by Rissa Brahm
She slammed her hand down on the table.
He wanted her to give in? Bend to his whim?
It’s not a damn contest, Preeya.
No, but this was her life, and would he or their baby want only half of her? A pained, fucked-up version of Preeya Patel? No matter how logical and practical and, yes, medically based Ben’s reasoning had been, Preeya’s gut and heart and instinct told her to follow through.
Now, Gigi being the godparent for their kid…how would she feel if Ben insisted on someone she didn’t trust to be their kid’s guardian? Like, say, Kelly from Denver? But he’d picked Stacy. And counter to Gigi, though also a single mother, Stacy seemed grounded. And she’d practically raised Ben, and was doing a fine job with Beth and Peter.
Maybe Preeya could bend…and let there be two godparents, Gigi and Stacy. Maybe that would balance things out for Ben and her, but more importantly, their kid’s upbringing. School in the States, summers with Stacy? But, fuck—all just thoughts in a vacuum. She needed Ben here, now. To talk to and make decisions with. Together.
But he’d decided to leave. No answer on their marriage license; no answer on their future. Which meant, what—no future?
Yes. That was what it meant, at least, that was what she needed to be prepared for. Abandoned again…officially alone.
But this time, so help her, she wouldn’t play the helpless, floating soul. Now, her feet planted firmly on the ground, her legs and body, mind and soul all had gotten strong and sound and solid—like the tree in Prana’s favorite book.
And like that tree, Preeya would give and give to her child. She’d give everything.
CHAPTER 55
Seven days since Ben had left. The junk mail pile on the kitchen table had become more of a tower. She tossed today’s bit on top, and the whole thing fell. Preeya sighed, dropped the groceries on the center island, then surrendered into one of the hard kitchen chairs.
From the top of her purse—no longer a pit of despair, but rather a giant organized billfold with handles—she grabbed the sonogram. The little 3-D image of her baby. She beamed, then felt her heart free fall. “You were supposed to be with me.” Holding my hand, Ben.
Shut it off, Pree.
Hard as hell to do toward the end of a long day. Especially after seeing the baby on the monitor. Moving, waving, kicking. Heart beating.
She could’ve called Gigi. Preeya had gone to her sono.
But, no. Ben, or no one. She chose no one. She needed to get used to it, anyway.
Because she could go this alone—without Ben.
She put the baby’s image to her chest, over her aching, wrenching heart.
The fact, the truth, the unchangeable reality? She wanted him. Ben. In her life. Always.
She should have felt joy today as she watched her child in real time. Her out of sight but so in her heart little blessing. More than relieved and grateful for the baby’s good health, but the joy? The culminating depth of ecstatic, united joy? Without Ben there, it was missing. The journey felt more like a trip to the next room.
But he’s not in the next room.
The raw ache that had simmered below the surface all week long—her fight to prove she could do this without him—it morphed in an instant to hot red spite.
Instead of being here with me, he’s in goddamn Texas. Not returning her calls, or the voice mails she’d left, or the texts she’d broken down and sent. She planned no apology, just a plea to talk. To hear his voice, to gauge their future on his tone and mood and the length of conversation he was willing to hold with her. But so far, he’d been willing to do nothing. The silent treatment like a damn child.
And now, despite her anger, she was so tempted to shoot him the sono, to tell him all the doctor had said, that she and the baby were fine—fine, despite her sleepless, high-stress week from hell since he’d left.
While he’d been so hell-bent on relieving her stress? What a crock of shit.
But she resisted the temptation to reach out again, especially with the status of the baby. A high-point card she held. He must be dying to know how their little creation was doing, right?
If he even cares, goddamn it.
Of course he cares, Preeya. You know him; you fell in love with him. He cares.
Yes, and his need to know about this week’s checkup would be the impetus for a phone call from him. He’d probably reach out today.
But the day’s near over, Pree.
That son of a bitch….
