I woke up with a smile on my face, something that hadn't happened in a long time. The familiar room was airy and bright. Thin rays of sunshine streamed through the bay windows that looked over the Public Garden. It was hard to beat the Commons in full bloom: the vivid green of the grass and willow trees was set off by the brilliant patches of color. The soft pink of late cherry blossoms. The thrill of irises and rose bushes lining the paths. This morning in particular, everything seemed to gleam, like the old Technicolor movies that Bubbe, my grandmother, loved so much.
I grinned lazily into the warm, white sheets and inhaled. Nothing smelled better. That light scent of fabric softener combined with something infinitely less definable, a delectable blend of mint, almonds, and something else that only smelled like one thing. I inhaled again.
How could I have ever thought of leaving this behind? Of leaving him?
The door to the bedroom burst open with a clap, startling me from my reverie. I sat up, holding the soft cotton sheets to my bare chest as Brandon eased backward into the room, carrying a tray of food. My head cocked appreciatively. Even in just a pair of worn flannel pajama pants, the man seriously had an ass that wouldn't quit. It helped that he wasn't wearing anything on top. Nothing but a broad-shouldered expanse of tanned muscle that tapered to his trim waist.
He kicked the door closed, humming a song under his breath. When he turned around, I found myself on receiving end of his full six feet, four inches of glory. Wide pectoral muscles smattered with a dusting of dark blond hair. Biceps that would have threatened the sleeves of a T-shirt had he been wearing one. A well-defined six-pack that stacked evenly down to the V-shaped muscles at his hips. An athlete's body that was lean and toned, not bulky. Perfect.
But none of it compared to his smile, that thousand-watt smile that lit up every room he entered and sky-blue eyes that seemed to shine brightest when he was looking at me. He made the sun seem dim in comparison. Even on a day like this.
My heart fluttered. It literally fluttered. What had I ever done to deserve someone like this? How could I ever have thought of throwing him away like some piece of garbage? The thought made me feel sick, so I shook my head and smiled back at him.
"Hey, beautiful, you're awake," he said warmly as he walked the tray over to the bed.
I pushed myself up and stacked a few of the massive down pillows behind my back before answering. "I just woke up. I slept like a rock."
"Good," Brandon said with another sweet grin that revealed the dimples in his ruddy cheeks.
He set the tray on the nightstand and then perched over me on his knees so he could give me a long, lingering kiss.
"And good morning," he murmured against my mouth.
I smiled again, my nose wrinkling against his. God, I loved this man. I couldn't love anyone or anything more.
"Good morning to you," I murmured against his soft, full lips. There was that scent again, in the flesh.
Brandon moved to sit beside me on the bed. He picked up the tray of food and set it between us, and I peered over all the accoutrements, not even trying to contain my obvious enthusiasm.
"And what do we have here?" I asked eagerly.
"I might have had Anna run over to Mike's for some pastries," he said, pointing to the plate stacked with flaky, buttery goodies. "But I cut up the melon and scrambled the eggs myself. You impressed, Red?"
I grinned. Brandon wasn't exactly a cook. I was honestly surprised he knew how to do anything more than boil water.
"You're going to make me fat," I said blissfully as I reached for a chocolate-filled sfogliatelle.
"Good," Brandon said with a satisfied grin. "More of you to love, right?"
I rolled my eyes at the corny line, but took a massive bite anyway. Who was I kidding? I loved it.
The merry expression on Brandon's face quickly turned almost predatory as he followed the movement of my mouth, zeroing in on my lips as my tongue slipped out to snag a stray bit of chocolate. I finished swallowing, but couldn't take another bite. With deft hands, Brandon plucked the pastry out of my fingers and set it back on the tray, which he then put back on the side table.
When he turned back to me, I was a statue. He reached up to tuck a few morning-tousled strands of my red hair behind my ear.
"Do you know..." he said as he leaned in slightly.
"Do I know what?" I asked as he ran his nose up and down my neck.
I dropped the sheet from my bare breasts, instead wrapping my arms instinctively around his warm shoulders. My nipples just grazed the hard planes of his chest, and I shivered at the feeling. I had no shame with this man. I was his, body and soul. He knew it, and I knew it. But even so, he also knew how much I loved to hear him say it out loud.
