“Ommmmm.”
Sitting in lotus position, with my palms together, I tried my best to follow along to the pregnancy meditation video I was watching on YouTube.
A very pregnant woman was demonstrating moves being narrated by a man who had a soothing British accent. A pretty beach was the backdrop. I’d never tried anything like this before, but if there was ever a time in my life to attempt it, it was now.
“Breathe in and breathe out,” he said. “Imagine that your baby can hear all of the positive thoughts emanating from your mind. Send love to the baby through your loins.”
My loins?
Gosh, I hoped my baby couldn’t hear any of the negative thoughts going through my mind lately. That would have been detrimental.
I’d decided to try yoga and meditation as a way to relax, get my mind off all of the stress I’d been experiencing lately, but I wasn’t quite sure if this was working for me.
The tune playing in the background of the video sounded like a cross between a lullaby and instrumental Chinese meditation music.
Some of the things that came out of the narrator’s mouth made me crack up. “Send peaceful vibes to your infant…imagine a beautiful light flowing up into your vagina and traveling to the baby.”
Into my what?
For some reason, all I could think about was what I imagined Rush would be saying if he were here. He would totally be making fun of this.
“I’ll travel through your vagina, alright. Like a fuckin’ rocket.”
“Let your love flow into the baby as you position yourself into downward dog.”
There was Rush again: “I’ve got lots of love to give you—doggy-style.”
I just kept hearing Rush and laughing, and that made me totally unable to concentrate on what I was supposed to be doing.
Well, of course, I was hearing the old Rush, the one who wasn’t broken by the horrible twist of fate we’d encountered, the one who still talked to me.
Maybe I couldn’t get Rush out of my mind because I had no idea where he was or what he was doing. He’d check in on me through Oak but still hadn’t told me what he was up to or when he was coming back. In the meantime, I had no choice but to just continue on with my life, trying to write during the day and then working my shifts at The Heights at night. The only good thing was that my writing was really taking off. Not sure if that was because mental anguish spawned creativity or what. But I was seriously kicking ass with my story, and that was literally the only consolation about this entire ordeal.
“Embrace your child and imagine running through a field toward it.”
For some reason, when the man said that, all I could picture was running through an open field with my baby and Rush by my side. I just couldn’t imagine going through this journey without him, couldn’t foresee life without him. Whenever I imagined anything pertaining to the baby, Rush was always there. That was going to be a hard habit to break.
That evening at work, I wasn’t feeling any more relaxed despite my best attempts earlier in the day. I’d stare down the hallway toward Rush’s office as if he was in there. His presence was everywhere, especially here. Being at The Heights was always the hardest part of the day to get through. Rush’s stamp was all over this place.
Oak made a point to come up to me during a slow period. “Hey, Gia. How are you feeling tonight?”
I shrugged. “I’m okay.”
God, that was such a lie.
“You sure about that? You seem really down. But I get it.”
“I miss Rush,” I confessed. “Has he checked in with you?”
Oak flashed a sympathetic smile. “Not today.” He paused. “But I think he was heading to the Grand Canyon, right?”
“The Grand Canyon? He’s out west?”
Oak’s face dropped. “Shit. You didn’t know he was out in Arizona?”
“No. I had no idea. What is Rush doing in Arizona?”
“Me and my big mouth.” He shook his head. “I shouldn’t have said anything, but I didn’t think it was a secret. He went to a funeral out there. A man he was friendly with when he was younger died. Name was Pat.”
My heart was beating out of my chest. “Oh my God. The guy who was like a father to him growing up.”
Oak nodded. “It was sudden. A heart attack.”
My heart broke for him. For that to have happened in the midst of everything else seemed so unfair. Then my heartbeat really started to accelerate because I remembered the whole story he told me about Pat…and his daughter. Beth. I definitely always remembered her name. The one he’d slept with. Pat was her father. They were good friends before they ended up sleeping together. So, if he was in Arizona…he was with Beth.
My roommates had accumulated a lot of stuff over the summer that they couldn’t bring back with them or that they couldn’t store in the City, stuff like boogie boards and surfing gear. So the following day I organized a rummage sale for those items in the house that they couldn’t take with them.
They agreed to let me keep a percentage of the profits in exchange for standing outside all day hawking the stuff. I needed money now that I’d be moving home and would soon be unemployed.
