Every Second With You

by Lauren Blakely

  “Did you go to the doctor?”

  He asked me that already. He asked me that on the way back from the store. He’d grabbed my arm, gripped it so tight his hand was a blood pressure cuff, and then practically dragged me to his nearby apartment.

  “I told you. No, I didn’t go to the doctor. Pregnancy tests work.” I cross my arms over my chest, standing firm against the wall. I have no clue where my certainty is coming from, but it’s as if all that prior fear zipped out of me, and now I am resolute.

  He shoves his hands into his hair, like they’re bulldozers. More pacing. Past the futon, wearing a tread to the bathroom, then he swivels around and back to me.

  “Are you keeping it?”

  My brain rattles, tries his question on again for size. But it’s like he’s given the computer a command it doesn’t understand. “What?”

  “Well?”

  His green eyes are dark, bottomless, and I can’t read them. All the gold flecks that sparkle are blotted out. “How is that even a question?”

  He raises his hands defensively. “Because it is.”

  “And how can you say it?” I spit back at him. My voice rears up like a viper, hissing. I press my hands against my belly protectively. My eyes follow my hands, and it hits me what I’ve done for the first time. Protected my baby. I’m winded by my own motherly instincts that materialized out of nowhere. “Of course I’m keeping the baby.”

  He turns on his heels and stalks over to the window, gripping the windowsill so hard he could crack the wood in his hands. I march over to him, grab his shoulder, and spin him around.

  My steely eyes glare hard into his dark ones. “And for the record, it is a baby. It is a he or a she. A boy or a girl. It’s not a fucking it, Trey.”

  “You don’t have to get like that with me. It’s not like we’ve even talked about abortion. It’s not as if we sit around and debate abortion, or the death penalty, or anything like that. I mean, I don’t even know if you believe in abortion.”

  I scoff, cold and dry. “Believe in abortion? It’s not a religion. It’s a fucking medical procedure.”

  “So. Do you believe in it?”

  I grit my teeth, wishing I had something in my hand—a glass, a phone, a hairbrush—that I could gun to the floor. “I am not having an abortion, and I want to smack you so hard for even suggesting it. How could you? You want to kill my baby?”

  His eyes fall shut, and he rocks back on his heels, his shoulders hitting the window. His body sags, as if all the bones in him have crumbled to dust and he’s only air and tenuous breath. His lower lip trembles, then he licks it once, and swallows. I don’t know what’s going on inside him, and I wish I could crawl up into him, feel his heart, read his mind, and know what’s happening.

  He opens his eyes, and then parts his lips to speak, but no words come. His apartment is starkly silent, and the quiet has become a living creature in this room, a shadow animal wedged between us. Then, he whispers, so low I’d need some kind of machine to pick it up if I weren’t staring at his lips, and the words that take shape on them.

  “Our baby.”

  He pulls me to him, and I tuck my face into the crook of his neck, placing a hand on his chest, his heartbeat wild and terrified under my palm.

  * * *

  Trey

  Two words I never thought I’d say. Not now. Not yet.

  But they’re here, levitating in the air between us, another presence in my apartment, and then inside me, an echo reverberating in my cells.

  Our baby.

  I can honestly say I never thought this would happen. Maybe that makes me stupid, but we were so careful, and I’ve never knocked up anyone before, so it makes no logical sense why it would happen now.

  But there’s no point in trying to apply reason. Logic has been factored out of the equation.

  So, what’s next? Are we supposed to talk about baby names? Parenting philosophies? What hospital she wants to give birth at, like responsible adults discuss? Or the fact that we’re in college and this is happening? That we’re recovering addicts, junkies, fuck-ups with the worst possible parental role models ever?

  I don’t know, I can’t know, and my feet feel unsteady and my breath is thin, but there is one thing I can hold on to—that I don’t want to lose touch with her. She is my rock, she is my hope, she is my every-fucking-thing, and so I don’t let go of her. I cling to her, my chin against her hair, her body gathered in my arms.

