Four Years Earlier
THE COLD JANUARY air burned my cheeks as I huffed my way up the brick stairs. Whose brilliant idea was it to rent a four-story walk up? Oh right, it was Luke’s, the non-pregnant one. I switched the bag of groceries to the other arm and made a mental note to talk to Luke about moving. That was, if ever I saw him. We were on completely different schedules these days. When I got up for pastry school at 6 am, he was getting ready for bed. While I was glad he was on the road to success with his band, I needed him more than ever lately.
When we found out we were going to be parents, Luke assured me we were in this together, but the past few months, while I was dealing with morning sickness, swollen ankles, and exhaustion, he was nowhere to be found. Wedging our apartment door open with my hip, silence weighed down heavily on me. Another night alone. I walked into the kitchen to put away the groceries when the baby kicked me in the ribs. Pain shot down my side as I bent over. The flimsy brown paper bag dropped from my hands, spilling the contents all over the floor.
“Easy baby,” I rubbed my stomach. “You don’t want to hurt mama, do you?”
I made the decision not to find out the sex when technicians asked if I wanted to know. As long as it was healthy, I didn’t care, but guessing by its mighty strength, I guessed it might be a boy. The pain dissipated at the sound of my voice and I straightened up. Spaghetti sauce pooled on the hardwood floors next to the broken jar. My enormous belly deemed it impossible for me to clean up. Once I was down, I was down for the count. Pulling out my cell phone, I dialed Luke.
His smoky voice floated over the phone line. “Hey love, everything OK?”
“Not really. I broke a jar of spaghetti sauce.”
“How did that happen?”
Irrational anger bubbled up inside me. “Why does it matter how it happened? It happened,” I snapped.
“You’re right. I’ll be home as soon as I can to clean it up. Give me another hour or so.”
A woman’s laugh rung out in the background. I imagined a perky blonde with a body that didn’t mirror a beached whale’s. While I was home, carrying our child, Luke was off doing god knows what. For all I knew, he could be in a motel room instead of at the practice studio.
“Enough time for a quickie,” I mumbled bitterly.
“I’m sorry, what’d you say, babe?”
“Nothing.”
“OK, I love you,” Luke said. “Leave the mess for me. Don’t pick it up. You hear me?”
His concern grated on my nerves. If he cared so fucking much, then maybe he should try to be home more. “Will do,” I chirped brightly to prevent the scream that was crawling up my throat. “Bye.”
I tossed the phone down onto the couch and stomped into the bedroom. When Luke and I first moved in, he splurged on a king size mattress for us because he knew how much I valued my sleep. The only problem was it took up the entire room with barely enough space for a nightstand, which was why Luke re-titled our bedroom “the cave.”
My lower back ached from the long hours on my feet in the kitchen and I longed for a massage. I kneaded the knot with my knuckle, but it was a lousy replacement for Luke’s hands. Propping pillows behind my head, I shut my eyes. An image of a woman and Luke’s legs entwined in a passionate embrace made my heart twinge.
“Stop, you’re being stupid,” I told myself out loud.
I rubbed my pregnant stomach in comfort, but instead it brought sadness. I wanted my child to be raised in a household where the dad was a constant presence. Years of living underneath my parents’ roof showed me what distance does to a family. Eventually, doubt poisons the water. Doubt of love, doubt of faithfulness, and doubt that the man you knew will disappear. Six months of Luke’s absence, and I could feel doubt’s suffocating grasp. Tugging the blankets over my head, darkness closed in around me. Although it was barely seven o’clock, exhaustion tugged my eyelids closed.
“GOD FUCKING DAMN it.”
I awoke with a start, convinced an axe murderer lurked in the apartment. My heart hammered in my chest as I listened intently. When silence greeted me, I called out a tentative hello.
“Fuck,” Luke grumbled.
The sound of his gruff voice calmed my nerves. Bleary-eyed, I stumbled out of bed and into the living room to see what the fuss was about. Luke was covered in tomato sauce from head to toe. A scowl decorated his full lips.
