The next day I tried to call Jaret. I wanted to apologize. For being an idiot. For telling him I loved him.
But there was no answer. I texted, and still didn’t get a reply back a few hours later.
Great.
A cheque for $10,000 showed up in the mail two days later. While the money was amazing, I couldn’t help but be a bit sad about it. I’d pushed Jaret away with my neediness. How could I have been so stupid?
Why did I want to be that close to him anyway?
Maybe he just needed his space.
Move on. You managed the rest of your life without being close to him, except for two nights where you got way too close. The world isn’t ending.
Still, maybe it was the hormones or something, but for some reason I was really feeling everything. It was like being back in high school, where every high was the greatest thing ever, and every low felt like the worst moment of my life.
And slowly but surely, I did move on.
When the three month mark passed, I started letting everyone know publically that I was pregnant. Every month, like clockwork, I’d get a cheque from Jaret for $10,000. But other than that, he was completely unreachable.
My breasts got a lot bigger, which was nice. My friends and I started shopping for maternity clothes. We started looking for a bigger apartment, a two bedroom. After all, with the extra money every month, I could easily afford it now.
Lisa in particular decided that she was going to use my pregnancy to show off all her doctor skills.
“Come on!” she begged me one morning. “Let’s go shopping for educational toys. You know, for the baby. And then we can have a lazy lunch. I need the break, this medical degree is taking up all my time.”
“Fine,” I finally seceded. Not that it was a hard sell. She was right, Lisa had been working for so long that it felt like I hadn’t seen her in weeks.
“So is the landlord letting you paint the nursery? Or are you thinking of buying a place?” she asked in the car on the way to the local mall.
“Yeah, the landlord says as long as I stick to a normal colour I’m welcome to paint the walls, she says the last four people who rented the place before me also had kids so it isn’t going to be an issue after I go.”
“Sweet. You gonna go for pink or blue? Waiting until you find out the sex?”
I shook my head. “No, I’m just going to paint it a light green. I mean, I don’t know if I want to find out the sex, and even if I do, I’ve never been the girls-in-pink-boys-in-blue type, you know?”
Lisa nodded. “Yeah, it doesn’t really seem like you. But still, parenthood changes some people so I wasn’t sure.”
We pulled in to the mall and went into the baby store. I had to admit, every time I started shopping for the little one inside of me, I got a bit more excited.
This was a living, breathing human being inside of me. I was going to have a baby.
Sure, it was terrifying. I had no idea what I was doing. And every day I thought about how much my mom would have helped me. She should have been there to be my rock.
Instead, I had my friends. And Lisa certainly helped.
I already had a crib, a dresser, a bunch of clothes Kathy had given me from when her brother had his first kid a few years earlier, and now Lisa and I were shopping for toys.
Obviously the choices for a newborn were pretty limited, and we ended up getting a mobile and a few stuffed animals that were newborn-safe.
With our purchases in tow we went to the food court and had a quick bite to eat. Subway for me – I was more conscious than ever about what I was putting into my body, though I did allow myself to stop at Mrs. Fields’ on the way out and grab a cookie.
We were walking back to the parking lot when I heard someone call my name.
“Hey, Mikki!”
As soon as I heard the voice, the blood in my veins froze. I knew who it was before I even turned around.