Crying because I didn’t want this baby to grow up with just one parent. I didn’t want to be a single mother. Crying because I didn’t know what Josh’s reaction would be, if anything at all. He had grown up in his own version of hell, never having a father. I had no idea whether that kind of thing was hereditary or just stuck in someone’s soul and they would make the same bad choices.
And it didn’t help that Josh wouldn’t return my calls.
I hadn’t heard his voice in twenty-nine days.
And yes, I counted. I stood at the cat calendar on the fridge and fucking counted. It was pathetic but it helped to pass the time as I waited for the pregnancy test to give me an answer.
And even if Josh did step up and be the father he should be for our baby, what would that look like? He loved someone else. He loved someone else so dearly that he was willing to just forget about me. Like he did once before. Like he wanted to do now.
“Amelia? Are you okay in there?”
Grace’s voice was muffled through the bathroom door.
I reached for the knob and twisted it.
She saw my face and knew before she looked at the test.
Then it was quiet.
Really quiet.
“You can say something,” I finally said.
“I’m waiting for you to go first,” Grace said.
“For what?”
“Whether to hug you and cheer or console you and cry.”
“Can we do both?”
Grace threw her arms around me. I bumped into the pregnancy test and it slid off the sink and into the trash can.
For some reason, that was the final straw.
I burst into tears.
I paced the living room of the apartment and switched between nibbling on my thumb and on the corner of my cell phone.
Calling Josh was useless. Texting him was the same. So I sent a picture. Of the positive pregnancy test.
It was the only thing I could think of doing.
His response?
Be right over
And nothing else.
Grace asked if she wanted me to have her stay or go.
I told her to leave.
I waited as long as I could before I opened the front door. I leaned out and looked at the door to the steps.
Right on cue, Miss Laura opened her door.
“Amelia!” she said in a happy voice. “How are you?”
“Oh, I don’t have the-”
“Let me tell you about my day,” she said.
I cringed.
“I really can’t…”
“Cable went out today,” she said. “Did you know that? Well, I bet you didn’t. Because I called them right up. I told those people they’d better get their act together. There’s an entire building here of people who…”
The door was ripped open from the stairs and Josh appeared.
He looked like a mess.
It wasn’t even eight at night and he had the look of someone stumbling home at three in the morning with a broken heart.
He was scruffy and his hair was as messy as ever. His clothes were cleaner than I expected.
“Oh, look at this,” Miss Laura said. “My boyfriend has come home. Why don’t you-”
“You’re pregnant?” Josh called out.
I gasped.
Miss Laura gasped too. She touched her chest and covered her mouth.
My cheeks flushed as I nodded. “I’m pregnant, Josh.”
“Oh, my dear,” Miss Laura said. “I think I’m going to go back inside.”
Josh didn’t break his stare from me as he stepped toward me. “Pregnant…”
“Pregnant,” I whispered. “Josh…”
Without warning, he reached for me.
For my stomach.
His strong hand touched against my still flat belly.
I jumped back but grabbed his wrist and pulled his hand to my stomach again.
We just stared at each other.
Just like before.
The night of his gallery showing when I had turned up. Years since I had last seen him, but the same feeling. And now it was just days. Twenty-nine days. But it felt like twenty-nine years. But the feeling was the same.
My eyes filled with tears again, waiting for him to do something.
Josh lowered his head down until his forehead touched mine.
He shut his eyes.
“Amelia…”
“You love her,” I said. “Delilah. You still love her. Don’t you?”
“Of course I do,” Josh said. “But you need-”
“Then you need to tell me everything about her. About the letter. I need to know how to live my life as the mother of your child.”
Josh stepped back. “That’s what you want to be?”
“That’s what I am, Josh,” I said. “We’re forever connected now.”
He laughed. “We’ve always been connected.”
“Then tell me. Everything. Please…”
I wiped a tear off my cheek.
That was your tear to wipe away, Josh.
He touched my stomach but not me. He didn’t wipe away the stray tear.
I was going to be the mother of his baby and nothing more.
And that meant a piece of my heart would always be broken.
“I can’t believe I have to do this with all these fucking cats looking at me,” Josh said.
“We can go to your place if you’d like,” I said.
“No. We’re here. We can stay right here, love. You want to know everything… here it is…”
Josh stood while I sat on the edge of the dining room table. The back of my mind raced over what was to come over the next nine months of my life. And the nine months of being pregnant was just the start. Nothing would be the same ever again. I was a struggling waitress living in an apartment dedicated to cats. I used to have a dream of being a writer and surviving that way. Now everything I knew had to shift to the life inside me.
And the life that stared at me with his strong arms crossed.
“I’ve been going to talk to someone for a while,” he said. “To… I guess help with things.”
“A therapist, Josh?”