I raised an eyebrow, “Did you slip?”
He wiped off a speck of red sauce from his cheek. “No, I got shot,” he deadpanned.
The smell of hard alcohol on his breath explained his snarky attitude.
“Maybe if you weren’t drunk, you would have seen it,” I said.
“I’m not drunk.”
Luke swayed on his feet. With an annoyed sigh, I sidestepped the mess to guide him to the couch.
He jerked away from my touch when I placed my hand on his elbow. “You don’t need to take care of me,” he growled.
“No?” I questioned, with a raised eyebrow. “Because it seems as if you’re acting like a single bachelor instead of an expectant father.”
“I have to live it up before the fun is taken away,” Luke mumbled.
I watched him clumsily stumble his way into the bedroom. It was a shock for both us when we saw the pink positive sign. We were happy—at least I was—and I thought Luke was, too. Waddling after him, I leaned against the doorframe out of breath. The baby had started to push on my ribcage, which made five measly steps feel like a marathon.
Luke glanced up at me with concern. “Is the baby hurting you?”
“No.”
“OK.” He got off the bed and shed his pants. “I am going to take a shower.”
The door clicked shut without an apology or an offer to get me a glass of water. Selfish bastard. I stared at his jeans in a heap on the floor. An unshakable urge to search his pockets washed over me. My hands shook as I tiptoed over to them. In my head I knew I was being ridiculous; Luke wasn’t a man who would cheat. If he did, guilt would line his face. Nonetheless, I couldn’t stop myself from violating Luke’s privacy. It was as if a crazy woman entered my body.
When I heard the shower turn on, I sprung into action. First the back pockets, then the front. To no surprise, nothing incriminating surfaced from his jean pockets. Guilt enveloped me. I slipped down to the ground and rested my head against the side of the bed. His jeans with the unmistakable hole in the knee lay in my lap, triggering a memory of the first time he told me he loved me, “inside and out, till the end of the earth.”
I absentmindedly stroked the well-worn fabric. “What happened to us?” I murmured.
Five minutes to an hour later, Luke found me in the same spot. My sense of time slipped away while I relived a handful of our best memories together. They were enough to add up to a love story any girl would kill for. Wrapped in a towel, Luke squatted down in front of me. He smelled like spring in full bloom. A droplet of water traveled down his neck to his collarbone. My tongue itched to lick it off just to hear him make that low moan at the back of his throat. It had been too long since we connected sexually, a problem we never had in the past. Luke searched my face for an explanation why I was on the ground.
“I thought you were cheating on me,” I confessed quietly, “so I searched your pants.”
Luke arched an eyebrow. “And?”
“And I found nothing.” My gaze lifted to his. “Should I have?”
Anger flashed over his features at my question and he stood abruptly. “I am not my father.”
I attempted to scramble to my feet, but the basketball around my waist proved a complication. Thankfully, Luke took pity on me and helped.
“I never said you were.” My eyes locked on his.
“Then why are you searching for ways to ruin our relationship?”
Fury roared through me like a freight train. “ME?” I pointed at his well-defined chest. “You’re the one ruining this. I don’t stay out till sunrise, doing god knows what. And with whom
, I might add.”
“I’m trying to get my career off the ground so we can live above the poverty line. I’m sorry if that means I’m not around all the time, but in the end it’ll be worth it,” Luke said.
“But at what cost?” I sat down heavily on the bed, the fight leaving my body. “Your baby’s birth, he or she’s first word. At what cost, Luke?” I repeated.
“You never did have faith in us.”
I glanced over at him, baffled at the sudden turn in our conversation. “What are you talking about? I’m your number one supporter,” I said.
When I first met Luke, he was playing in shitty venues around Seattle with little to no social media presence. He was like an eighty year old man when it came to technology, completely clueless. I stepped in and designed his website, managed his MySpace page, and helped him gain a following. Within three months, he was booking shows at venues where piss didn’t decorate the bathroom walls.
“Not me as a musician. Us.” Luke motioned between the two of us. “We as a couple.”