"You are..." he trailed off again as his mouth found the edge of my shoulder and he began to feather his lips along my collarbone.
"I'm what?" I murmured as I leaned back, opening myself up to his eyes and his kisses.
I laid fully back into the pillows, allowing him to cage me under his big, warm body. I moaned under the delectable feel of his stubble along my clavicle, the soft flick of his tongue at the base of my neck, the wet press of his mouth between my breasts. But he knew what I wanted to hear. It was another game we liked to play. And I wasn't going to be distracted.
"Brandon," I said even as I clutched at his thick mane of gold, wavy and curling at the base of his neck. "Brandon, I'm what?"
With a groan, he pulled away from his ministrations and pushed up onto his forearms to hover over me, blue eyes kind, clouded with desire, and glazed with sudden vulnerability.
"You're...everything to me, Skylar."
His voice was thick, and the Boston accent, which he normally kept well-hidden except for moments of extreme emotion, was obvious in the way the "r" all but disappeared as he spoke. I could hardly breathe, but my heart thumped loudly between us.
Brandon leaned down to touch his nose to mine.
"Everything," he whispered. "I love you."
And there it was: everything I wanted to hear, everything I wanted to know. My entire body relaxed at the sound of those three perfect words. Our lips met around them, echoing with our bodies what we'd just proclaimed. God, he tasted so incredibly good. Like butter pastry and sugar and something else that made me just want to...
Vomit?
My stomach lurched. A split-second later, I was shoving him off me with sudden violence. Away. I just needed him away.
"Skylar?"
His voice was frantic as I sprinted off the bed, too concerned with making it to his pristine en suite bathroom to bother with grabbing a sheet to cover myself. Fuck, the last thing I needed to do was lose my breakfast all over Brandon's spotless white sheets. My feet seemed to thunder across the plush carpet, and my body lurched again.
"Skylar?" Brandon called behind me, but his voice seemed far away.
"Skylar?"
~
I sat up suddenly in my childhood bed, a thin sheen of sweat across my forehead as an increasingly familiar wave of nausea rode through me. The motion sent a series of creaks through the old spring mattress that echoed through the darkened room. Shit. I'd woken up too fast again.
A small bag of Saltine crackers sat on the worn table next to my bed, along with a dish of ginger cookies. I grabbed for them, but it was no use. The nausea was already here, and once it was here, there was really nothing to do but ride it out and try my hardest not to lose whatever was left in my stomach. If there was anything to lose after a night of waking up like this every few hours.
Just the thought of it caused another wave to roll through my aching belly as I laid back down on my pillow and silently willed the feeling away. I was maybe six or seven weeks pregnant, but I was already thoroughly sick of it––pun absolutely intended. Pregnancy glow, my ass. My breasts ached, I was exhausted all the time, and in the last week I had actually lost weight from vomiting so much.
In hushed tones from Chicago, Jane, my best friend and former roommate, had told me I probably had something called hyperemesis gravidarum, which was a fancy Latin term for sick as a motherfucking dog. This was according to her cousin, the anonymous OBGYN, whom I was about ready to fly to Chicago to punch in the face. Seriously, that chick never had anything but bad news for me.
It was funny how your entire life could change in the space of a few hours. Only a week ago, I had watched those two lines turned pink, and two hours later, the first waves of nausea began. I had ridden the four hours from Boston to New York in the backseat of my grandmother's station wagon, my things jammed into the trunk and onto the roof, Dad and Bubbe up front bickering while I tried my hardest to focus on something, anything, that would keep me from throwing up all over Bubbe's macramé seat covers.
Too bad the only thing that worked was a pair of blue eyes I'd had to say goodbye to. Turns out grief beats hormones if I'm willing to substitute one pain for another.
We had arrived at my childhood home in Brooklyn late that night, and I had immediately dropped my duffel bags on the floor and sprinted for the downstairs toilet. I'd somehow managed to unload my things from the car, but since then, I'd been camped out in my small attic room, making periodic runs for the bathroom.
