LAUREN

 

I did everything I could think of on the flight home for my thoughts not to dwell on Tyler. I listened to music. I crushed some candy. I tried to read. But with every second of distraction, my mind would quickly turn back to him every chance it got.

Those words.

I want you.

The way he said them sent tingles all over my skin. The way he looked at me. The way his touch on my wrist sent my hormones into overdrive only hinted at what he could do to my body.

I was grateful Gabe wasn’t there to greet me. He would have seen the shame in my eyes. I loved Gabe. In a way, I loved him very much. He had been so good to me, so sweet, so why was I tempted by his brother?

My night was spent tossing and turning, the sheets twisting around my body as a suffocating cocoon. I checked my phone repeatedly, telling myself that it was to see if Gabe had reached out during the night, but I knew I was lying to myself.

When my phone did finally ring the next day, it was when I had my hands in a pile of soapy water at the café. Peta raised her eyebrows as it vibrated in my pocket. We weren’t supposed to have our phones on us. Without checking who it was, I quickly offered an excuse and walked into the storeroom.

“Hello?” I answered breathlessly. There was only sobbing on the other end. “Hello?” I said again, this time briefly pulling the phone away to check the caller ID. “Billie?” I asked when the crying continued.

“My life is over,” she wailed.

I shushed her as the sobs continued. “Take a deep breath.”

Peta popped her head around the corner. “Everything okay?”

I mouthed, “Billie,” and pointed to the phone before miming tears dotting my cheeks. Peta tapped her finger to her wrist, indicating that I really should be back in the café. I held a single finger up, promising to only be a minute.

“Billie, tell me what’s happened. Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

Billie half laughed, half snorted. “Okay? Am I okay? No,” she almost screamed. “I’m not fucking okay!”

I was taken back by her anger. “Just calm down and tell me what happened,” I said, letting the tiniest hint of annoyance colour my tone.

“Hamish happened. That’s what happened.”

“You’re going to have to give me a little more information than that.”

Billie took a deep, but shaky breath. “I told him that we shouldn’t. I told him it was dangerous that night, but would he listen? No,” she said sarcastically.

“Billie, you aren’t making any sense.”

“Don’t you get it?” she wailed. “I’m fucking pregnant!”

My world stopped. My skin turned cold. No, not cold. It was though it disappeared altogether and every nerve was left exposed.

“Did you hear me?” Billie asked. “I’m pregnant. Hamish is going to be so annoyed. Shit,” she cursed. “I’m so annoyed. I’m not ready for this. I don’t want this. Lauren, would you please say something?”

Ever since I lost my own child, the announcement of a pregnancy brought back that fresh wave of fear, of guilt, of sadness that swelled within like nothing else could. But I always managed to fake a smile and murmur my congratulations. Somehow, though, hearing it from Billie was worse.

“Would you fucking say something?” Billie yelled down the line. “I’m freaking out here. I don’t want to be a mother. I don’t know how.”

I cleared my throat, hoping it would dislodge some of the pain that was stabbing my chest. “How far along are you?” I managed to stammer out.

“Too fucking far to do anything,” Billie replied. “What am I going to do?” she wailed. “I told Hamish I never wanted children and he was happy about that. He’s had four already so why would he want another? What should I do? How should I tell him?”

My brain was thick with fog. I couldn’t think of a single word to say.

“Lauren!” Billie screamed. “I’ve come to you for help. I’m stuck up here with no one to talk to, no idea of what to do and I’m completely freaking out. I feel trapped. I feel as though someone has locked me in a room with no door or windows and even though I’m perfectly safe, I’m completely freaking out. Did I say I was freaking out, Lauren? Because I am!”

“You need to tell him,” I said finally.

“I know that,” she hissed. “I need to know what to tell him. How to tell him. I need your help.”

I squeezed my eyes shut at the tears that were threatening. My mind went back to the time I discovered I was pregnant. My first call had been to Peta. She sat on the other end of the line, laughing as I completely panicked. Similar to Billie, I hadn’t wanted children at that stage of my life. Derek, on the other hand, had been so happy, so pleased. Peta laughed and comforted me at the same time. She already had two of her own. The thought of me freaking out over one when I was in a safe and serious relationship mystified her. And then the baby was gone along with my chance to ever have children again.

“Look,” I said down the phone. “I’m sorry, Billie, but I just can’t talk at the moment. I’ve got to go. Talk to Hamish.” I hung up on her protest.

The door to the storeroom swung open again and Peta walked in, hands on hips, ready to rip into me for taking so long on the phone when the café was filled with waiting customers. She stopped in her tracks.

“Ren?” she asked, her eyes widening with concern at my ashen face. “Is everything okay?”

I sunk to the floor. “Billie’s pregnant.”

Peta walked out the door again and returned seconds later. She bent down and helped me to my feet. “Right,” she said. “Mark is taking over, he’s calling someone in to cover your shift and I am taking you back to your place where we will spend the night getting deliriously drunk, okay?”

I nodded numbly and let her guide me from the café. Mark looked over, his eyes softening with concern, but Peta shook her head. She knew I couldn’t possibly explain how I was feeling to Mark. How could I tell someone of the guilt I felt at the loss of a child I never wanted? How could I explain the loss I felt over something I claimed to never desire?

Peta drove me home, chatting about everything and nothing as I stared out the window at the streets of my small town flashing by in a blur. She ran into the liquor store and grabbed bottles of something. I didn’t know what and I didn’t care. As well as being devastated, I was confused as to why Billie’s announcement had upset me so much. I had survived other pregnancy announcements with much less drama. In the end, I put it down to the freshness of reopening the wound at Christmas.

We walked inside, Peta bending down to scoop Smudge into her arm, expertly balancing him in one arm as she poured the wine into glasses and handed one to me.