The baby kicked, reminding me how much faith I did have in the future of our family. I grabbed Luke’s hand and pressed it against my stomach.
“If that were true, then I wouldn’t be having this baby,” I said gently.
Luke yanked his hand away as if he had been burned. He turned around to grab a pair of sweatpants from the closet. The harsh sting of rejection scolded my skin. Was he right? Did I always think our relationship was doomed to fail? I didn’t know, but what I did know was I had to fight for what was left of it. My baby wasn’t going to grow up without a dad.
“You’re drunk,” I stated. “Why don’t we both go to bed and we can talk about this in the morning?”
“I’m leaving in the morning.” He said it so quietly, I thought I misheard him.
“What?” I asked.
Luke looked over his shoulder at me, a mix of remorse and defeat shined in his eyes. “The band got a couple of shows lined up at the last minute.”
The air swooshed out of my lungs. No, this can’t be happening. Luke can’t leave with one month left in my pregnancy. What if the baby came early? Or complications arose?
“For how long?” I squeaked out.
He had the audacity to shrug. “I’m not sure.”
His noncommittal answer sparked a wave of outrage inside me. I may have had a serious case of baby brain, but I wasn’t stupid. Luke didn’t want to come back and be a family man. He wanted to be a roaming bachelor.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I lifted myself off the bed to shoot daggers at him. “Do you even care about me at all? About our child?”
“Of course I do, but it’s—”
I waved off his sentence, knowing full well what he was about to say. “Money, right.” I let out a bitter laugh. “Maybe I was right to not have faith in our relationship, because you’re doing exactly what I thought you’d do all along. Leave.” I waddled over to the closet where Luke stood. “Here let me help you” I ripped his clothes off the hangers and threw them to the ground. Hot tears rolled down my cheeks as I blindly tried to erase Luke from my future. If he wanted to leave, so be it. I could raise our child alone. Luke restrained my arms to my chest. “Stop,” he said.
I collapsed against him in heavy sobs. Wrapping me into his arms, he guided me to the bed where I lay down. He pressed himself against my back.
“I’m so sorry,” Luke said quietly. “I hope one day you’ll be able to forgive me.”
In my gut, I knew he wasn’t apologizing for the fight, but for what he was about to do. The next morning, I awoke to an empty apartment and a bare closet. A note was left on the pillow next to me with five simple words. “You are too good for me.”
The day my water broke was when it sunk in that he had left for good. I never thought in a million years he would miss his daughter’s birth. I fantasized a dramatic scene of him bursting into the hospital room at the last minute. When he didn’t, I shot Luke one text message after the next. In the end, it was Camille who saw Nil come into the world, proving what he’d said was right. I was too good for him.
DUMPING THE REMNANTS of my tea down the sink, I rested my head against the upper kitchen cabinet. Exhaustion tugged my eyelids close. When I finished telling the story to Camille, she reassured me there was nothing I could have done differently. Still, I couldn’t help but think my rash decision to not attend Luke’s concert tonight would be another what if.
Twenty minutes later, the contents of my closet surrounded me. “Where could it be?” I asked out loud. The last time I’d seen the little red dress was a couple months ago when Camille convinced me to burn everything that reminded me of Luke. A bottle of wine later, we started a small fire in the backyard. Concert tickets, his old t-shirts, a condom wrapper all burned to ashes. But at the last minute, I saved the dress along with a photo booth picture strip of Luke and me the day we found out about Nil. If my memory served me correctly, I stashed them away in a box. A keepsake box as I drunkenly called it that night.
“Oh shit.” I buried my head in my hands. “I know where I put it.”
