Designed

by Alicia Renee Kline

  “What are you doing here?” he asked me.

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “I could ask you the same thing. After all, I live here and you don’t.”

  He held a stack of mail in his hand, which he raised slightly in explanation before flopping it onto the counter. We watched as the envelopes fanned over the laminate top. When he tore his eyes away from that, I saw him give me a thorough once-over.

  “Don’t say it,” I interrupted, “I already know I look like death warmed over.”

  Death. The word hung in the air around me, reminding me of my own body revolting against me. I winced at the thought.

  “Are you sick?” Something that resembled concern reflected in his voice. It appeared to be genuine.

  “Sort of,” I hedged.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Lots of things, I wanted to tell him. But my mouth remained tightly closed, even as a sharp, stabbing pain shot through my lower abdomen. So much for stoicism. I clutched onto my stomach, emitting a whimper.

  Chris crossed the room in about two steps.

  “Don’t touch me,” I hissed.

  He backed off considerably, sufficiently discouraged.

  In fact there was nothing more I wanted him to do than to hold me in his arms, to cradle me like the baby he didn’t know we were losing. I wanted him to grieve with me, but I’d stopped that from happening the moment I’d decided to delay telling him. It wasn’t fair to throw all of his at him in one big lump of information, then expect him to feel sympathy for me.

  “Do you want to go to the hospital?” he asked.

  Fear flashed in my eyes. There was no way he was going to take me there. He’d insist on staying with me through the whole horrible ordeal, finding out what he was missing as I answered medical questions. If they wanted to do surgery, which I imagined was a possibility still, I could just imagine coming out of anesthesia to the sight of an empty chair beside me. Or worse yet: the cold, dead eyes of someone who hated me but would be forced to see me through recovery before leaving me for good.

  “People don’t go to the hospital for cramps,” I breathed.

  “You’ve never had cramps that bad,” he countered. Damn him for knowing me and my menstrual history so well. “Are you sure it’s not appendicitis?”

  Yeah, I was pretty fucking sure.

  “It’s cramps,” I repeated, “nothing more.”

  My voice broke at the nonchalance in my words. He didn’t notice my outward lie. For this I was glad. If I could shield him from the truth, he’d be better off. Better off thinking that I was moody and hormonal, instead of on the edge of hysteria. The only thing worse than him being pissed off at me for not telling him would be to see the pity in his eyes if he knew the truth.

  I’d vowed to tell him, back when there was something to hide. He would have found out anyway. It wasn’t like I could hide a pregnant belly for long. Even if I could, I wouldn’t be able to explain away an infant. But now there was nothing to tell. If I could keep him from reading too much into today, he’d never be the wiser. And in doing so, I’d spare him the heartbreak that I was feeling.

  Chris shrugged and took my declaration at face value. “If you’re sure that everything’s under control, then I guess I’ll take off.”

  I had to physically grip the counter in order to restrain myself from reaching out to him and begging him to stay. The pain was shooting through my body even as the lightheadedness sunk in. I was so scared. I didn’t want to be alone, but I’d made my bed and it was time to lie in it.

  “Good,” I pronounced with more courage than I felt.

  “If there’s anything you need, you can call me,” he said, leaving that door open for me to walk right on through. My, how that was tempting.

  “There’s one thing I can think of,” I said.

  He turned back to face me, his interest piqued. “What?”

  “You can rot in hell.”

  As soon as I said it, I regretted it. But I needed to make certain that he hated me. I didn’t deserve him being nice to me, not after what I’d done.

  For a moment, we stood there, staring at one another. The look on his face would later replay in my nightmares. Then, without another word, he was gone. This time, the door slammed behind him for real.

  Despite the pain radiating through my body, I rushed to the picture window in the front room in time to see the Civic tearing out of the driveway, leaving a angry cloud of gravel in its wake. I stared at the empty space it had left behind until a wave of nausea brought me to my knees.

  So these were the complications that they had warned me about.

