Chapter 27 – Carolina
1 Week Later
The next week is a blur. I start my new job, which Garrett helped me find. It’s fine, uneventful, which I guess is perfect but hardly the dream job I had left my little town to take.
It’s a slow Monday, though, and I can’t seem to get Garrett off my mind. It seems like the entire universe is here just to test me. Jake is now calling me, saying he had made a mistake.
“I was so crushed by the news that we probably couldn’t get pregnant, I reacted badly,” he'd said. “Let's get together again. I just need to feel your body next to mine to know if our relationship can work despite the reality that there's no way we can have kids.”
That’s the gist of his sorry-not-sorry call, anyway. Clearly, he only wants sex from me. The old me might have been down, but now I wouldn’t stoop to being my ex husband’s booty call.
If Garrett had taught me anything, if the last few months had revealed anything, it was that I was better than that. I blocked Jake on my phone, and the funny thing is, I thought I would feel something. But I don’t. It’s finally time to leave the small town girl behind and move on. I’m a different, better person now, and Jake no longer seems enough.
Meanwhile, I had kept the lines of communication open with Erin, who was getting all the dirt. She and I had practically become the best of friends. She said she treated Garrett to lunch one day and he spilled his guts to her. He said he had no desire to date anyone else but me.
On the phone now, she says, “Cari—is it okay if I call you that?”
She had heard me talking to Martha on the phone one day in the office, and has asked me what it was she kept calling me. She’d like the pet nickname, I guess, and I’m flattered that she remembers.
“Sure,” I say. If there’s anyone else I would let call me that, it’s her.
“Cari, you are not going to believe the irony. I don’t know how some people do it. Garrett said he thinks of how ironic it is that he finally met a girl he’d like to settle down with, and he can’t or else it would lead to a mess with the partners.”
“Settle down?”
“Yes. I reminded him, ‘Garrett, you are independently wealthy, hon. You really could leave.’ But he said this is his life. And, you know, you really can’t fault the guy for that. He’s right. It’s his life.”
“Woah, back up. Settle down?”
My ears— and my heart— perked up at these two words. Leave it to Erin to skip over the most important part of the story. I couldn’t believe she had become Garrett’s confidant— except, I guess maybe I could, since he was probably awfully lonely in my absence— but I definitely can’t believe he told her that.
“That’s what I said. Aren’t you listening?”
“Erin, I can’t deal with this. I really can’t. I mean, why are we making this so complicated?”
“Yeah, you guys are nuts. Claude would say straight people are nuts, but it’s mostly just you and Garrett. It wouldn’t be fair to paint all straight people with the same brush as you two nutcases. It should not be this weird.”
***
The following day, I speak to Erin and she says Garrett will be sending me a text. No doubt she put a bug in his ear, but I’m grateful. She says she watched him type it, and it’s a love letter.
It never comes. I understood and decide it doesn’t matter how much we all wanted this to happen, it wasn’t meant to be.
A few days later, beaten down and tired, I feel like I’m getting the flu. I decide to leave work early. The next morning, I’ve still not recovered, so I stay home an extra two days, but nothing is shaking it. A trip to the doctor is in order.
In the waiting room, minutes felt like hours as I wait for the doctor to return with a diagnosis. My nails are bitten down to the quick. I think, just bring me my antibiotics so I can leave.
Instead, the doctor walks in looking poker-faced. Something is obviously up. I think, here we go, he is going to tell me I have H1N1 or some dreaded virus. Just my luck.
Instead, he says, “Your symptoms are pretty typical for what’s going on.”
I take a deep breath. “And that would be?”
“Ms. Abbot, as they probably say back South where you’re from, you are pregnant, my darlin’.”
It’s as if I’m hit by a tsunami. I can’t believe the doctor chose such a nutty way to tell me I’m pregnant. I’m shocked and rocked by both elation and fear, all at the same time. I suppose he thought some humor would lessen the blow, but I’m in no mood to laugh.
What the hell am I going to do now?