Earlier in the week, I’d hung up fliers around town advertising the sale. I added a lot of my own personal belongings to the mix. I had more shoes and clothes than I knew what to do with, and now that the baby was coming, I needed to downsize. So I rounded up a bunch of stuff I wanted to add to the pot. The less I had to take back to the City with me, the better.
Putting two outdoor tables together side by side, I laid all of the items out. Some of the bigger things, like surfboards, I propped up behind my chair.
Volume was slow. Cars that happened to drive by would stop, but the majority of the time the people wouldn’t buy anything. Every ten minutes or so, someone who’d seen one of the fliers would walk over.
A little after lunch, a flurry of people showed up all at once. I sold off all of the larger surf items to one buyer, and I was left with about half of the other things. The small crowd also left behind a mess on the table of the items they’d rifled through that I needed to clean up.
My back was turned away from the street as I reorganized the clothes and small goods on display.
“What’s all this?”
His voice vibrated through me.
I turned around so suddenly that it made me a little dizzy.
My heart nearly stopped at the sight of him. Rush had never looked so amazing. Maybe it was the absence, maybe it was the pregnancy hormones, but it took everything in me not to leap into his arms. The recognition of his scent was both beautiful and painful all at once. I longed for him but wouldn’t allow myself to move toward him.
Feeling off balance, I muttered, “Rush…”
“Hi, Gia.”
The Rush who’d left a couple of weeks ago was a total wreck. The Rush standing before me no longer had red eyes and a pained expression. I wouldn’t say he looked happy, but he looked at peace, like the time away had somehow changed something in him. What exactly that meant for me, I was still trying to figure out.
Blowing out a shaky breath, I said, “You’re back.”
“I am.”
My eyes were working overtime, scrolling up, down, and across him for any signs that he’d been with someone else, that he’d fallen for another woman, or that his heart was no longer mine—as if you could tell those things by just looking.
He was wearing a jacket I’d never seen before. I wondered if he bought it in Arizona. His hair was no longer mussed from running his fingers through it. He didn’t smell like cigarettes, either, so I was happy to know that he probably hadn’t fallen off the wagon on his travels out west.
“I’m so sorry to hear about Pat.”
He squinted like he was trying to figure out how I knew. “Yeah. It was unexpected.”
“Oak told me that’s where you’ve been.”
“He did, did he?”
“I know you didn’t want me to know where you were. He accidentally let it slip.”
God, I couldn’t stop staring at him. I wanted nothing more than for him to touch me, hold me, kiss me…anything. I couldn’t recall my physical need for him ever being as strong as it was in this moment. I would have been completely fine with forgetting about things for a night and just going inside my place and taking all of our frustrations out on each other. But of course, that was fantasy; the hard stare aimed at me right now was reality.
“It wasn’t that I didn’t want you to know. Where I was in relation to me and you is irrelevant. I needed to get away, get into a different headspace that wasn’t based on anger. And I needed to do that apart from you. Unfortunately, Pat died in the midst of it, and my being away became mostly about mourning him and only partly about clearing my head.”
I continued staring at him, my body profoundly aware of his presence, yearning for him to touch me.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, I am. His death definitely knocked the wind out of me, though.” He looked down at my stomach, then back up at me. “Are you alright?”
I shrugged. “Hanging in there.”
He looked at all of the items still strewn on the table. “Why are you selling this stuff?”
“It’s almost the end of the summer, and we’ve all accumulated a lot of junk. Plus, I needed to downsize.”
Rush sucked in his cheeks. “Downsize? Sounds like I wasn’t the only one who did a lot of thinking while I was gone.”
I looked down and nodded. “I’ve decided to move back to Queens.”
“And your mind’s made up…just like that? No discussion?”
“I need to do what’s best for us.” My hand automatically went to my belly. I’d been doing that a lot lately—rubbing and not even realizing I was doing it.
“And that’s running away? Because fucking running away solves everything, right?” he said bitterly.
“I’m not running away. I’m just doing what I feel I need to at this point in time.”
We stared at each other. After a long time, I took a deep breath and said, “Can you tell me you want to be with me? That you can accept the hand we’ve been dealt and move on?”
His face had been hard, revealing his anger at hearing about me downsizing in anticipation of my move back. But when I asked that question, his features softened. That told me his answer: he felt bad that he couldn’t bring himself to tell me to stay with him. The trip might’ve done him some personal good, but apparently the internal debate he’d been having didn’t come out in my favor.
Rush looked down. “I wish I could, Gia. I wish I could.”