She should send the sono image. He accused her of being selfish—she should send it to show him how unselfish she was. Just like the search for her mother wasn’t for her—it was for the baby, damn it. The uprooting of Jenny’s poisonous roots was for the baby.
So yes, despite their rift, she should send Ben, the father, the image of their child.
She took a snapshot of the sono and got ready to hit Send. But her trembling fingers stopped her. She put the phone down and shut her eyes. What-ifs filled her head. Maybe—even as she prayed for a call or a text…snail mail, something—they really were…over? Sonogram or not. Baby or not. What if?
Her chest tightened and a sharp, stabbing pain in her right side made her wince.
A kick.
Preeya grunted, then giggled without meaning to. It was as if the baby wanted her to buck up, wake up—stop pouting, sulking, dwelling.
Another jab, same spot.
Let it go for now, Pree. The baby says to let it go.
She patted her belly. “Thank you, little one.” She let out a long, measured stream of air like a leaking, overinflated balloon. Her mouth dry, her eyes now, too, she got up for some water.
Yes, focus. Do, move, be.
She finished the glass, conquered the four grocery bags of frozen and refrigerated items, then refilled and took her glass back to the table to sit, her feet already throbbing from the four-minute stint.
She propped her feet up on the opposite chair and sighed, ready to breathe and hydrate and distract herself with the coupon mags, brochures, and BS promos strewn across the kitchen table. She sipped her water while sifting and sorting. Putting her mind on diaper brands warmed her heart rather than constricted it. She smiled through the glossy pages of baby food and tush cream. Then she came to baby meds—and lodged in the crease were two, no three, letters. She flipped them over. Two credit card promos for Ben. And…a letter addressed to Preeya Patel?
In the five months living at Ben’s rental on 17th , she’d received not a single stitch of mail. All her stuff went to her PO box close to Gigi’s place since she’d become a flight attendant two years ago.
But this letter—she held it up to her face—was definitely addressed to her.
With no return address. Of course.
*
A check fell out of the handwritten letter.
A check made out to her. From…DP LLC?
For eleven thousand dollars and change. Memo line: Gift.
What the hell is this?
She pushed the paper and the check away from her now-trembling hands. Swallowing hard, she racked her brain. Because who knew what to expect? Had Gigi’s search for her mother gone farther than she knew?
She hadn’t spoken to Gigi since Ben left. In fact, Gigi didn’t know he’d left—Preeya knew, stupid. Maybe even unsafe, especially with Ben fifteen hundred miles away. But she didn’t want to think or talk about it or anything stemming from it. Not the godparent thing, not the hunt for Preeya’s mom—which she’d maybe subconsciously halted in its tracks—and not Gigi’s situation—pretending not to be alone and depressed even though Gigi no doubt was both. Just like Preeya was now alone and depressed, but not pretending otherwise.
So avoidance had been the name of the game. She even skipped out on prego yoga the other day for a “mandatory exams study group.” Gigi bought it. She’d texted Preeya later that day, saying she’d gone to class anyway and then had gone for ice cream with a bunch of the women from class, “the single ones.” Oh God, s
ingle. Preeya’s heart cringed at the thought. It almost seemed like Gigi had found friends, other friends, single friends, all with positive goddamn outlooks on being alone. Alone and pregnant.
Get used to it, Pree.
She laughed to herself. In a subconscious way, she had been…getting used to it. Single and alone. No calls or texts or social media. She’d boycotted it all, except for her one-sided Ben text string. Why? No, not only because she didn’t want to say what she knew had to be said: that she and Ben…they were, well, for all intents and purposes, over.
No, the reason she’d chosen to wall up and cut off and hide away was because, damn it, Ben was the only person she wanted to speak to, see, hear, touch, breathe in or wake up to.
While he was the only one in the world who wouldn’t speak to her.
She reached for the water glass to her left—an inch from the letter and the check. She watched the note as she drank, like it might flit up and bite her. But it lay still, silent, keeping its contents secret.
She put the glass down away from the letter.