  I needed to lie down, I told myself. That might help. If it didn’t, at least I’d already be on the floor when I died. I didn’t want to lie on the couch; it smelled like something rank. But the blanket that covered it did not, because I’d just washed it. I crawled over on hands and knees and pulled it around me, prepared to curl up in a ball in the corner of the room. With a sparsely furnished home, there were lots of places to stretch out.

  But instead of finding that particular portion of the room empty, I found the real reason that Chris had come over.

  He’d brought me a Christmas tree. It was undeniably artificial and looked like it had been salvaged from a dumpster, but it was a tree nonetheless. Not more than four feet tall, it looked ridiculous where it stood, illuminated with a single string of lights, but he’d remembered how much I loved the holidays. He’d attempted to make this one a little bit brighter for me, and I’d thanked him by telling him to rot in hell.

  I tightened the blanket around me, lowering my body gingerly to the floor beside the tree. A combination of sobs and searing pain racked my limbs. Eventually, exhaustion won out and I fell into a fitful sleep.

  A very large part of me hoped that I would never wake up.

  Chapter Eighteen

  With Matthew and Lauren’s cat out of the bag, wedding preparations went into full swing. The members of the bridal party had been informed right away, and the general public would find out soon enough. Lauren’s small frame wasn’t the type of figure that could mask more than a few pounds of weight gain, and her tiny baby bump was threatening to call out her condition. Right now, she was at the stage where people might suspect but not ask - if they valued their lives.

  But I could see it. Of course, I knew what to look for. It was written all over her face: an expression of supreme contentment. A smile that never went away, likely not even when she slept. Pregnancy suited her - she practically danced around the room, illuminating the space where she stood.

  The same look was reflected in Matthew’s eyes as he experienced it second hand. Lauren had always walked on water as far as he was concerned, even more so now. And it was hard for me to argue with that. Anyone who could restore the light to his eyes in that way, who made him want to live again, had to be some sort of miracle worker.

  So I tried as best I could to swallow down my misplaced jealousy. She hadn’t done anything wrong. And both she and my brother were clueless on why their good fortune would bring me so much pain anyway. I wasn’t really big on dropping that bombshell ever, and especially not now. She was far enough along that I was certain her experience wouldn’t end in the devastation mine had, but I still didn’t want to upset her. She didn’t deserve that.

  Best to let it fester like the unhealed wound that it had been for nearly the last decade. Some days, some months even, it was buried in the dark recesses of my mind, almost as though it hadn’t happened. Almost but not quite. There was always a numb place in my soul that reminded me. But now the memories had come screaming back to the surface with a vengeance, ripping me in half all over again. And I had no one to confide in, no one to share it with. My choice, however ill advised at the time, but something that I had to live with.

  Gracie came up to meet with us most weekends now, weighing in on the wedding planning and keeping mum on the subject of her best friend’s pregnancy. I had the distinct feeling that she w
as less than thrilled at the turn of events. Being a few years younger than Lauren and me led to an intense dislike of most anything maternal. That and being perennially single. Though she was obviously happy for her friend, I could see the concern in her eyes that when the baby arrived, their relationship would change.

  Today we’d gone bridesmaid dress shopping. With only two of us in the wedding party, it was rather easy to come to a consensus on a selection. Gracie and I had already proven that we had similar tastes when we’d bombarded Lauren with our picks for her wedding dress and with the spotlight turned on us, the feat was no different. Armed with Lauren’s blessing to pick any color we wanted, we’d agreed on a beautiful sapphire blue A-line dress that coordinated well with the bridal gown.

  Gracie and I were similar in stature, though not coloring. Yet the blue looked fabulous on both of us, setting off Gracie’s mane of jet black hair and matching a portion of mine. If I’d designed a dress myself, it likely would have looked like the one we ended up choosing. Secretly, I was glad we’d found a winner right away, or I might have been tempted to branch out into fashion design simply to know we’d have something available based on our shrinking timeline. Lauren had eagerly signed off on our decision and we’d closed the book on the planning portion of the day.