Grabbing a shovel from the tool shed, I broke through the hardened ground and dug a hole near a cherry blossom tree in my backyard where I unearthed a pink metal lunchbox. Inside the box lay the items in question. Although the dress smelled like damp dirt, it was still wearable. As I was about to close the box, the picture strip caught my eye. I gingerly removed it as if it was a precious piece of glass. It was like any generic photo booth strip, our faces pulled into ridiculous expressions until the last frame. Luke’s eyes were bright with wonder as he gazed at me. I remember his hand was on my out of frame stomach
I clasped the picture against my chest; grateful to have a keepsake of the love we shared. My trip down memory sealed my decision. Tonight I would attend Luke’s concert in the little red dress and remind him of the couple we used to be. His girlfriend was dust in the wind. Brushing the dirt off my knees, I picked up the lunchbox and went back inside. Faint voices came from the living room when I entered the kitchen.
“Hello?” I called out.
My grandmother’s head peeked around the doorway. Her normally gray curls were dyed a reddish blonde, which highlighted her green eyes. She looked decades younger.
“Hello, Sweet pea,” she said cheerfully.
“You look…”
I searched for the appropriate word, but my mind drew a blank.
My grandmother swept into the kitchen and did a twirl, her hand landing on her cocked hip “Twenty years old?”
I laughed. “Yes, you look twenty years old.”
As my eyes swept over her new look, I had to say, it wasn’t a lie. She did look twenty years old or at least a woman madly in love.
My grandmother grasped my arm and whispered in my ear, “It’s the sex.”
I shut my eyes against the offending image she painted in my head.
“He’s like a racehorse in the sack,” she continued, oblivious to my look of horror. A bath in bleach was in order to erase the feeling of disgust skittering across my skin. My gaze flitted to the freezer. While bathing in bleach wasn’t probable, a shot of vodka was. Camille left a whole bottle at my house the night of the trashcan fire. As I was about to step in that direction, my grandmother yanked me toward the living room.
“You’re going to love him,” my grandmother gushed.
“Who?”
She playfully smacked my forearm. “Ted, silly.”
Right. Ted, the man who was a racehorse in bed. How could I forget? When we stumbled into the room together, Nil ran over to me and stuck a picture in my face. A princess in a pink sparkly gown blocked my vision.
“Annalen drew horses, but I told her horses were ugly so I drew princesses,” Nil explained in one breath. She exhaled and barreled on, “Because princesses are prettier. Men fall in love with them wherever they go. Did you know Ted has a horse?”
“Wait, what?” I asked.
“I believe your p
recious daughter was saying I own a horse.”
Lowering the picture, I saw Ted, my grandmother’s lost love, sitting on the couch. He wore a fitted pair of Levi’s with a tucked-in checkered shirt, a thick head of gray hair, and a handlebar mustache. It was as if he stepped out of a western movie. I looked over at my grandmother, then back at him. Where the hell did they meet? At two-step lessons?
“Four horses actually, and a handful of livestock,” Ted continued.
“He owns a ranch,” my grandmother boasted.
No shit. That much was obvious. She went over and nestled underneath his arm, pleased as punch.
“He owns lots of millions and millions of acres,” Nil burst out.
The happy couple laughed, as I stood there, stupefied. Ted was the opposite of my gentle grandfather who never once set foot on a farm.
“Where did you two find each other again?” I asked.
“At the grocery store of all places,” Ted said.
My grandmother eyes twinkled with laughter. “We were both getting chicken for dinner.”
My breath caught in my throat as Ted gave her a tender look. As if he couldn’t believe his luck. It was the same look on Luke’s face on the photo strip. “As soon as I saw her, I knew my prayers had been answered. All my life I’ve waited to be back in her arms.
LOOKING OVER MY shoulder, I switched lanes to turn right. Safeco Field, the stadium where Luke was performing, also doubled as a baseball field for the Seattle Mariners and could fit over forty-five thousand people. According to the website, Luke’s show sold out mere minutes after the tickets had gone on sale.
I parked my car a couple blocks away and half stumbled, half walked to the theater. Back when Luke and I were together, my heels got more use. He had a show at least once a week, which required me to look my best. These days, the only reason I changed out of sweats was for work. The dress rose above my knees with every step I took. I yanked it down, only to have it shimmy back up again. My dress should’ve stayed buried in the ground where it belonged.
Love of a Rockstar Page 13
