by Rye Hart
It went straight to voicemail.
I tried again. Same thing.
Huh, I thought. Maybe her phone's dead? Maybe she's already sleeping?
I thought for a moment and keyed in a quick text message to her.
Thinking of you. Sorry for being distant, but I'd really like to catch up soon.
It was the truth. Spending practically every waking minute with Melody made me miss Camille even more. Her easy-going, quiet personality, her adorable smile, the way she laughed at old jokes that only the two of us would understand. I felt like I could be myself around her. I didn't have to worry about status or impressing the Joneses.
Melody ate it all up though. All of it. She lived for that sort of life and all of the fancy trappings that went with it. Which was why she was happy I wanted to be a doctor – because I made a very good living at it. Except for the fact that I wasn't doing it for the money. I did it for my parents, who I lost far too young.
My father was a doctor, my mother died of ovarian cancer. Melody got pregnant early in our relationship, in college, and I did the right thing and married her, because that's what men did when they got somebody pregnant. Or at least, I thought that's what they did.
To be honest, I never regretted that decision. Even now. It was the right thing to do at the time, and I loved my son more than anything in the world. I adored him and wanted to give him the best life possible. It was hard though, when his mother wanted one lifestyle, and I wanted another for him. I wanted him to be grounded and centered. Appreciative of life and all it had to offer. His mother wanted him to be of the upper crust. The elite. She wanted him to hobnob with the wealthy and powerful. She wanted him to attain status. I just wanted him to be happy.
Suffice it to say, our parenting styles often clashed.
I let out a long breath and stared down at my phone again. No response, and my heart sank just a little bit more. I feared that I'd really screwed things up with her in a big way.
God, I missed Camille. I felt empty without her. I hated to admit it, even to myself. I knew it was all moving too fast, but that's the way I felt about her. One day, I hoped to introduce her to Carter. I knew he'd like her and that they'd be thick as thieves. I know they'd probably geek out over their shared love of the X-Men – something Camille used to enjoy back in high school. Man, it was so hard to know what she liked anymore though. I really needed to spend more time getting to know her. To find out what she liked and didn't like anymore.
After waiting for over an hour and getting no response to my text, I finally got ready for bed and called it a night. As I drifted off to sleep, I dreamt of a different future. One where I'd married Camille instead of Melody, because I'd waited for Camille like I'd promised her I would.
Instead of that coming to fruition, of course, the distance between us became too much for us to handle and we'd broken up. Melody was there. She was simply a convenient rebound that turned into something more by chance. I knew at the time that she was a rebound, but I was lonely. What if things had been different, though?
Of course, if it had all gone differently, I wouldn't have Carter, and that alone wouldn't work for me. No, I loved my son, and because of that, there was nothing I'd do differently. Certainly not if it meant losing him. Carter was everything to me. He was my world.
But, if there was a way to have Camille and Carter – both in the same future? Then hell yeah, that would be one happy dream alright. It was a dream I'd fight for. A dream I'd do everything in my power to bring to fruition.
***
“Rise and shine, slacker!”
A shrill voice pulled me from my dreams. Still groggy and my head feeling like it had been stuffed with cotton, I opened my eyes to see Melody standing over me, arms crossed in front of her in that ever so familiar pose of discontent. She was fully dressed in a pencil skirt and white button up top, ready for the office. Instead of leaving for work though, she was standing over me with a scowl on her face.
“What time is it?” I asked, rubbing my eyes.
“It's five-thirty,” she said.
I fell back into bed and closed my eyes, pulling the blankets up over my head, and wishing her away. At least for a little while longer. I wanted to get some damn sleep. Was that too much to ask?
“Preston, are you seriously going back to sleep on me?” she screeched.
Apparently, it was too much to ask. She punched me in the arm, and for a little thing, she sure managed to pack a wallop. My arm stung where she'd connected. I pulled the blanket off of my head and glared at her.