“I hate that fucking word. That makes me feel weak.”
“You’re not weak.”
“I did it as a promise to Aaron.”
“Why?”
“Because of Delilah.”
“Who is she, Josh? What happened to her? Is she… dead?”
“No,” he said. “She’s not dead.”
“And you still love her?”
“With everything inside me,” he said without hesitation.
My heart ached even more. I swallowed as much down as I could, wanting to give him his chance to talk to me. My hands protectively touched my stomach. I already started to negotiate with myself, saying that as long as Josh loved and took care of our baby, then nothing else mattered. Nothing about his past or my past mattered. We had done this together. We had created this life together.
Josh pointed to a picture of a cat swatting at a balloon. “Do you think the cat got the balloon? Or did they pull it away?”
“What? Do you really care about that?”
“I don’t know. I’m just amazed that someone set this up. And someone bought it.”
“Josh…”
He stared at the picture of the cat. “I lost myself, Amelia. Really bad. I had a couple of events with Sasha that went well. I was hanging around Michelle, stuck in feelings that were different than hers. Yet I couldn’t get away. I knew I was hurting her, but I didn’t care. And then guys like Azor, who meant well, were just as destructive in their own way. I felt like I was walking this fine line each day and it got exhausting. So, one night after getting as drunk as I had ever been in my life, I decided to go find…” Josh looked at me.
“Delilah?” I whispered.
“Yeah. I went back to her house. And I didn’t actually just go back. I went inside.”
“Inside?”
“What happened?”
“The people who lived there woke up. Found a drunk Josh stumbling around their house calling out the name of someone who didn’t live there anymore. They were an older couple. The man had a bat and wasted no time in hitting me with it. He could have killed me, but he hit me in the ribs to take me down. I pleaded with them to call Aaron. He came and saved my ass. He was there for everything. With the police.”
“The police?”
“I broke into a house, love. I should be sitting in jail right now. But the woman - her name was Angie - she sort of stuck up for me. It was a blur for me as Aaron busted his ass to help keep me from getting into serious trouble. But he made me promise him to go talk to someone. To figure everything out. So, I call it the meeting. I go and talk.”
“Josh, I had no idea,” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me…”
“Do we need a reminder that you came to me digging for a story.”
“There was never any story," I said. “I would never do that to you. Do you have any idea what you mean to me? Back then and now? My entire heart revolved around you. How do you think I feel right now finding out I’m probably second best to someone else?”
Josh lowered his head and shook it. “That’s what you don’t get.”
“What?”
He looked at me. “Everything, love. You were close to the edge when you’d come find me. You don’t get where that could have gone. And my life was a mess. Us meeting up again and getting together wasn’t part of this.”
“Since when do you have a plan in life?”
“When it comes to protecting you, it's the only plan I’ve ever had.”
“What about Delilah? Did you protect her? Or were you protecting me as a way to make sure we didn’t find out about each other?”
“It’s not like that at all.”
I stood on my two feet now. I was the one feeling protective. And it wasn’t over Josh.
“Then tell me what it was like.”
“My father showed up with Delaney. Then he left for good. He started another family. You know all that. You know what I did to his house over and over, which did nothing to help me. There was a girl that lived next door to me. We were best friends. True best friends. Like me and Aaron except she understood me more because of the way she lived. Her father was raising her on his own. We leaned on each other. She was the first girl I felt things for.”
“Let me guess, Delilah,” I said in a cocky voice.
“No. Not at all. Her name was Lilah. And she moved to Texas a week before I found out Delaney was sick. She was there and then she was gone. Gone when I needed someone to be there for me. Everything in my life fell apart, love. Lilah left. Delaney got sick and passed. Gram got sick and passed. All I had were the guys. I should have gone to Aaron but he was living his perfect life. We only got close again when his parents divorced. You were the only thing I had for a little while, but…”
“You pushed me away," I said.
“I saved you, Amelia.”
“Saved me. You broke my heart that night. I went home to my mother bleeding on the floor. She was drunk. I was destroyed. And now I know you were running off to someone else.”
Josh stood in silence, only confirming everything I was thinking and saying.
I suddenly felt sick.
I rushed to the kitchen and leaned over the sink.
One thing I had mastered was pulling my hair back, so it didn’t get any vomit in it.
My cheeks burned hot as I had never thrown up in front of Josh before.
He came to my side.
His hand touched my back.
I shook him away and reached for the paper towels.
“Don't worry," I said, “this happens all the time. It’s not just in the morning. But I think this one was your fault.”
“Amelia…”
“I loved you so much,” I said to him. “I’d never kissed someone before, Josh. I wanted to kiss you. I wanted to have you… do whatever you wanted. You pushed me away. Twice. I felt like the ugliest person in the world.”