  We stand there for minutes, our arms tangled so tightly together, our bodies snuggled close as if we can erase the distance and the fear if we’re entwined.

  Soon, I pull apart, look her in the eyes, and opt for the naked truth. “I don’t have a clue what we’re supposed to do next. Or talk about. Or if I’m supposed to take you shopping for baby clothes, or touch your stomach all the time. All I know is, I fucking love you, and I’ll do whatever you need.”

  Her shoulders seize up, and her eyes well, but she nods, seeming strong, steadfast. That’s my girl. My tough, badass, brave girl.

  “I love you too. That’s all that matters, right? We’ll figure it all out somehow. As long as we’re together.”

  “We will always be together,” I tell her, locking eyes with her, making sure she knows these words are the absolute truth. They are the foundation of how I live my life now. With her. With the certainty I have in this crazy love that we found in the most unlikely place. “Remember? Staying.”

  “Staying,” she repeats, nodding. “Always.”

  Then her hands slip up my shirt, and she runs her fingernails across my arrow tattoo. I rub her shoulder and bring my lips to kiss her heart and arrow. It’s like we’re sealing a promise. One that neither of us ever expected to make; not now, not like this.

  But what choice do we have?

  Somehow we manage through the rest of the day, and when her stomach rumbles in the evening, I laugh.

  “Hungry much?”

  “I guess so,” she says with a sheepish grin.

  “Bet you didn’t know I am amazingly proficient at making grilled cheese sandwiches.”

  Her eyes light up. “Ooh! I bet you didn’t know that’s my favorite kind of sandwich.”

  I show off the extent of my skills in the kitchen, making her a grilled cheese sandwich for dinner, the melted cheddar drizzling over the crust of the bread.

  She takes a bite and rolls her eyes in pleasure. “This is so good I’m going to call it the Cheesy Miracle.”

  “That is an excellent name.”

  I whip up a Cheesy Miracle for myself, and damn, it tastes good, and it’s almost enough—the dinner, and the banter—to make it seem like we are the same people we were this morning, or yesterday, or a week ago.

  Almost.

  But not quite.

  Because as the hours turn into days, and the week ticks by, I start to feel uneasy, as if I’m living on borrowed time. Because that’s what we’re doing. We’re playing pretend, avoiding reality, talking about sandwiches and saying I love you so much we’re a broken record.

  I want to live in this make-believe state forever and ever. But then time does what time does—it marches onward—and reality sets back in. The tape starts playing in my head, a highlight reel looped over and over, and I see myself at age fifteen with my baby brother, Will, dying in my arms when he was only three days old. His tiny chest, rising and falling for the last time. It was hard to pinpoint the exact moment when he left this world. Everything had slowed, all his breaths, all his blood, and he slipped from life to death sometime as I held him, his tiny little body no longer working, his heart no longer pumping blood.

  I didn’t even know him, and still, it hurt so damn much. It hurt like someone was shoveling out my heart, scooping out my organs, the metal edges grinding against my bones.

  The aching, the awful aching emptiness of those days. Of that life. Of no one to talk about it with. I’ve worked so hard to move on: to live, to love. To not see death in front of my eyes every time so
meone says words like pregnancy or baby, but now it’s all I can see. It’s the picture I can’t stop looking at.

  My mind starts to agitate like a washing machine stuck on an endless spin cycle, as I feel the hope and the happiness and the future draining out of me.

  On the first day of her junior year of college, and my final semester, I walk her to campus. Her hand is in mine, and it feels so right to hold her hand, so I know—I fucking know—that I shouldn’t feel as if my blood is on speed. I try to settle my hyperdrive heart. I look down and see her fingers in mine, intertwined. See? It’s all fine, I tell myself. I can do this. I can manage. I can survive all my fears. I don’t have to be scared. We can keep doing what we’re doing.

  I grip her hand tighter, needing the familiar, as we press past throngs of our fellow students returning to school, chattering about their summers away from New York, or their summers in New York, or the classes they took, and the jobs they tried on for size. A guy in a brown T-shirt has his arm draped over his dark-haired girlfriend and they turn the corner, debating whether to bestow six stars or seven to the movie they saw last night.

