I Fell In

by Tiffany Winters

  Amy patted my leg, slinging her overnight bag across her shoulders. "One of the few things I'm sure of is you and Truman Miller. You two are fused so tight, forgiving him for whatever fuck up he made isn't 'if', it's 'when'."

  She leaned over and kissed me on the head. "He's a tough guy, chiquita, but anyone can see he's lost without you. Don't make him wait too long."

  I watched the door close behind her, my voice failing me. I wanted badly to call her back in the room and tell her the hard truth. But what had happened was not who he was. The loneliness and longing for him made my cheeks burn with shame. I still loved him.

  When I picked up the bouquet, something white fluttered down to the floor. I picked it up, unfolding the lined notebook paper—no doubt borrowed from one of Grace's school notebooks, and smiled at the cutout of an ad for cereal featuring an elderly couple.

  Jess...you have to forgive me. I can't imagine being without you. I'm sorry for what I did. It was wrong and I knew it the minute it happened. It's the fucking booze, baby, just like you said. I'm done with getting smashed every night. I haven't had more than a few beers since you left. I want to grow old with you, woman, just like these two geezers in this picture. Come back to me, Jessa, and I promise things will be better.

  The words were blurry before I finished reading, my anger disintegrating along with the ink my tears fell upon. I dragged myself to philosophy class, then dragged myself back, having heard nothing my professor said. I was too busy having my own existential crisis to worry about whatever Nietzsche had to say about the subject. What would my life be like if I didn't take Truman back? The answer was only an exercise in the illusion of choice. I had to forgive him.

  As I walked through the door to my dorm room, a familiar, unwelcome tingling sensation on my scalp stopped me in my tracks.

  Oh God, not again.

  I gripped the bookshelf inside my room before crumpling to the floor. The movement jarred my knees painfully as my book bag landed with a thud, spilling its contents.

  As I pressed my hands to my stomach, acid—stinging and hot inside my esophagus—threatened to rise up. I swallowed reflexively several times, breathing through my nose, waiting for the moment when everything in my stomach would explode into my mouth and out onto the worn, speckled carpet in front of me. Like every episode before it, no matter how eminent it seemed, the moment never came.

  It was torture, the anticipation of puking but never actually doing it. Every time it happened, the urge was so powerful I was tricked into thinking this is the one, so I braced for impact. Sweat broke out on my upper lip, saliva gathered on and around my tongue, my skin felt prickly and sensitive. It would've been a relief to evacuate my stomach, but my traitorous body never gave up the ghost.

  My reunion with Tru would have to wait another day. I wasn't going anywhere. Vertigo, crippling nausea, my pounding heart...it went on until I lost all sense of time. I was suspended in one long, miserable moment. I gasped for air, pulling at the collar of my shirt.

  I managed to pull myself up onto my bed, face the wall, and concentrate on the cracks in the brick. Breathing wasn't enough. The air was too thick to serve its purpose. My lungs expanded yet felt empty. I was going to suffocate, right there in my dorm room.

  I traced the cracks on the wall in front of me as my thoughts wandered to the dark place I tried to pretend didn't exist for me. What might happen if I accepted the black dots in the periphery of my vision? What a relief to release my tentative hold and let the darkness bleed to center, blocking out the light and my miserable life.

  One deep breath. That's all I need, just one.

  I closed my eyes and let the darkness take me.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Before all the bullshit

  Present~

  "So, what does it say?" Nick had been standing in the doorway of the bathroom, watching as I peed on a pregnancy test.

  We'd been through every procedure imaginable. I'd had my legs up in stirrups for the fertility doctors more times than I could count. Nick had masturbated into a cup in an awkwardly staged "living room" at the clinic a dozen times or more. We'd joked about the outdated porn, about how it "still got the job done."

  We'd fucked under every circumstance—because we wanted to, because an ovulation stick had a smiley face on it, because we had to make double-dog sure he'd left enough sperm inside me to guarantee one of the eight million would crack my egg, because it was morning and morning was supposed to be the best time to "do it," because it was night, for the same reason.