When my symptoms persisted, I had told my dad and Bubbe that I had come down with mono after working so hard to finish law school. Dad, ever in a perpetual daze these days after losing most of the use of his left hand (including his ability to play the piano) in a brawl with a debt collector and his thugs, had nodded and told me to rest up and feel better.
Bubbe was a bit harder to fool. A Ziploc bag of Saltines appeared on my nightstand the next morning, and ginger cookies the day after. To her credit, however, she was waiting for me to say something. That was Bubbe for you: someone who preferred to suspect more than actually know. She hadn't even asked what had happened with Brandon since seeing him at my graduation.
Brandon. God.
My stomach heaved again, this time with sadness. Why did I have to be one of those people who carried every emotion I had in my gut? Just like every other time I remembered the way I had willfully and forcefully shoved the love of my life out of said life, my eyes welled up and a giant sob choked my throat. I swallowed it back and shut my eyes again, willing the pain away.
It didn't work.
But Brandon was still in the middle of a very contentious divorce. And then he had made arrangements, behind my back and against my express wishes, to give money to my father's loan shark––the small-time gangster who was also responsible for Dad's smashed hand and a bevy of other injuries that had landed him in the hospital last March. I had known there was no way I could make it work with someone who would keep such secrets from me. I had had enough of those kinds of secrets because of my father, and I couldn't be with someone I couldn't trust.
But that didn't mean every cell in my body wasn't absolutely pining for Brandon Sterling.
The sob in my throat rose and fell as I gasped heavily. Go away, go away, go away. With silent mantras, I willed away the memory of his strong, knife-edged jaw line, his unruly, gold-streaked waves, his tender blue expression and bright smile. I willed away the look on his face when he'd said goodbye, the memory of our last fight, the feel of the last time he'd kissed me. I pushed it all down into the back of my heart where I couldn't feel it anymore.
Except, of course, in the pit of my stomach.
The air felt heavier than it should in mid-May. New York had been having a warm spat for the last week and it seemed like all the heat in the house had risen into my room overnight. A drop of sweat ran down my brow, slid down my cheek, and landed on the top of my collarbone, bare under the strap of my camisole. The feel of it caused my stomach to heave again, this time more violently.
"Just get it over with, Crosby," I muttered as I reached down for the plastic basin next to the bed.
Once I emptied my stomach, both of food and painful emotions, I'd feel better, at least for a little while. It would give me enough energy to go to my doctor's appointment, where I'd find out just exactly how far gone I was. Then I'd finally have to face just what was happening to my life.
~
"Well, you're definitely pregnant, hon. As if the constant yakking hadn't already clued you in on that one, am I right?"
The doctor's voice was annoyingly cheerful. I sat sullenly atop the paper-covered vinyl table, shivering in a flimsy hospital gown. When she took a seat on her stool, Dr. Brown's face dropped at my glowering face. She was a lot more cheerful than I'd expected the staff at a free clinic to be, but I was also her first patient of the day.
"I take it that's not good news," she said more sedately.
"Not really," I said, keeping my hands clasped on my lap and willing both the nausea and the welling tears to subside.
Neither obeyed. It was like pregnancy caused everything to come out of me, emotionally and otherwise. I had literally no power to censor anymore. Whereas I had always had a hard time keeping emotions off my glass face, now they seemed to run rampant through every other part of me as well.
I closed my eyes against the tidal wave of grief. I was tired. So, so tired.
"Oh, dear," Dr. Brown said, and immediately scooted over and grasped my clenched fists. "I'm sorry."
She had the good sense to wait a moment while I calmed down. I had to give her credit for her bedside manner. I probably wasn't the only one who walked through her doors with an unexpected pregnancy.
"It's not that..." I trailed off, choking up more. I didn't have to say anything; I knew that. Still, I felt the need to justify my confusion to this woman. "I...the father, he's just not around..."
"Of course, of course," soothed the doctor.
She gave me another squeeze on the hand before scooting back to the small sink to get me a tissue. I took it gratefully and dabbed at my eyes until finally the tears subsided. With a small sniff, I looked to her.