Look at it.
What if it was from her? Her mother. Jenny.
Ben’s warnings crept in and scurried around her head like venomous fire ants, furious and mean and biting.
Look at it or don’t, but Jesus, do something.
Decide something.
Her right hand slapped the letter and grabbed it between her thumb and fingers.
She inhaled then blew out.
Preeya. Preeya Patel.
The handwriting was horrendous.
You are a hard woman to find…if this letter actually did find you. I messaged you a bunch of times on a bunch of your social media channels for the past few months, but no luck there.
Huh. Thinking back, Preeya guessed she’d been ignoring her social media for far longer than the past week. With the baby and Ben and everything, it made sense.
So I used my pull, or my prior pull, that is, having since parted ways with the band…
The band? She shot down to the very bottom of the page. A signature, hardly legible, like the rest of the scribble. A large D—not an M for Mom or a J for Jenny.
She sighed.
But…the band.
Dawn.
Preeya shook her head and laughed, a belly-bouncing laugh that both hurt and delighted…until her bladder leaked. Then she laughed harder. Dawn—Josh’s helpful little lesbian band manager, Dawn.
She ignored the spot of pee in her panties and kept on reading.
…to find this address (the airline led to the UW campus.) Congrats if you did go back to school to heal the world. LOL. Anyway, here we are, Pretty Preeya with the “near-violet” eyes. Yes, you intrigued and captivated me that day. The day of vomit puddles and memory lane. Whether you’re single and still searching…or not, you seemed like a sensitive soul, and if you are in Seattle, which is where I’ve parked myself since leaving Carnal Knowledge, I do hope to see you again. Coffee at minimum.
Anyway, the sensitive-soul subject leads me to the point of this note and the explanation of the enclosed check.
As soon as I put out the metaphorical fires inside the house that morning (Josh did wake up, only to snort a few more lines before proceeding toward Otto’s room for a shower, where he subsequently passed out, ripping the shower curtain and its pole from the tile surround, flooding the damn master bath) I went back out to see if the cab had scooped you up. It had. I almost wished it hadn’t. Selfish, I know, but we are…all of us humans are…selfish, self-preserving assholes.
Okay…where the hell was this going? She snagged a sip of water before returning to the note, or rather, the damn novel. The handwriting wasn’t only bad, it was tiny. She rubbed her eyes and got back into the thing.
Anyway, stranger than strange, I stood on that porch with only one thought in my head: Sandpoint Way. Weird, I know. But the stupid road name wouldn’t leave my head. I walked to the end of the driveway thinking maybe I’d find your cab broken down a ways? Shit like that, thoughts or dreams leading to reality, have happened to me before, as freaky as that sounds…
Preeya chuckled. Not so freaky. Not so freaky at all.
…but anyway, no, there were no cars in sight. Nothing. I looked straight ahead of me, across the street toward the lake, which, to follow the strangeness of the happening, had been glimmering in the sunlight through a break in the cloud blanket above. Still, the road name scrolled across my brain like a ticker tape. I looked at the roadway (at the ruts and random potholes, at the yellow double line) and there, six feet from me, was a flattened piece of paper embedded into the road. Why I had to go out and get a piece of goddamn garbage from the middle of a 50 mph road, I don’t know. But I just had to.
Preeya lifted her eyes from the note. Trash in the road? She licked her lips, chapped to hell as they were, and bit down on her bottom pout before resuming the read, her curiosity piqued. She had a strong feeling she knew exactly where this was heading, though.
Wouldn’t you know, as I peeled the paper up from the blacktop, a car nearly hit me…yeah, that’s how totally stupid but compelled I was. Anyway, I leaped back to the safety of the driveway, unsmashed the wad of paper, and opened it.
Preeya took a breath. The letter.
The original handwritten love letter (and yes, lyrics to the number one top hit of my now former band, Carnal Knowledge) from and by Josh Bolte to you. To Preeya Patel, the inspiration of it all.
