Us: A If I Break (Her) Story

by Portia Moore

A streak of jealousy slices through me, and I know it makes no sense. It’s ridiculous, but the idea of Ian confiding in Lauren makes me angry. I don’t want him telling her these things, letting her into his life like this. “Why are you still talking to Ian?” I demand. “I’m Cal’s sister. Ian has nothing to do with either of you!”

  I see the calm, apologetic expression slip as Lauren’s lips press together, her irritation showing through. “Ian is my client,” she says stiffly. “And besides that, he’s my friend. And considering all that’s going on, he could really use one right now.”

  “Well, you can leave me out of whatever friendship you have!” I say coldly, still furious.

  I hear the door open and turn to see Cal walking out of the gallery towards us. “What’s going on?” he asks sharply as he approaches, and I don’t know which one he is today, Cal or Chris, but at the moment, I couldn’t care less. The second he’s within earshot, I turn on him.

  “Why did you tell Ian that I wasn’t pregnant?” I ask accusingly, glaring at him. He returns the expression in equal measure, and I can tell then that it’s Cal I’m dealing with.

  “I didn’t tell Ian anything,” he says, the coldness in his voice echoing mine. “Ian drew his own conclusions.”

  “Conclusions from what!” I can hear my voice rising again. “What the hell did you tell him?”

  Cal smirks. “What you should have told him,” he says, and his eyes meet mine, neither of us looking away.

  “What are you talking about?” Lauren asks, her alarmed voice slicing through the tension. “What did you tell Ian, Cal?”

  I’m done with this conversation. I’m so done. I’m done with all of them, with everyone, with the lying and the tricks and the manipulation. I don’t want anything more to do with it.

  “I don’t want anything to do with either of you anymore,” I spit out, looking between the two of them. “You can play games with your own lives, but you can stay the hell out of mine from now on.” I pause, getting my keys and turning towards my car before looking over my shoulder and throwing one last directive their way.

  “And you can tell Dexter and Helen the same thing for me.”

  17

  Ian

  I should have known I was going to get a scolding from my mother when I showed up today. I practically disappeared, and I’ve been dodging her calls, which I hear about from the second I walk through the door. I can’t really blame her though, and I take it in stride, knowing that I deserve it. I cut off everyone for a while there, and I know she’s just laying into me because she cares about me.

  “You’re my son,” she finishes, shaking her finger at me. “My family, and no woman on the planet is worth what you’ve been going through with Alana!”

  I haven’t told her everything. If I did, she’d be on the warpath. Only that Alana struggles with mental health issues. It would be too much to fill her in on everything that I’ve dealt with from Alana and my relationship.

  “You’re handsome and successful,” she declares, looking at me across the kitchen table. “You just need to let the idea of her go, and move on.”

  “Okay, Mom,” I say gently, reaching the end of my patience with it. “I didn’t come over here to be lectured, you know. I wanted to spend some time with you. I’ve missed you.”

  “Fine,” she grumbles. “But you need to know I’m upset with that girl. And if I see her again, I’m going to give her a piece of my mind, and you can’t stop me!”

  I let out a sigh of exasperation, carrying my plate to the sink and leaving my mom, who is still muttering under her breath, to finish making dinner while I go and sit in the living room with my stepdad, who is busily watching the football game and ignoring all of the drama.

  He looks up as soon as I walk in, smirking as I take a seat. “I’m going to hear about that tonight,” he says, jerking his head in the direction of the kitchen. “In fact, I have heard about it every night since you stopped answering her calls.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say sincerely, but he waves a hand.

  “It’s alright,” he says. “I understand; heartache isn’t easy to come back from. Sometimes you just need to sit with yourself for a while, really think things through.”

  I start to respond, but my phone vibrates, and I pull it out of my pocket. It’s a text from Blue, saying that he needs to talk to me, and my heart does a flip in my chest. I text him back quickly, telling him to come meet me at my mother’s house.