"Thanks," I said. "I'm...well, you can see I'm a mess right now. And I'm supposed to be studying for the bar exam, and I have to start my new job in two months. And the guy, he's...gone. There's...no one else."
It wasn't completely true, but I couldn't ask my seventy-six-year-old grandmother and my father, a newly recovering addict with a maimed hand, to help me bring up an infant while I left to work the eighty-hour weeks of a new associate. They had enough to deal with just getting their shit together. Theirs was no world in which to bring a new baby, and my life certainly couldn't handle it.
It was a thought that just about killed me. It was easier to push away the image of what that baby might look like, but only because I didn't know what it would look like. I hadn't even permitted myself to think about whether it would be a boy or a girl, whether he would be blond or if she would have my red hair. Whether he would have his father's bright blue eyes, or whether she might have my slanted green. Would the baby be ruddy or fair? Tall or dainty?
Because thoughts like that inevitably led to imagining the life that baby might have had, one where Brandon would hold it close, the tiny body so small that he could cradle its head in the center of his broad palm. He would coo, shelter it with his big shoulders, shelter us both...
I choked down a sob and pressed my face into my hands.
"You really don't need to justify your emotions, honey," the doctor said, offering a kind hand on my shoulder while I got myself under control. "Not to me or anyone. Now, have you decided what you want to do?"
I hiccupped back the remaining sobs, somehow managing to keep my emotions in check. The tears were still threatening to fall, but I looked away from the doctor's kind face and focused on the gray steel trellis from the construction outside the office. I needed to remember where I was. Not in a kind, loving relationship with a man I desperately loved, but a single, jobless, daughter of a disabled garbage collector, the previous mistress of a man who couldn't really be mine. More than one future depended on my choice here today. I needed to take care of the people who were already in the world first.
"I have," I whispered. My voice sounded weak and insubstantial. "I want to...but I can't have this baby right now."
Dr. Brown waited a moment before nodding.
"Are you sure about that?" she asked gently.
Was I? Blue eyes––or were they green?––bloomed inside my mind. I shook them away.
Unable to look at the doctor directly, I just clutched at the edge of my hospital gown and nodded shakily. "Yes. I think so."
Smoothing a professional yet kind expression over her plain features, the doctor nodded and stood up. "All right. Let's talk about all of your options. Then you can decide."
I nodded again. "Okay," I whispered. "Okay."
~
When I returned to the house, a reminder card was in my purse for my appointment on Thursday. The doctor and I had gone over all my possibilities, and she suggested I wait until our appointment on Thursday to make my final decision.
The thought of it hurt my chest. Everything hurt about this situation. There was literally nothing good about it. If you had asked me two months ago what I would have done in the event of an accidental pregnancy with Brandon, I would have been terrified, but I probably would have wanted to keep it. Those were the days with Brandon that seemed so easy, when our rhythm, even one that involved fighting and fucking, always involved making up again. They were the days where even our fights had a rhythm to them, complemented by the ease of the rest of the time we spent together.
But that was before my family's life exploded with my father's latest gambling addiction.
That was before Brandon got wrapped up with the mobster who had nearly killed my dad for his debts.
That was before he lied to me about it.
That was before I knew he had a wife.
That was before he had all but called me a whore just for wanting out of a shitty situation.
How could I possibly bring a baby into this mess? What kind of care could I or anyone else be expected to give it? What kind of care would it get from its parents, two people who had functionally been raised by people other than their parents, two people who would both be working eighty-hour-weeks, two people who didn't even speak to one another anymore?
What kind of life would that be?
I was met by the blare of the TV and Bubbe's sharp voice chattering on the phone in the kitchen. The old brown Victorian house seemed to sag a little under the hotter-than-usual May weather, and the sun shining through the front window was producing a greenhouse effect indoors that made the smell of dried potpourri and stale coffee stronger than usual. My stomach lurched again, but there was nothing to lose. I held onto the door, waited for the feeling to subside, then entered.
I dropped my keys on the small entry table with a loud clink.
"It's at three o'clock, Erica," Bubbe instructed as she turned from the kitchen table to glance at me. "Yes, in the temple basement. It's Rachel's turn to bring the knishes, so you might want to bring something else, if you know what I mean."