I intelligently brought it to show Josh a few hours later (you know, once he’d come down.) I was thinking I needed certification that it was really written by him. All I had to do was insinuate that he’d plagiarized the words to his awe-inspired “Sun and Moon in the Guest Room,” and it worked like a charm. He snagged the page from me, held it to his face, pointed at it (all while my phone’s video record function had mysteriously turned itself on, ahem, so strange) and went on to state for the record that the words, the handwriting, the letter to his very first love (on that paper) were indeed penned by him.
Yeah, so, for once, just to see how it felt to do something for no reason but to see justice done for someone else, I popped the video up on the Carnal Knowledge fan site and put the letter up for auction. I sold it to the highest bidder for the net amount which you see in the enclosed check.
“Wow, that’s unbelievable.” Preeya stroked her belly. “This woman…she hardly…hardly knew me. To…do this?”
The only thing that caught me up? A little bit selfish…(see, almost nothing can be done with pure and total selflessness LOL.) I just had to punch Josh in the virtual face for being such a goddamn prick to me, to you, to countless women, people, animals…for as long as I’ve known him. So…I added a little “bonus material” to the auction post.
Oh no she did not. Did she?
Our little water-pouring video snippet. It felt so good, Preeya. Embarrassing the shit out of him, even though it potentially risked the value of the letter, making the “great Josh Bolte” less desirable…but the fans jumped on it anyway. And, yes, the whole incident got me canned. Worth it, though. Totally worth it.
So that’s the story. I’m hoping to hell you’re holding the check instead of it being in the hands of some new prick in your life who’s not worth the crud underneath your fingernails.
No…no new prick.
No prick at all.
Her mind spun. She has, or had, an unbelievably amazing man, one whom she’d pushed away. Alienated. Selfishly goddamn alienated and hurt and had only considered when the decisions were simple. She hadn’t let him in—not really. Not with any of the vital choices or parts.
God, how different was she than Josh-fucking-Bolte? Center of the Universe, Josh Bolte.
Because here she was, center of her universe, alone, Preeya Patel.
Maybe never to be Preeya Trainer. And it goddamn served her right.
And while she’d played for control, Ben had been busy assuring her health and well-being. He’d been so focused on her fears, on prot
ecting her, that he locked away his own hidden pains. Beyond losing his wife to cancer, Ben had lost his first baby! How could she not know that? He held it back for her welfare.
Jesus, she’d been a horrible partner, person, friend. How lonesome Ben must’ve felt.
She hadn’t been there for him.
Like her mother hadn’t been there for Preeya’s father.
Then her thoughts shifted to the soothing balance struck by Sylvia and her dad. And, in contrast, how muddy and murky and downright blurred she and Ben seemed, had become. Or had always been?
Because of Preeya’s officially apparent one-sidedness. Opposite of Sylvia…and just like her mother. But she’d end it here. She’d change the tides. She wanted to share her life—truly share it—with Ben.
She wiped a rogue tear from her cheek while she stared at the letter in her hands.
God, what a prick—Josh Bolte. How many times might she have gotten pregnant by mistake with Josh’s kid, as that stupid teenager she’d been—that teenager who Josh Bolte had convinced he’d loved, and set to be with forever. So convincing that, goddamn it, they “didn’t need protection.” She gagged. “Let’s make true, raw love—no barriers, no shield.” And gagged again. No fucking condom? And she’d caved. Thank God the universe didn’t teach her a lesson by planting that seed—a sure path to hell on earth. Goddamn coke-snorting Josh Bolte as the father of her kid. Full-blown nausea now. The idea of having a baby, a life with that man, Jesus.
She winced then slammed her eyes shut, forcing an upsurge of bile from her stomach back down her esophagus. A flash of Josh’s empty eyes in that guest room that regrettable morning met her mind—thank God again that he couldn’t get it up or keep it up because who knows if she’d cave again, that the baby in her womb now really could have been that asshole’s. She flushed the memory away as fast as it had come.