“You haven’t said much.” She joined me on the couch.

I shrugged, the pain I felt earlier dissolving to numbness. “What is there to say? Billie is pregnant. I never will be.”

Peta gently rubbed my arm.

“I know.” I sighed. “I never wanted children.”

“But,” Peta said, finishing my thoughts. “You wanted the choice.”

We’d had this conversation many times over the past couple of years. Peta knew how I felt. She knew the confusion of the battling thoughts in my mind. She knew the devastation, the pain, the guilt and the anger.

“You know,” Peta said, lying back on the couch and adjusting the cushion under her head. “I often wonder what my life would be like if I hadn’t had children. Would I still be married to Shrek? We only got married because I was pregnant. Despite all the advancements in birth control, accidents still happen. Would I still own the café? I love the kids. I love them more than life itself, they mean the world to me, but sometimes I wonder what happened to the parts of me that existed before I had children.” Peta swung her legs off the couch, sitting back up to face me. “Before I had children I had an iron gut. I could literally eat anything, go on anything, and now, I can barely sit on a swing without feeling nauseated. Sometimes I wished I had the chance to go back to that life again. Having children was kind of thrust on me. I never made the conscious decision to have children, I just got pregnant.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” By this stage, I had drained two glasses of wine, as had Peta, but although her cheeks were flushed in a warm glow, I felt nothing but cold.

Peta screwed up her face. “Of course it’s not supposed to make you feel better. I can honestly say I have no idea what it feels like to be you, but I can understand Billie freaking out.”

“I also got pregnant without intentional thought, remember?”

“But you can’t now,” Peta said quietly.

“You are crap at cheering me up.”

“I’m not trying to cheer you up, I’m just pointing out some facts. When you want to have children, if you want to have children, it can only ever be your choice, Lauren. Sure, you’ll have to use less traditional methods than say, I have, but I know if you want to be a mother, you’ll find a way. And you’ll be a wonderful mother.”

Peta had never been one to beat around the bush. It was part of what made me love her. She never said something merely to make me feel better, she never sugar-coated her thoughts, she just blurted them out.

One bottle of wine later and the warm glow that flushed Peta’s cheeks had begun to spread to mine. Instead of making me forget though, all the thoughts that had niggled away at the back of my mind, began to shout. By the time we finished the second bottle, I was a mess.

“I’m dating someone nine years younger than me,” I said to Peta, my words slurred by either alcohol or my mental state. I wasn’t sure which. “Nine years! What am I doing?”

“You’re having fun, that’s what you’re doing.” Peta stroked Smudge sitting on her lap.

“But what sort of a future have we got? Why is he with me? What if he wakes up one day and wants children I can’t give him? What if I want children and he doesn’t? What if I never want children?”

It felt good to blurt it all out. I wasn’t even sure if Peta was listening but it didn’t matter. Just saying the words out loud brought a sense of relief.

Peta stopped patting Smudge and pushed him to the ground. He looked back at her with disdain.

“First of all,” she said. “You are beautiful. And I’m not just talking on the outside, pretty and all that, I’m talking on the inside. You are a beautiful, smart, kind-hearted woman. Any man would be lucky to have you and Gabe knows that. The reason he’s with you is because you are you. Heck, I’d be with you if I was into that.” She took a sip of wine but ended up laughing and spitting some of it onto the couch. “And secondly—” she pressed down the second finger on her left hand. “We are at secondly, aren’t we?” I nodded. “Okay, and secondly, if you want to have children one day, either of you, you will need to talk about it. But you’re not there yet. You’re bringing tomorrow’s troubles into today. Heck—have you noticed my fondness for the word, heck, tonight?—you’re bringing years into the future’s troubles into today. You’ve got to stop, okay? Stop listening to those voices in your head and just enjoy your life. You’ve got a beautiful boy to fuck, sorry, man to fuck. You’ve just started a job you actually want to be in, and you’ve got a wonderful boss at your other job. Life is good. Why are you trying to stuff it up? So what if Billie is pregnant?”

I chewed on my bottom lip.

“What?” Peta asked.

“There’s something else,” I said quietly.

“Another worry to borrow?”

“This one is a little more in the present.”

“Well, spit it out then.”

I took a deep breath, trying to quieten the screaming voices that told me not to open this particular topic. But Peta was my girl. I told her everything. Well, most things. “A tiny bit of me, just a little, tiny, minuscule part might like Tyler.”

“One of Gabe’s brothers?” Peta laughed. “Even without knowing which brother you are referring to, I can assure you that’s perfectly natural. In fact, if you weren’t attracted to at least one of them, I would think there was something wrong with you. I’ve seen the photos. So is he the dark and intense one, or the wild one with the hair?” She shuddered. “Both of them are fine specimens of the human race.”

I swallowed as she laughed. “The thing is though, he’s told me that he wants me. He’s made it perfectly clear.”

Peta looked over to me slowly, a smile crossing her face. “Really? So maybe you need to tell me a little more.”

And so I did. I told her about Tyler and the dinner we had. I told her of the way he looked at me, the way he made me feel, ending with, “So what do I do?”

“You realise this isn’t helping with my yearning for my single days, don’t you?” She drained the last of the wine, pouting when she realised there was none left. “You do nothing, that’s what you do. If it turns out you do have feelings for Tyler, then you break it off with Gabe. But at the moment, you have no idea how you feel, so to throw everything you have with Gabe away for guilt over some feelings for Tyler would be stupid. He may turn out to be nothing more than a pretty face.”

“See, this is why I have you.” I offered her my glass of wine, just a drab sitting in the base. Peta drunk it hungrily. “You talk sense into me.”

“It’s what I’m here for.” Peta lazily saluted. “To be the voice of reason.”