Three Years Ago
I’m sitting on a park bench in Ellis Square trying to figure out what just happened in the last thirty minutes of my life.
I met Mallory at The Stone Pub for dinner. She was standing outside the restaurant, waiting for me, which was completely strange because the first person to arrive always goes in to snag the good booth in the corner.
Everything is kind of a blur, and I’m having trouble putting what just happened into focus.
There were words such as “not working out” and “seeing other people” that came from her mouth.
I feel like there is a load of cinder blocks sitting on my chest, and all I want to do right now is let them suffocate me.
Focus. Think.
Outside the restaurant, she said, “Wait,” before I opened the door. Then she leaned up against the wall and began to cry, burying her hands in her face. Worry and panic washed over me. I swooped in and wrapped my arms around her. She cried harder. I stroked her hair. I kissed her face. She finally calmed down after a few minutes.
I hugged her close to me and told her that whatever it was, it was going to be okay.
Then she launched a grenade square into my gut.
The explosion leaving a hole so big, so deep, that I felt it completely transform my soul at that very moment. A transformation that would never be undone. I felt myself go numb. Then I felt as though I was floating above the two of us, watching a scene out of a Shakespeare tragedy unfold.
She’s pregnant.
The baby isn’t mine.
I remember her saying a whole lot of words, but I have no idea what they were. She said she was sorry about two-hundred times. She had felt a distance between us for a while. She didn’t mean to hurt me.
“Are you sure?” I remember robotically spitting out. “Are you sure the baby isn’t mine? How can you be sure?”
“I’m just sure, Luca,” she whispered. “I wouldn’t be here, like this, if I wasn’t sure.”
She sobbed. She apologized.
I said nothing else to her. She was standing in front of me, crying, pleading. And I just stood there, completely checked out.
She slid down the wall and buried her face in her knees.
As I watched the scene, seemingly from above, I saw bystanders looking at us uncomfortably, wondering if they should stop to help her. No one stopped. Just ogled us like the tragedy that we were.
She’s pregnant.
The baby isn’t mine.
Those two sentences swirled around in my head as I stood there staring at her while she sat there, folded into herself on the ground, sobbing with regret.
I needed to get her indoors. Take her home.
What home? I couldn’t go back there with her.
She’s pregnant.
The baby isn’t mine.
“So,” I choked out, swallowing hard, trying to get rid of the melon-sized lump in my throat.
She looked up at me, tears soaking her face. Smudged black makeup from eyelash to chin.
“So,” I repeated. “This is it? No more us,” I said slowly and quietly. As a statement, not a question.
Her face wrinkled into an ugly cry, and she nodded her head, twice.
I took a deep breath and extended my hand to help her off the ground.
“Let’s get you off the street. People are going to think you’ve been mugged, or worse.”
She took my hand and let me help her up. I walked with her the three blocks to our apartment, other than her occasional sniffle, in complete silence.
At the apartment, I grabbed my backpack and dumped everything out of it. I shoved what clothes of mine I could fit into it.
As I approached the door, Mallory begged me to stay and talk. She said she hadn’t told the father yet, and she didn’t know how. She needed help.
I had no reaction. None.
“Take care of yourself, Mallory.”
I turned around and walked away.
She cried and screamed for me to come back.
There was nothing to go back to.
She ruined everything.
I run my hands through my hair as the sun begins to set. I look in front of me. Kids, happy, splashing around in the enormous splash pad in the middle of the square. Families enjoying time together. Dogs barking, birds chirping. All the while, my insides are crumbling. My heart is obliterated.
My girlfriend of two years, whom I lived with and shared a bed with, no less, just told me she’s pregnant with another man’s baby.
Pregnant.
Another man’s baby.
I was going to take her to the Eiffel Tower and propose to her. The cheesiest, most clichéd romantic thing to do, but she would have loved it.
Now all I have is a ring in my backpack along with a pair of tickets to London we were supposed to use in two weeks.
I lean my head back against the bench. Where did I go wrong? Why didn’t I notice?
I know exactly why.
Senior year. Ten-thousand things to do and nowhere near enough time to do it. Had I been neglecting Mallory? I thought we had a good, balanced routine. Why didn’t she tell me?
As much as I try to fight it, tears begin to stream down my face and into my ears. The cinder blocks on my chest are weighing down on me more and more.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see the flicker of the neon sign for the bar Taps.
I sit up straight, wipe my damn face, and head over to the bar.
The woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with just splintered my heart into a million irreparable shards.
A few shots of whiskey to drown those shards into oblivion seem like the only right thing to do at this moment.