are like when it comes to babies, or more to the point, childbirth itself. At least we got her to hospital and her labour wasn’t at home, where she would have only had the two of us for help.
“Five more minutes, mom and baby will need their rest,” the nurse says as she peers round the door.
“Okay,” I say, not looking up from the precious bundle in my arms.
Reid and I say our goodbyes to Zoey, Brock, and baby Thea, then we head back out to the car.
“She was so beautiful,” I say softly as we start our journey.
“Mm-hmm,” Reid mumbles but doesn’t look my way.
I’m not sure what has Reid so deeply lost in his own thoughts, but he’s been the same since we arrived at the hospital. Maybe it’s the fact that in a few months’ time, he’ll be doing this with Molly and their son. I don’t say anything else until we arrive back at my house. I invite him in and hand him a bottle of Bud.
“You look like you could do with one,” I say as he takes the bottle.
“Thanks. Just the one though. I have to drive home, remember?”
He offers me a smile, and though it doesn’t quite light up his face like normal, it seems genuine, and I take it as a sign he’s not so wrapped up in himself.
“We should order takeaway,” I say as I sit on the couch next to him.
“Sure. What do you fancy?”
We order Chinese and I’m glad, because it’s a little late and I don’t fancy cooking. It’s been quite an eventful day. A beautiful picnic in the park with the man I love dearly, followed by my goddaughter being born.
“You’ve been very quiet today,” I observe as I plate up the takeaway.
“Sorry.”
“Are you okay?”
His face drops and he doesn’t respond right away. I hand him his food and we sit at the breakfast bar in my kitchen. He pushes food around his plate rather than eating it, and I’m worried that I’ve said or done something wrong.
“Reid,”
“It’s not you, Kara. It’s me.”
Oh my god, those are the words people use when they want to break up with you.
“It’s not you, it’s me.” Or “It’s not your fault but…”
“Are you…” I can’t swallow because of the lump in my throat. I feel the sting of tears and I put down my fork, my appetite all but gone.
“Are you breaking up with me?” I finally manage to ask.
As soon as the question has left my lips, the tears begin freefalling. It’s like they’re racing each other to leave their salty tracks on my cheeks.
“What? Kara, no!” Reid exclaims as he stands up.
He rounds the breakfast bar and draws me into his arms. I freely sob into his chest. My chest heaves as painful sobs leave me. Reid holds me tighter and allows me to cry. I don’t know why I’m crying now. He said he isn’t leaving me. So maybe it’s just relief? I really don’t know.
When my tears subside, I look up at Reid and he offers me a small smile. He wipes the remaining tears from my cheeks with the pads of his thumbs and leans down to plant a chaste kiss on my lips.
“I’m sorry, Kara. I didn’t mean to upset you. What gave you the impression I was breaking up with you?”
He pulls his stool round next to mine and sits down before reaching for my hands.
“People always say ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ when they are about to break up.”
“Oh baby,” he says as he rubs circles on the backs of my hands, “I meant that I wasn’t being quiet or off because of you. It’s nothing you’ve done that’s made me withdrawn this afternoon.”
“Oh.”
I sigh and lean into him. The scent of his cologne, tinged with that manly smell that is all Reid comforts me.
“Baby look, I should tell you something. It’s about Zoey and me.”
His eyes bore into mine and it’s as if he’s imploring me to listen. With all thoughts of food and a night in front of the telly with my man discarded, I sit up a little straighter and nod at him to continue.
“We were going to have a baby.”
“What?” I almost shout.
If my best friend had been pregnant, she would have told me. Wouldn’t she?
“It was back before we got engaged. We hadn’t been together long. You know it was all a bit fast back then. One minute we were getting to know each other and taking it slowly, then we were planning our wedding. Or at least our parents were.”
“I remember thinking it was all a bit sudden, I mean I’ve known Zoey for years, and I never saw her as the type to marry and settle down. But that changed when she met you.”
“That was because she found out she was pregnant.”
I hold Reid’s hands a little tighter. It doesn’t take an educated guess to tell where his story goes, considering Thea is Zoey’s first child. I don’t say anything and wait for him to continue.
“That’s when our parents decided we should get married. They’re the type of people that think that there’s a certain order you should do things, and according to that, we should marry before our child was born. So we got engaged and our parents took over organising everything. The truth be told, I hadn’t known Zoey for long, and what we had wasn’t love. We were a no-strings-attached kind of arrangement. Then I met you. And I started to look at you in a way I didn’t look at her. This was before the news of her pregnancy.”
Reid gets up and pours himself a glass of water.
“I realised I was with the wrong person and when I was about to break it off with her, that was when she told me she’d missed her period and had done a test. I thought I should do the honourable thing and stay with her. When she was just about fourteen weeks gone, she miscarried.”
His voice breaks and I look into his eyes as the tears start to flow. My heart breaks for him and I want to erase all his pain, but I know I can’t say or do anything to make it better.
“We didn’t even know the sex of the baby. We didn’t get to bury our child, to have a gravestone to mark him or her. We don’t know what caused the miscarriage, it was just nature’s way. I didn’t take it too well and that’s when I left to get my head together.”
“But Zoey…”
“She told you I left without reason and she screwed half the men in town to—and I quote—‘get over me.’ She made out it was all my fault. I know all this because she told me so.”
Now I understand his sudden disappearance and her promiscuous ways. She was using sex as a coping mechanism and Reid was out of town to get his own head straight.
“Zoey and I weren’t meant to be together and we both knew that. Losing the baby was our breaking point. We realised we had nothing to stay together for. The split was a mutual decision. I never knew she hadn’t told you until I got back to town and had the inevitable talk with her. We put our differences aside and I forgave her for telling people it was me that left. I realised there was no point being bitter because my bitterness only ate away at me, it didn’t affect Zoey.”
“Oh Reid…”
I don’t know what to say to him, so I stand and wrap my arms around him.
“That’s why I’ve been a bit withdrawn today. Because she had a baby, something we would have done all that time ago.”
I hug him to me and he buries his face in the crook of my neck, wrapping his arms around my waist and pulling me closer.
“I’m so sorry, Reid. I would have gone on my own if I’d known. You should have just said you couldn’t come with me.”
“That was never going to happen. She was freaking out, so you were freaking out. I wanted to be there for you. Although I was there for her in a way, I guess. Brock was out of town and I didn’t think she could wait until he got home, so yeah, I guess I just wanted to help.”
***
We talked a little longer and ended up warming our food up in the microwave because we discovered we were actually starving. So we ate our Chinese and then instead of going home, I asked Reid to stay. He took a shower and then we crawled under the covers together. He’s asleep now and I’m lying here watching him. He looks at peace, all traces of the pain I saw earlier are erased in sleep.
I know that people get over things in different ways and at different paces, but I can’t understand why my best friend didn’t tell me she was pregnant or that she lost the baby. I can’t be angry at her though. I guess everyone is entitled to their secrets. So long as those secrets don’t hurt anyone else.
I snuggle up to Reid and feel him slip his arm around me as I try to get comfortable. I don’t know what the future may hold, but I know that the past plays a part in it. And I know I want to be there to comfort Reid. No matter why, how, when or where, I will always and I mean always be there for him.