“You’re not,” he said. “Fuck, love, you have always been the prettiest girl… and now the most beautiful woman. And now the mother of-”
“How can you say that to me? I read that letter, Josh. That letter did things to me I never thought possible. I thought to myself that if I could find someone to love me the way the person who wrote that letter loved Delilah…”
I shook my head.
“Can I finish what I’m saying here?” Josh asked.
“You know what? No. I didn't know what to expect tonight. I’m pregnant. With your baby. This is our life now.”
“And I want this life,” Josh said.
“Where is the letter now?”
“I destroyed it. Like I should have done when I wrote it. I didn’t even want to write that fucking thing. I was supposed to write it and destroy it. To get rid of everything. But it didn't work. Because the second I saw you…” Josh put his head back. “I wrote another letter.”
“To Delilah?”
“Yes,” Josh said. “Because when I came back, and you were gone-”
“You know what? This isn’t my business. You should give her that letter. I’m serious, Josh. You and her should not go through life never knowing what could be.”
“That’s what you want?”
I swallowed hard. “Yeah. I want you to be happy, Josh. And if that’s with her, then fine. Go give her the letter you wrote.”
Josh stepped back. “Then that’s what I’ll do.”
My lips quivered.
That was the moment he was supposed to grab me again. My waist. My arms. My face. That was the moment he was supposed to tell me he loved me and nobody else. I was pushing at him out of jealousy and now he was… leaving.
“Josh,” I said as I slowly walked after him.
“I’ll take care of everything, Amelia,” he said. He looked me in the eyes again. “And I promise you, I won’t be like my father. You never have to worry about that.”
Josh shut the door behind him.
I touched my stomach and wanted to feel relief, knowing I wasn’t going to be alone in all of this.
But it wasn’t enough.
I wanted more.
I wanted Josh.
I needed Josh.
I ran back to the kitchen sink.
I felt like I was choking on my broken heart.
I sat on my bed, my legs crisscrossed with a notebook in front of me. I was writing a letter of my own. Except I was writing my letter to everyone. My memories felt raw and exposed. They refused to back away, so I sort of just stood in them for a while.
I thought about my father’s death. Knowing it was all eventual. So, getting the call that he was gone didn’t hurt me as much as it maybe should have. I thought about my mother, fleeing everything she knew in life, living a quiet and secluded life across the country. Seeing the positive pregnancy test was maybe a chance to talk to her again and bring her back into my life. But to me, I was nothing but a reminder of what life had been like for her. All the times she fought with my father, yelling for me - fly, baby, fly - wanting to keep me safe.
One thing I knew for sure was that this baby was not going to be born into a twisted world. This baby was not going to come home from the hospital to an apartment full of cat pictures. Or have to endure Grace’s speeches on life. This baby would not live through what I lived through. I would find a way to be everything this baby needed and then some. And if Josh was telling the truth that he wouldn’t do what his father did, then this baby would have the love from two people who knew what not being loved felt like.
Except I loved Josh.
I still loved him.
I couldn’t imagine not loving him.
It was impossible to not think about the way he had touched me. Kissed me. Taken me to his bed. The way our bodies felt together. Not just physically either.
And the entire time…
A soft knock on my door broke up the painful thought.
I wiped the corners of my eyes and turned my head as Grace opened the door.
“Hey,” she whispered.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Please…”
“Not sure what you want me to do. But Josh is here.”
“What?”
“He’s at the door looking for you.”
I swallowed hard. “Okay.”
“Want me to tell him you’re sleeping or something?”
“No,” I said. I climbed out of the bed. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Are you sure? Your body can only take so much, Amelia. And now you need to think about the baby. All the time.”
“Grace,” I said. “Please.”
She opened the door all the way and disappeared.
I shuffled through the apartment in oversized black pajama bottoms and an oversized gray hoodie. I was the definition of a walking mess and I didn't give a damn about it.
Josh stood at the front door, hands in the pockets of an old and dirty black leather jacket. I hated that no matter what he did, said, or wore, he was gorgeous. Even hurting me, he made it so I wanted more. Which was wrong. I was mad at myself for that.
“What do you want?” I asked him.
“To do what you said to do, love,” he said in a soft voice.
“And now you came back here to do what? Rub it in my face? I told you I'm sorry I asked anything. I should have known better. You’ll never understand-”
Josh stepped toward me and gently touched my cheek. His thumb grazed my bottom lip. My eyes filled with tears.
With his left hand, he pulled something out of his pocket. He stepped back and took my hand and placed a piece of paper into it.
“There,” he said. “It’s done.”
“What’s done?” I asked.
Josh looked into my eyes maybe deeper than he’d ever done before. “I just gave the letter to Delilah.”
Chapter 44
A Letter to Delilah Page 27