  “Guys have it easy,” Lauren commented as we were seated in a booth at the Italian restaurant we often frequented. “We make all the decisions when it comes to the wedding and they just show up.”

  Gracie slid into the booth beside her friend while I sat across from the two of them. Lauren and I left our menus closed; we already knew what to order, while the Indianapolis resident pored over the listing of selections in the leather-bound folder.

  I laughed good naturedly. “I’m assuming that when you say ‘we’, you’re really meaning me?”

  It wasn’t lost on her that the majority of the details had been gladly left to me to handle. “Of course,” she admitted, “if I had to do this myself, we’d never get married. I’d be too bogged down in the little things to commit to anything.”

  “I picked out her house,” Gracie reminded us, without even looking up from her menu. “If I hadn’t, she’d still be living in a hotel.”

  “Or not,” I pointed out, “she would have just ended up moving in with Matthew officially instead of doing whatever it is that they’re doing. And then she wouldn’t have the headache of trying to unload a house.”

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Gracie defended. “She was being hardheaded. How was I to know they’d end up kissing and making up?”

  I shrugged. “I guess we shouldn’t ever give up on true love, right?”

  “If ever there were two people that were destined to be together, Lauren and Matthew are it. Hell, they both told me that at various times, then swore me to secrecy. I should probably use that in my toast somehow.”

  “Good idea. I refuse to write that for you.”

  “Unlike my friend, I’m perfectly self-sufficient,” Gracie folded her menu with a smug smile. Turning to Lauren, she pronounced, “And naming the baby is all on you. Neither one of us is gonna do that.”

  “Very funny,” Lauren deadpanned.

  “So what are the guys doing tonight?” Gracie asked the table in general once the waitress had come to take our orders. Clearly, only Lauren was privy to this information, but she was trying to include me as well. It wasn’t like I would know what plans my brother had with Chris. Matthew and I had an unspoken agreement about the number of times he was allowed to mention his best friend in my presence; with the wedding looming before us, he was already dangerously close to exceeding his allotment.

  “Pretty sure that they’re all over at Matthew’s watching hockey,” Lauren replied. “I think that he and Chris are trying to include Will in more things so that he doesn’t feel out of place at the wedding. Will seemed kind of surprised that Matthew asked him to be in it.”

  I didn’t know Will from Adam, but considering that him pulling Lauren over led to the perfect storm that was her hooking up with my brother, he shouldn’t have been shocked. Matthew wasn’t close to many people so finding someone else to stand up for him at the wedding would have been a difficult task. Chris had been a no-brainer and Will was one of his friends, so I was certain that he’d had a hand in persuading him to accept. All I knew about him was that he was a cop, he was recently divorced, and he would be walking me down the aisle. Because the cynical ones about love were always a perfect pair, right?

  Conversation lulled as our food was brought to the table and we dug in. Shopping always made me famished, Gracie was eager to try what she’d selected and Lauren - well, Lauren was in a perpetual state of hunger at this point.

  When she set down her fork and her eyes got big, I just assumed she was feeling nauseated. She hadn’t dealt much with morning sickness, but she’d had a couple of bouts.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered.

  “What?” I jumped to attention, the tone of her voice sending chills down my spine. It was almost like watching her in slow motion, remembering my experiences and praying that they didn’t repeat themselves before me. She’d had such a textbook pregnancy so far, certainly nothing could be wrong.

  She grabbed Gracie’s hand and pressed it against her abdomen.

  “Do you feel that?” she asked her friend.

  “I don’t feel-” Gracie began, then abruptly shut up.

  “I think I just felt the baby move,” Lauren breathed, filling me in as though I couldn’t pick up the context clues from Gracie’s face.

  Gracie looked absolutely horrified, which prompted Lauren to strengthen her grip on her wrist, holding her there.

  “I swear,” Gracie hissed when she was allowed to pull away, “if you ever do that to me again, I will kill you.”