  They’re not talking about the baby in her belly. The kid they’re going to have. The child they might lose.

  My lungs are pinching, and it’s like my organs are being crammed into smaller-sized storage containers.

  We reach the building where she has her creative writing class. “Go write something good about talking animals,” I say, and I flash a smile, trying to keep it light so she won’t know I’m withering inside.

  “I always love writing about talking animals. Meet me after class?”

  “Of course,” I say then I kiss her on the forehead, and she opens the door and disappears. When she’s gone, I slump against the wall and sink to the ground, my head resting on my knees.

  My insides are threatening to pour out of me, to spill all sorts of fears, and that’s the last thing I want. I can’t handle that kind of mess right now. I clench my fists; I squeeze them tight. They’re a vise, holding in all the doubts that want to ensnare me. I picture the walls closing in, compacting this messy stew in my head.

  Because I know how to shut down.

  It is my greatest skill, it is the subject I’ve mastered, and the class I excel in. And, as I head off to my history seminar, it’s as if my veins have stopped pumping blood, and now there’s some kind of strange coolness flowing through them, as if the blood cells are made of blue liquid distance.

  I don’t meet Harley after class. I don’t answer her calls. I send her a text telling her I forgot I’m meeting Jordan for lunch. I lie to her for the first time.

  Then I do it again that night when she comes over after I return home from No Regrets. She tries to snuggle up close with me in bed, but I don’t want to be close to her, so I pretend I’m asleep. She wraps her arms tight around me, her warm little body against mine, and it’s almost enough for me to turn around and kiss her and tell her all the things I’m feeling, except I don’t want to feel anymore. Not a thing. Not for anyone.

  Not at all.

  Chapter Eight

  Trey

  There are five stages to grief: Denial. Bargaining. Depression. Anger. Acceptance.

  I learned them all from Michele, my shrink. I went though some of them each time one of my three brothers died. I bypassed many of them.

  But what the shrinks don’t tell you is that there is a sixth stage.

  Faking it.

  “Let’s break this down. Piece by piece, because that’s the only way to tackle something so big,” Michele says, folding her hands in her lap, taking my news so coolly, so calmly that I’d bet the house on her being on Xanax. How the hell else can you explain the fact that she’s not pulling out her hair, or sitting there with her jaw hanging down on the floor? She’s acting like this is all too normal. Have an emotion. Have a reaction. Fucking feel this with me.

  Or don’t. Whatever. I don’t care. I can’t care. I don’t want to care.

  “I need you to be straight with me right now, Trey.”

  “Sure,” I say, settling into her couch. Her office, with its abstract paintings of red squares, yellow brushstrokes and blue lines, is my bomb shelter, safe from shrapnel. No bad news can hit me here. No one can touch me.

  “I don’t want anything but the truth. Promise?”

  “Got it,” I say, nodding.

  “What is your biggest fear? Being a father? Committing to Harley? Or are you—”

  I cut her off. “What? Committing to Harley? I’m committed. I’m with her. There’s no one else.”

  She shakes her head, crosses her legs. “That’s not what I’m saying. But having a family and being parents is a huge step and it tethers you to someone for life. You’ve only just started having a relationship with her, it’s the first one you’ve ever had, and now this. You’re not even living together yet,” she says, leaning forward in her chair. “Did you ask her like you’d planned to?”

  The window of her office is suddenly fascinating. The way the afternoon light slants through it. How the glass is spotless. “Do you clean that window every day?”

  “No. The cleaning crew does.”

  “Damn, they do a good job. Don’t you think?” I ask, turning back to her.

  She gives me that look. The one that says she knows I’m stalling. “So, what did she say when you asked her?”

  “I didn’t ask. I meant to. But it didn’t seem like the right time.”

  She nods. “I can imagine. But then, maybe it would have been the best time. Are you afraid to ask her to move in now? Afraid to be close?”