“Yes, I am. I don't need to be up for several more hours,” I said. “And why are you awake and bothering me this early?”
“We still have so much to do to get ready for the party, so, I figured we'd get an early start,” she said, pulling out her trusted and revered checklist – something that, in that moment, I wanted to shove somewhere very uncomfortable for her. “Like get the stage built and set up in the back. You're building the stage, right?”
“Stage?” I grumbled.
“For the band, of course,” she snapped. “We talked about this months ago, don't pretend you don't remember.”
“Who says I'm pretending?”
She punched me again, and I sat up, knowing there was no hope in me getting anymore sleep. Not with her standing there, in a drill sergeant kind of mood.
“We got the band from Kidz Zoo to perform,” she growled. “Preston, that's a huge deal! They're very popular YouTube stars with all the kids today! The other parents are going to be so jealous. I can hardly wait to see their faces. This will put those pony rides to shame, I tell you.”
“Uh huh,” I said,
With a disgruntled sigh, I climbed out from under my cozy and warm blankets, scratching my face as I walked toward the bathroom. Melody followed me, talking about the specs and details on this so-called stage, which in reality, would take me weeks to build.
Considering the fact that I had a full-time job, not to mention a host of other obligations, I really didn't expect it to get done. Not that I'd tell her that. That would only be opening up a can of worms all over myself that I didn't particularly feel like dealing with in that moment.
I reached the bathroom door with Melody was still on my heels, still chirping away about this and that needing to get done. I turned around and glared at her balefully.
“Some privacy, please,” I growled.
She stopped outside the door and pursed her lips. “Well – hurry then, please,” she said. “You can shower later. Right now, we need to get started before Carter wakes up.”
I shook my head and went into the bathroom, happy to shut the door behind me. At least in there, in the bathroom, I could have some measure of peace and quiet. I sat down on the closed toilet seat, resting my head in my hands and yawned wide. I almost fell back asleep sitting there, but then Melody knocked on the door, startling me awake again. Dammit. “Preston, it's coming up on six,” she called. “Carter wakes up at –”
“I know what time my son wakes up, dammit,” I said.
I grumbled under my breath and stood up, deciding I had no choice but to face the beast head on.
Chapter Thirteen
Camille
“Thank you for meeting with us on such short notice,” I said, sitting down at Dr. Garcia's office.
It felt weird being at the clinic and not seeing Preston. It also felt weird being in the clinic knowing what I'd done in the examination room with him. But, it also felt nice to be in the familiar office of my regular doctor.
Dr. Garcia smiled, shaking both of our hands, totally and completely oblivious to the problems and drama within our relationship. To her, we were just a normal couple trying to conceive. I didn't mention Jessica, neither did Stephen. No need to, it would only make things awkward.
We sat down, and I felt like the office was suffocating me. Earlier in the week, I'd come in for some tests, as did Stephen. He sat in the seat beside me with a smug look on his face. T
he look of a man who thinks he walks on water and can do no wrong. He was certain the problems existed with me, and not with him. I wanted to smack him across the face so hard, it wiped that smug smirk off his lips permanently.
When he caught me staring at him though, he reached for my hand and gave it a squeeze I'm sure he meant to be reassuring. It only managed to feel condescending. The physical equivalent of a politician saying, “I feel your pain.” I had to admit, feeling my hand in his just didn't feel right anymore. It was like two pieces that didn't fit together in any way, shape, or form. It felt wrong on so many levels after being with Preston. But, that was the past.
I was going to try to move forward with things in my life. I was going to chart my course forward on my own terms. I was going to move on from the past.
Dr. Garcia started right into the medical talk – it was one thing I always liked about her, she didn't waste any time and got right to the meat of the matter. She looked through the file and read over the results – most of which made absolutely no sense to me.
“Camille, you've expressed concerns that you couldn't get pregnant?” she asked.
“Yes, I'm afraid with my history, I might be infertile.”