My grandmother, ever the imposing presence in her five-feet of glory, waved a hand out to catch my attention as I was walking toward the stairs.
"Hold on, Rachel," she said before putting her palm over the telephone receiver. "What did the doctor say, bubbela?" she asked me. "Did you tell her how sick you've been? Did she test you for cancer?"
I rolled my eyes and braced myself against the doorway as another wave of nausea rolled through me. Like the last, this one thankfully just kept going.
"Bubbe, I told you, it's just mono. She did some bloodwork to be sure, and I have to go back on Thursday for the results."
I hated lying to my grandmother, who could read my transparent face better than most, but I had to hope that the misery I felt superseded any other tells.
Bubbe squinted for a moment, the movement causing her stiff dome of hair to move slightly, all at once. She looked me up and down, as if trying to determine the credibility of my story. But that was the thing about my grandmother. She wasn't buying what I was selling, but she was willing to wait until I was ready to tell her the truth. Or not.
"All right," she said with a short nod, then turned back to her friend on the phone.
I pushed off the doorframe and wandered into the living room to sit next to my dad on the couch. Even though I needed to be studying for the bar, I wasn't going to be able to do that until I was sure I wouldn't vomit all over the test materials. And I wouldn't be able to take anything for the nausea until I had decided whether or not to take the other pill that would bring it all to a halt.
Dad's eyes were trained completely on the TV while he held the remote with his right hand. His left hand, the one that had been crushed by a couple of thugs looking for him to pay a bad debt, still bore the dark, ugly scars from his most recent surgery to repair the extensive damage to the nerves. It was wrapped with a soft splint while it healed.
He had been at home on disability for the last two months and likely had at least three or more until he would be clear to go back to work at the sanitation department. It was pretty hard to lift garbage cans when you didn't have use of one of your hands.
His injury also prevented him from pursuing his main love: playing piano with his jazz quartet. As far as I could tell, he spent the majority of his time sitting right where he was in his favorite spot on the old plaid couch, watching the morning news, sports, and then flipping to old reruns of classic TV shows in the afternoons.
Right now, he was watching The Today Show. His piano, the gorgeous Mason and Hamlin upright that was usually covered with sheet music and Dad's scratched-out compositions, stood against the wall behind us, gathering dust.
"Hey, kiddo," my dad said distantly. "Feeling better today?"
Fantastic. Just trying to decide which painful, life-altering path to take.
"A little," I said. "Did you do your physical therapy this morning?"
"What? Oh, yeah, sure I did."
Dad's eyes didn't move once from the TV, where some pop star was gyrating her way across an outdoor stage. I glanced over at the small shelf where Bubbe kept the daily mail. The rubber exercise ball that Dad was supposed to use to strengthen his muscles and break down scar tissue was also gathering dust. The sheet of exercises his physical therapist had given him had been used as a coaster many times over, and currently had three different coffee mugs clustered over it.
I looked back at my dad, but before I could say anything, another wave of nausea hit me, and this one wasn't going away.
"I'll be back," I choked out before sprinting out of the room and down to the hallway bathroom.
Dad didn't move an inch.
As soon as my knees hit the cold black and white tiles of the bathroom floor, the sweat started to build on my forehead. The nausea didn't fade until I had heaved for about a minute, losing the last remnants of the ginger cookies. I laid my cheek on the fuzzy pink seat cover on the toilet and sighed. The room smelled strongly of Lysol and the scented candle Bubbe kept on the top of the toilet bowl.
I took a deep breath. Then another. I wasn't going to vomit anymore, but the nausea wasn't subsiding completely. There was only one thing left to do, and I really didn't want to do it because I knew I'd still feel shitty, even if in a different way, by the end.
"Fuck it," I muttered to myself as the nausea rose again.
I closed my eyes and let my mind wander where it really wanted to go: back to that bright, warm room that smelled like almonds and sunshine, where a pair of strong arms held me tightly and blue eyes gazed into the depths of my crushed soul. Where my heart (and stomach) felt light again.
It was just for a minute, I told myself even as I fell deeper into my daydream. But that was the problem. It was never just a minute with Brandon Sterling, even in my dreams.
~