  Blue gets the same treatment the minute he walks in the door just before dinnertime: my mother flying over to give him a warm hug and then scolding him about how long it’s been since she’s seen or heard from him. Blue takes it all in stride, telling her that he was just busy making money to spoil his favorite aunt, and produces a bouquet of flowers and a bottle of wine. I’m impressed. I have no idea how he managed to dig that up and get here so quickly, but Blue has always been the smoother of the two of us.

  Before I can get him away to find out what the hell is going on, my mother shoos us all into the kitchen for dinner. It’s my favorite: pulled pork and mashed potatoes and homemade mac and cheese. But I can hardly taste it. I’m so anxious to find out what Blue needed to tell me.

  “So who are you seeing these days?” Mom asks him, heaping food on his plate.

  Blue grins. “Someone new,” he hints. “You’ll meet her sooner or later if it sticks. Don’t want to scare her away,” he says with a wink, and my mother scoffs.

  “See, this is what I’m telling Ian. He needs to get with a nice, normal girl. Take a lesson from you.”

  “Hey, that’s enough, just drop it okay?” my stepdad scolds lightly, and my mother rolls her eyes, toning it down just a little but continuing to make small comments here and there. It’s enough to make me ready to call it a night by the time we finish eating, my hands full of leftovers as I give Mom a hug and a kiss, and my stepdad a quick hug, following Blue out to where the cars are parked.

  I can’t even wait until we get to the car. The minute we’re outside, I immediately blurt out: “Okay Blue, spill it.”

  “Megan wasn’t lying,” Blue says with a sigh. “She really is pregnant.”

  “Are you sure?” I ask desperately. I’ve been holding on to hope that maybe she was making it up, that maybe it’s not true, but I know that’s not likely—that the reality is that Cal was probably fucking with me and Megan is most likely telling the truth.

  Blue lets out another long breath, and when I put the food in my car and turn around to face him, I see him holding out his phone, handing it to me.

  There’s a photo of an ultrasound, plain as day, and when I look at it, it feels like a kick to the chest, like all the air has been sucked out of me. “Well, that’s it then,” I murmur, and to my horror, I feel tears come to my eyes.

  Blue gives me a one-armed hug, and I can tell that he’s upset for me. I try to pull it together, forcing back the tears and swallowing hard as I hand him my phone. You always knew this was true, I tell myself. I just decided to doubt it, like a fucking idiot, because that’s what you wanted to happen. “It’s alright,” I tell Blue. “At least I know for sure now.”

  “You’ll be alright, man,” Blue says. “I gotta go, but I’ll check in on you later, okay?”

  I’m walking over to my car as Blue gets in and starts his, and I hear it click, but it doesn’t turn over. I pause, giving it a minute, but it’s clear as I walk back towards him that it’s not starting. “Fuck!” Blue growls as he smacks the steering wheel. “I just knew something was going to go wrong with this soon.”

  A quick inspection by us both determines that the battery is fine; it’s the ignition switch that seems to be broken. “I’ll take you home,” I tell him. “My parents won’t care if you leave it here until we can get the part and get it fixed.”

  Blue flushes a little. “I was going over to Hillary’s,” he mumbles, clearly embarrassed.

  I just grin at him. “Well, at least one of us is getting laid,” I say
, forcing myself to sound cheerful. “Come on, I’ll take you there then.”

  Hillary comes out on the porch when she hears us drive up, and walks over to my window as I roll it down. “Thanks for bringing me my man,” she says with a grin, that then fades as she takes a closer look at my face. “You look sad,” she says with a pout. “Come on in, you need a drink.”

  “No, that’s okay,” I start to say, but she insists, and Blue joins in, cajoling me to come in. It’s easier to give in than to argue with them, so a few seconds later I find myself on Hillary’s fucking impractical velvet sofa while she starts to mix us tequila sunrises, which Blue informs me is her specialty.

  “What’s wrong?” she asks me, glancing over from the brass bar cart where she’s working. I shrug it off at first, telling her that everything is fine, I’m just tired, but by the time I’ve had my second drink I start to let it out.