I spoke the words so quietly, I feared she might not hear them. I almost felt like if I didn't say them out loud, in a strong, clear voice, they couldn't come true. That if I whispered them, some small spark of hope, the tiniest ember, could be kept alive.
Dr. Garcia nodded her head and stared down at her files, a smile spreading across her face.
“Well, I have some good news, which may come as a surprise, all things considered,” she said. “You're definitely not infertile. You show no actual signs of cysts, and all your hormonal levels are normal. Everything looks fine on your end.”
“No,” I muttered. “That can't be right. I –”
Dr. Garcia chuckled, resting her hands in front of her on the desk. She gave me a smile that was warm and sincere. Kind. Happy even.
“Camille, I have more news for you,” she said. “Your pregnancy test came back positive.”
“Come again?” Stephen asked, leaning forward.
I'd heard the words myself, but I couldn't quite believe them. They didn't seem real. This couldn't be real, it had to be a dream. Or some trick my mind was playing on me. Surely, I couldn't have heard what I thought I'd just heard.
“Yes, Camille,” she said, seeing the look of stunned disbelief on my face. “You're going to have a baby.”
I tuned them out, processing what I'd just been told. I was vaguely aware of Stephen arguing with Dr. Garcia, but I was stuck in my head, which was a maelstrom of thought and emotion – and even though I was notoriously bad with numbers, I was busy doing the math.
“How far along am I?” I asked softly.
“Only a couple of weeks. You're very early, but it showed up on the blood test,” she said.
Her smile wavered a bit as she turned to Stephen. His face darkened with anger and outrage. When he turned to me, his eyes narrowed, and his jaw clenched. He seemed to automatically know what I was only just now coming around to realizing.
A few weeks. Right after he'd informed me that he'd cheated and was having a baby. Stephen and I hadn't been intimate in a long while before that. He'd been too busy with Jessica apparently, and I assumed we were just taking a break for a bit. If I'd been a few months along, then yes, it would be Stephen's, but as it stood, given the timing of it all...
“Oh God,” I said.
Dr. Garcia was reading the results of Stephen's tests, but I only picked up the very end, “I'm sorry, Stephen, it appears that your sperm count is very low and weak,” she said. “And normally I'd give you less than a zero-point-one percent chance of having children of your own, but I guess miracles can happen. So, congratulations are in order.”
She looked at me knowingly, and I knew that expression all too well. She knew my secret. She knew this baby wasn't Stephen's. It couldn't be Stephen's. He's the one who hadn't been able to have kids all this time. He was the one who was broken. Not me.
It was all I could do to not jump up right there, do a little dance, and scream, “in your face!”
“There must be a mistake,” Stephen yelled.
He snatched the files off of Dr. Garcia's desk, rifling through the paper work and test results. He tried to read them over, but it proved futile. He growled and slammed the files back down on her desk, unable to make heads or tails of them.
He looked at Dr. Garcia with narrowed eyes and spoke in a low, menacing tone. “Low, weak sperm count, huh?” he sneered. “Yeah, well I got another woman pregnant, so I can't be infertile. I knocked up two women in less than a few months’ time –”
“Stephen, my baby isn't yours,” I said quietly.
“What did you say?” he asked, turning to me.
I turned to look directly at my ex, and felt a smile forming on my lips. It was the wrong time to be happy, but I couldn't help it. The look on his face, the look of absolute shock and betrayal – and, of course, the knowledge that this was his fault, all this time – filled me with more joy than it should have. Of course, I was also happy to hear I was pregnant, though, the reality of that hadn't fully sunk into me just yet. That was going to take a minute to process.
“This baby can't be yours, Stephen,” I said. “When's the last time we were intimate?”
“Three months ago,” he said proudly, as if it were a night to remember – it wasn't. “It was on our anniversary.”
“But you didn't finish, remember?” I said. “Too much alcohol? We went to bed early.”