  I glanced up from my perch on the toilet. There was no modesty left in our marriage. "It takes at least two minutes to see the results, babe. It's not like a litmus test."

  He took the stick from me, examining it as he mumbled, "Actually, it kind of is."

  I couldn't stop the grin from spreading across my face. "How can you be so sweetly nerdy and hot at the same time?"

  His smile lit up the room, eyes bright as though I'd given him the greatest compliment ever. I finished up, readjusted my clothes, and then felt his warm hands around my hips, pulling me to stand between his legs after he'd set the test behind him. I looped my hands around his neck when he bent his head to kiss me. It was sweet, no tongue, and when he pulled back his eyes crinkled with affection. But, as beautiful as it was to see Nick looking at me in the way only he could, relaxing was impossible. The test was right behind him, a second line developing...or not. Our lives over the past year and a half resting on one tiny, urine-soaked piece of plastic and paper. He hugged me tighter, arms squeezing my ribs until he had my eyes.

  "We'll be OK no matter what. If it's positive, great. If not, we have other choices. This isn't the end."

  I shook my head. The thought that IVF hadn't worked seemed impossible. "How much more of a guarantee can we get than having your sperm actually inserted into my egg, incubated in ideal circumstances for five days, and put back inside of me where it belongs?"

  Nick pulled me closer. He was hoping for success as much as I was, both of us trying hard not to show it so we didn't stress the other out. Didn't matter. The tension was there, in the spasming of his hands on my hips, the pulsing of the vein at his temple, my shaky smile and watery eyes.

  I ran my finger over the stubble on his jaw, biting my lip. "It's not that I'm against adoption. I just hate the idea that we'd have to do it, you know? I want to have a choice about how we build our family."

  Nick leaned his forehead against mine. "Me too, babe. But does it really matter how we get there? I don't give a flying fuck whether our child is biologically related to us or not. My family genetics are a joke anyway, with my alcoholic grandparents and my loser, jailbait cousins. We might even be dodging a bullet here if the test is negative."

  My laugh sounded relaxed even to my own ears, but soon my smile faded. I'd never imagined trying to get pregnant would become so difficult. Nick had searched for humor wherever he could, I suspected to lighten the load for both of us. Between hormonally inspired mood swings and my own overwhelming pessimism, he'd had his hands full.

  He kissed me again harder, with tongue, before looking down at me. I gripped the fabric of his T-shirt at his waist with trembling hands while he stared into my eyes. "If we hadn't tried this, we would've always wondered if it was possible. Now, we'll know for sure. If it doesn't work, we can decide what to do next without any regrets."

  His voice, though thick with emotion, remained strong. He was my rock. I buried my face into his chest, inhaling his scent and letting it calm me. We stayed like that until my need to know was translated into the restless shifting of my weight from one foot to the other.

  The test had had plenty of time to show a result. My breathing picked up. Doubt made my limbs heavy. Could I handle the nightmare that was surely resting behind my husband? I'd seen dozens of negative pregnancy tests and not one positive after two years of trying.

  Failure was all I could imagine.

  "You ready?" Nick's grin was tight, but I loved
seeing twin dimples marring the smoothness of his chiseled cheekbones. His smiles were my reason for living. They conveyed confidence, hope, smartassness, sympathy, and raw sexuality, everything I loved about him. I took a deep breath. We would be OK, because he was Nick and he would make it OK. But, damn, I wanted this for him. For us.

  "You look first. I can't do it." I shut my eyes as he leaned back, angling his body away from mine, one arm reaching behind him to grab the stick, the other arm holding fast around my hip. There was a long pause. I started to sag into him.

  His voice was husky. "Babe. Look at me."