  “I thought maybe Megan was lying about being pregnant, to get rid of me,” I say quietly. “Cal hinted at it. But turns out he was just fucking with me, and she really is pregnant with Kam’s baby. Blue saw the ultrasound.”

  “Oh no, I’m so sorry,” Hillary says, her voice sad, and I can tell that she really means it. “Can I see?” she asks, and I shrug as Blue pulls out his phone and shows her the photo that he took.

  “How far along is she?” Hillary asks.

  I shrug again. “She just found out. I guess a few weeks. I don’t fucking know.”

  “A couple of weeks is like six or seven,” Hillary says offhandedly. “She’s three months, big difference.”

  Blue peers at the photo. “Yeah, you’re right,” he says. “It does. Guess it’s a big one,” he jokes a little drunkenly. They continue to talk, and I wallow in my thoughts, trying to figure out how many glasses of water I need to drink before they’ll let me go. Today, finding out I was wrong didn’t hurt as much as the first time. I guess my heart is done breaking, but the numbness is there again. I push the empty glass away from me when it slaps me in the fucking face.

  Three months.

  I start to count backward in my head. I’m trying to keep my composure, but I can feel hope beginning to bubble up in me.

  “Blue,” I say, trying to sound as casual as possible. “How long ago did Kam move in with Megan? When he came to Chicago?”

  Blue looks confused and shrugs. “Hell, I don’t really remember.”

  “I need you to remember. It’s important,” I say through gritted teeth, leaning forward.

  “Now, now, boys,” Hillary says jokingly. “There’ll be no drunken fighting in my house.”

  “Think!” I say urgently to Blue, ignoring her.

  Blue frowns, concentrating. “Um…shit. Two or three months ago, I guess.”

  I’m as sober as a nun in church now, the implications of it all rushing in and making me dizzy.

  “I don’t get it,” Blue says, looking at me and then at Hillary and back again. “Why are you thinking about that? You’ve got to stop thinking about that shit!”

  “Think back to the night you were at my house,” I say tightly. “When Alana was there, when she came back. It was the whole reason that Megan asked you to tell me to turn Alana down if she came back.” I know I’m white as a fucking sheet, and as Blue takes in what I’m saying, realization dawns on his face too, and I see him start to go pale.

  I snatch the phone out of his hand. “Unlock it,” I demand, and when Blue does, I stare at the ultrasound again, my heart hammering in my chest.

  “What the hell is going on?” Hillary asks urgently. “Don’t leave me out, I want to know!”

  I stare at the picture, and I can’t stop the smile that starts to come across my face as I look down at it, at the baby there on the screen. When I answer her, it’s in an almost awed whisper, my hand clutching the phone.

  “I…I might be the father.”

  I was supposed to go home.

  I promised Blue that I would, that we’d sit down when we were sober and figure out the best way to approach Megan about this possibility, about my theory that I might be the father. He calls it a theory, I call it a gut fucking feeling, one that I feel down to my core. Blue had suggested that maybe talking to Lauren first was the best way forward; Hillary agreed to help set that up. I’d left fully intending to go home and stick to what we’d agreed, but as soon as I got back home, I couldn’t just wait and sit fucking still—I had to talk to her.

  Everything has changed for me today, the minute I looked at that damned ultrasound. I can’t keep my eyes off of it. I’ve stared at it so much I’m going to dream about it. I’d blocked the idea of “the baby” out of my head when Megan told me about it. At that time, it was just something that destroyed my connection to the woman I love, that broke us apart for good and destroyed any chance I might have had at the life I wanted with Alana.

  But now it’s restored a sliver of that hope. This baby, this possibility, is now my only hope, my only shot at regaining what I’ve lost, even though I know the odds are against me. It kills me to think of Alana with another man, even as Megan, but I know that it happened. I can’t fucking deny it—she’s been with Kam, and probably a lot more times than just the one time that I had with her. I have a drunken picture in my head of my sperm drunk off its ass trying to find its way to an egg, but it’s a tiny possibility, and I’m not going to let it go.

  I can’t.