  I sneer. “No. Not afraid of that whatsoever. We’re already close. It’s just . . .” I say, but my voice trails off.

  “Just what, Trey?”

  “I just need space to process this, okay? It’s kind of like a big fucking deal.”

  “Right,” she says firmly. “It. Is. Like, the biggest deal of your life. That’s what having a kid is. So are you pulling away from her?”

  “No! I’d never do that to her.”

  “Then I need to ask you the next question. We need to talk about the elephant in the room.”

  My chest rises and falls. I know what’s coming. I don’t want to know what’s coming. I hold up a hand, but she asks anyway.

  “Are you thinking the baby won’t make it?”

  Armor. I put on my armor.

  I scoff, like that’s a ludicrous suggestion. “That’s crazy. There’s no way that would happen. I mean, how could it? We’ve done our time, I’ve fucking paid for it. That doesn’t happen. Does it?”

  Michele sighs deeply, and fixes me a look I’ve seen before. One I know well. Kindness, laced with sympathy. She feels sorry for me already?

  “Trey,” she says in a soft, gentle voice, “it’s unlikely it would happen again, but there are never any guarantees of that sort. I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that prior loss is a hedge. That it preempts the possibility of any future problems. Because that’s not true. Anything can happen at any time, though I hope your baby will be fine.”

  I draw a sharp breath, and push my palms hard against the couch. “It won’t happen. I won’t let it, Michele. Everything will work out fine.” The more I repeat it, the more it becomes true. “There’s no way that could happen. The universe won’t let it. Everything will be picture perfect.”

  I try to impress this upon Michele for the rest of the session, and by the time I leave, I nearly believe it. I press hard on the down button in the elevator, then rest my forehead against the panel and close my eyes. It will all be fine. Lightning doesn’t strike twice. Or in my case, four times.

  See? That’s the proof there. There’s no way on earth it could happen again.

  I have immunity now. Absolute and utter immunity from loss.

  The cool of the panel feels good against my skin, cocooning me in a protective bubble. Because I am safe. Even when I leave Michele’s building and the late August heat smacks my face, it doe
sn’t faze me because: Everything. Is. Fine. Here.

  A cabbie slams on his horn, the crude sound blasting into my ears, but it doesn’t bug me. Because I know how to protect myself.

  I have a shield from pain.

  I turn the corner, and a burly guy smoking a cigarette crashes into me, nearly knocking me against a building, but I sidestep him nimbly. See? Nothing can hurt me. Nothing can touch me.

  I make my way to Third Avenue and turn left, heading north, heading somewhere, passing familiar shops. Florists peddling bouquets that rich husbands bring their beautiful wives to say they’re sorry for working late, but then they do it again the next night, then the next, the lure of the deal, the boardroom, the negotiation more potent than her. Then they buy diamonds from the jewelry shop on the corner here. Or send them to this spa for the day, where it’s tranquil and calm, as the women lie with cucumbers on their eyes, drifting off to the memories of pleasure.

  Then I walk past doormen I have seen before, town cars pulling up, ladies spilling out. And then, finally, the maroon-uniformed man greets me with a nod, and holds open the door, since he’s known me for years.

  And I’m honestly not sure how I got here, but this is where I am: my medicine cabinet, where I keep my pills. This is where my robot feet have taken me, where my cool, perfectly modulated heart is beating. Across the rose marble lobby, into the elevator. Doors close, I press the button, fifteen floors later, a whoosh, and here I am. The plush brown carpeting, the cool quiet of the hallway, the doors ready to reveal naked bodies. What’s behind door number one? How about door number two?

  Or maybe, just maybe, 15D?

  That one. Yeah. The fucking painkiller that’s going to make everything fine, sliding down my throat like a couple of Vicodin. There’s only one thing that can that can erase uncertainty, that can take away pain, and it’s calling to me in its siren song that blots out the sounds and noises of old New York.

  I step out of the elevator onto Sloan’s floor.