He looked stunned but screwed up his face and kept thinking. Looking for some way to prove that the child in my belly was his. But, if he'd just do the math himself – and Stephen was very good with numbers – he'd have to realize he just admitted we'd last had intimate contact three months ago. I was only a few weeks along. The math just didn't add up to support his belief that he was the father of my child. Period. Cut and dried. Black and white.
“And even if I was pregnant from that night, I'm clearly not three months along,” I said, rubbing it in just for good measure. That's when the reality of it all hit me though. “Oh God, I'm pregnant. I never thought –”
My smile grew wider as did the fluttering in my heart and stomach.
“If not mine, then who's is it?” he growled.
Stephen's face was bright red now, his eyes filled with rage. I was thankful to not be alone with him in that moment. Even Dr. Garcia seemed to be growing more cautious. Her hand hovered near the phone on her desk, likely to call security in case he got out of hand.
“An old friend,” I said.
I looked over at Dr. Garcia and couldn't keep the smile off my lips. I couldn't admit that this child very likely could have been conceived right there, in her clinic, by one of her doctors though. I wasn't going to rain hell down on Preston like that.
“Someone who came back into my life after a long time apart,” I said.
Stephen slammed his fists onto the Dr. Garcia's desk, making her jump. His face was growing darker, the rage seeming to increase. He looked like he was on the verge of losing control.
“You filthy fucking whore –”
Dr. Garcia stood up, and she was a tall woman, but was nothing compared to Stephen. He easily outweighed her by a hundred pounds. Yet she had a commanding, authoritative presence about her. When she spoke, people listened. This was not a woman to be trifled with.
“You need to get out of here this instant, Stephen,” she said, her voice firm. “Leave now, or I'll call security.”
He stood up to leave, knocking over a chair as he left. When he reached the door, he stopped and turned around, looking over at Dr. Garcia. In a voice that was suddenly low and quavering, all of the bluster and bravado gone, he asked her a question softly.
“Infertile?” he asked. “You're sure?”
“Positive. You're shooting blanks, Stephen,” she said, her voice rising. “No
w get out of this clinic. I never want to see you here again.”
“But Jessica –” he muttered.
I remembered what Liv had said early on, and giggled as I shouted out to him, “Sounds like your sidepiece had a sidepiece of her own.”
He slammed the door, leaving me and Dr. Garcia alone. Once he was gone, she burst out laughing and then apologized for laughing. I joined in though, and we both started giggling like maniacs. Not the most professional of behaviors, but it broke the tension that had saturated the room not moments before.
“I'm happy for you, Camille,” she said at last. “I've been seeing you for years now, and while this is the first time I met your fiancé –”
“Ex-fiance,” I corrected her.
“Yes, of course,” she said, clearing her throat, “your ex fiancé does not seem like a very nice person. I'm not sure what you saw in him, to be honest. I'm just glad that your child won't have to grow up with that sort of influence.”
I sighed. “Trust me, you're not the first person to tell me that,” I said. “Well, not that last bit, but you know what I mean.”
Her smile was beautiful and sincere. “I most certainly do.”
***
I left Dr. Garcia's office with the news of my pregnancy swirling around in my head. Adrenaline was still pumping through my veins and disbelief continued to grip my mind. I was still shocked, unable to believe that there was a life growing inside of me.
It was only a few weeks along, but it explained the throwing up. I'd just been assuming it was stress of everything I'd been going through lately. In the hallway outside of Dr. Garcia's office, I looked around for Preston, afraid we'd run into each other. I breathed a sigh of relief as I rounded the corner and stepped into the waiting room without having crossed paths with him. This was not the place for us to have that kind of conversation, and I was far too distracted to talk about anything else.
I was pregnant, but with Preston's baby. He was married, or at least had a woman in his life, and a son. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with that. I had no clue at all. I walked to my car, feeling a surge of emotions that ran the gamut, flowing from happy and ecstatic, to terrified, to downright depressed. This was not what I had pictured for my life, not at all. I didn't want to be a single mother. I wanted to have a family with a man I loved.