  I know it’s not a good idea to talk to Megan now. I’m upset, and what I drank earlier is not completely out of my system. But I have to let her know that I know, that I’m not going to give up. I’m not going to pressure her or force her, but I want her to understand that I want to know if it’s my child. I’m not just going to go away. She can’t erase me out of her life if she’s having my baby, and it hurts like a wound in my chest to think that she’s disconnected from me so easily, just pushed me out of her life like I was nothing. I thought that we’d had a connection, that my love for Alana made her realize that I could love her, too, but I realize now that Megan doesn’t understand that she’s Alana, and Alana is her. I can’t explain it exactly. It’s strange and convoluted and doesn’t always make sense, but I know that there isn’t one without the other.

  And I don’t think for one goddamn second that this Prince Charming, this perfect Kam guy, is going to accept both parts of her.

  I know better than to drive. So I get an Uber to her apartment building, and I’ve regained a little bit of my sobriety by the time I get out and start to walk up the sidewalk, enough that I think I can make a reasonable case for my side. I’m trying to think of what I should say and how exactly to say it when I hear someone call my name from behind—not a female voice, but for sure a man’s. I stop dead in my tracks and turn around, seeing someone that I don’t recognize—a tall man with short dark hair, traditionally handsome in that clean-cut, rich kid sort of way. Everything about him screams upper-class, and I’m immediately on the defensive. I can see his face in the lamps along the sidewalk. His expression is almost unreadable, but he’s staring hard at me, his eyes fixed grimly on my face.

  “Yeah, I’m Ian,” I say defensively. “What do you want?”

  The guy just gives a small nod. “I know. You saved me a trip.”

  It sounds ominous, and I bristle, not knowing who this guy is or what he wants with me. “And you are?” I challenge, squaring my shoulders as I draw myself up to my full height, ready to take on whatever this guy is going to bring.

  “Kameron,” the guy says, and I flinch.

  So this is Kam, Megan’s white knight, her prince who rode to her rescue. The asshole who ruined my life, who has my girl, who is marrying my girl. The only person I’ve ever met who could be the other side of my coin. I match his gaze, each of us staring the other down, and I search his face, looking him over to try and get the measure of him. We couldn’t be more different. We’re so fucking different. We have different hair colors, are dressed differently—this guy screams money and polish while I’ve always been roug
her around the edges. That was why Alana liked me. I was her match, able to challenge her and give her as good as she got. This guy looks like he’d wilt with one word from her. The only thing we have in common is that we’re both tall.

  “Are you here to talk to Megan?” Kam asks, his voice hard and firm but not as defensive as I’d expected.

  “Yeah,” I say, my voice clipped.

  “Don’t you think we should talk first?” He steps closer, more into the light, and I can see from the expression on his face that he’s not giving an inch. My blood pressure has shot up, my heartbeat thundering in my ears. I knew about this guy, but he was never real for me, never someone I considered as a real threat until recently. I was Alana’s husband. I married her. I had her first—body and soul.

  We were an “us” long before Megan and this guy ever met.

  “Go ahead and talk,” I challenge, and Kam glares at me, looking far beyond annoyed.

  “What are you doing here?” he bites out, and I just laugh.

  “What the fuck do you think I’m doing here?” I ask with a snort.

  “Megan ended things with you,” Kam reminds me tightly. “So what the hell are you doing back here?”

  I fight to keep my composure, to hold my emotions and my anger in check. We’re in front of Megan’s apartment, on a public street, and I know just how badly this could go. If this asshole says the wrong thing, I’m not going to be able to stop myself. My fist is going to wind up in his face, and he might just get the rough end of everything that I’ve been bottling up all of this time—all of the anger and frustration and pain that I’ve been holding inside. And right now, I don’t know that he doesn’t fucking deserve it.

  “Alana’s gone,” Kam says sharply. “You and Megan have nothing between you.”

  I chuckle at that, taking a step forward. “I don’t know if you realize it, but Megan and Alana are the same person. And if there’s any part of Alana still in there, we’re not fucking done.”