  “You felt it, right?”

  “Of course I felt it. And it’s just creepy. Like your body has been invaded by an alien or something. I want no part of it.”

  Gracie didn’t understand. Lauren didn’t care, caught up as she was in pulling out her cell phone and immediately texting Matthew with the development. And I sat across the table from both of them, feeling as though I was miles away.

  I would have given anything to have had that experience. In the back of my mind, I knew that I might at some point in the future, but that knowledge did little to stop the ache that reverberated in my heart now.

  I was so jealous of all of them. Of Lauren, for being able to successfully carry a baby. Of Matthew, for knowing that in a few short months he’d be a father and for being so happy about it. Of Gracie, for being grossed out by the whole thing and not mature enough to realize the gravity of bringing another life into the world. Of Chris, for being oblivious to the past. Even of Will, for actually having closure in his failed relationship.

  So much for being the bigger person.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The day that I had both lived for and dreaded all at once was fast approaching. Luckily, jealousy and despair were like muses for me and my creativity was at an all-time high. Instead of focusing on the fact that Lauren was leading the life I very much wanted for myself, I put everything I had into making her wedding day the most perfect twenty-four hour period ever known to man. Combined with the fact that I was also single-handedly running my design business, I didn’t have much of an opportunity to breathe, let alone think.

  I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

  And so it came together straight out of a movie. Proving time and again that I was the best of the best, I managed to make chaos sit down and fall into place, bowing at my feet. Rings were designed and crafted, flowers ordered, a menu planned, cake baked. Dresses came in and were altered, tuxes were rented. My hotel connection came through for me, a minister was found, a DJ hired, a photographer booked.

  It would be the ultimate ceremony for two of the most important people in my orbit. Notably, not the wedding that I would have dreamt of for myself - I wasn’t that shallow or
masochistic. The party I put together was undeniably theirs; a wedding beyond their wildest dreams. I was so happy for them both, so honored that they trusted me implicitly.

  Now if I didn’t ruin it for them come game time, I’d be golden.

  So I stood in front of my full length mirror on the night of the rehearsal dinner, primping as though anyone would give a crap about what I looked like. Even though tonight was a casual affair, I stressed about my outfit. After several minutes of debate, I finally settled on a pair of white capris and a flowing pink tank, capped off with a pair of white slingback wedges. Any other day, I would have just thrown on the first thing that caught my eye, but this was different. That decided, I contemplated my hair, piling it up on top of my head, then lowering it back down over my shoulders.

  The doorbell interrupted my obsessive-compulsiveness and I gladly ran to answer it. As expected, Gracie stood on my porch, as calm and collected as I was panicky and freaked out. We’d arranged to ride over to the hotel together, hopefully getting there prior to the guests of honor in order to make certain everything was perfect before they arrived.

  “Hey,” I greeting, holding open the screen door and letting her pass through.

  “Hey, yourself. Ready to go?”

  My hesitation told her all she needed to know.

  “You look great,” she complimented with a sigh, “just like someone who wants to stab the knife in her ex’s gut and twist it around a little bit.”

  “It’s that obvious?”

  “Written all over your face. Unless that’s the look of wanting to make him want you back. Maybe they’re one in the same. But I would change one thing if I were you.”

  “Being?”

  “Put the hair up. Just a few strands loose. It will make him fantasize about taking it down. And if you’re feeling particularly evil, take it down sometime during tonight, but definitely when he’s watching.”

  I raised an eyebrow at her, then we retreated into my bedroom for a little beauty salon time. Gracie wielded my brush like a pro, creating the look she envisioned in a matter of minutes. While she pulled my strands into submission, I wondered what it would be like to have an honest to goodness girlfriend. Lauren was the closest that I’d come in ages, but she now belonged to my brother and soon to their child. Besides, she’d been more of the type to overanalyze and not to throw caution to the wind. Lauren was responsible, level-headed and the complete opposite of her best friend.