  My chin quivered as I opened my eyes, tears already rolling down my cheeks. My heart beat a heavy rhythm in my chest as I struggled to breathe. I looked to the side, where he was holding the stick up. The + sign was unmistakable. Disbelief sucked the air out of my lungs and joy re-inflated them, lifting me up as if I were a balloon full of helium. I looked at my husband, his beautiful green eyes watery as he beamed down at me.

  I hardly recognized my own voice when I heard it, full of a sense of wonder unlike anything I'd ever experienced. I needed to say the words, had been waiting so long to say them. "I'm pregnant."

  ***

  Happy birthday darlin'. So glad you were born. You, my flower, have always been one of the cool kids, sweet as sugar, smart as a whip. I will always love you, Tru.

  Twelve weeks later, I stared at the screen of my laptop in the dark, early hours of the morning and sighed. How had I forgotten my own birthday? Oh, right.

  Life.

  Imploded.

  Impossible to miss the devastation, though I'd done my best to hide from it for seven days.

  I sighed, the sound heavy with the kind of fatigue not earned through physical labor, but through the workings of a brain that spent all of its energy focused on regret. At that moment, I didn't care if I ever saw another birthday again. I closed the lid and sank back down into a lethargic sleep.

  ***

  "Jessa, you gettin' up anytime today, baby?"

  I squinted as Nick opened the blinds in our bedroom.

  "Close them." My reply was muffled against the pillow. I sensed his gaze on me as the sound of his movements stopped. How could he be so functional when all I wanted to do was curl up and die? What fucking arrogance. What right did he have to keep acting like everything was fine when it so clearly was not?

  He approached the bed. Shut the goddamned blinds and get the fuck out! The words echoed inside of my head, each one visceral with spite. I flinched at the non-existent sound.

  The bed dipped beside me. Nick's cool fingers moved the hair off of my cheek. "Babe, you've been in bed almost a week. It's not healthy. You've got to get up, eat, and move around a little. Let me draw you a bath or something, yeah?"

  When I didn't respond, he sighed. "At least call Amy. She's worried sick that you won't see her. Let her know you're doing all right. I think she's starting to wonder if I've buried you in the basement."

  I kept my eyes closed. Tears welled up behind the closed lids. "I'm not doing all right, so telling her that would be a lie."

  Nick sighed again, the sound more forceful this time. "Jess. We lost the baby, but we didn't lose each other. We didn't lose the chance to be parents. It's a huge setback. I feel it, too. But we can't give up. It isn't like you to stay in bed like this."

  He was right. I'd never reacted this way to any tragedy in my life. Even when my dad had passed, I'd still managed the house while Mom had fallen apart. I'd been disgusted by her at the time, but too numb with grief to do or say much about it. By the time she'd snapped out of it, my anger was buried as deep as Dad was.

  Memories of his coffin were like a punch in the stomach. My baby had died, but there'd be no coffin, no memorial service for him or her. My baby was nothing more than "medical waste" now. I fought a sudden wave of nausea at the thought.

  I turned on my side, facing away from Nick. "I should've known something wasn't right."

  He sighed. He'd probably mouthed the words behind me, I'd said them so often in the past week. I'd had very little morning sickness, but I stupidly counted myself lucky. I never thought it might be a sign that things weren't progressing normally. We'd gone through hell to get pregnant, so of course I was due an easy pregnancy. But after ten weeks of believing we were going to be parents, we'd learned there was no heartbeat to accompany the tiny little blip we thought was growing in my womb.

  I'd gone numb on the drive home from the clinic, my brain and body shutting down as a defense against the onslaught of sadness. Since then, I'd barely eaten, called in sick to work, refused all visitors and phone calls, and had done little except sleep and cry.

  I'd asked Nick to sleep in the nursery—now back to being a guest bedroom. My heart constricted at the thought. It was better for him to be in another room, away from my late-night sob fest. I'd been stripped down to some kind of primal animal, in need of only the basics—food, water, sleep.

  I couldn't find the energy to twist my expression into something socially acceptable, so I'd hidden in our room. My anger at the absolute injustice of it all was a never-ending hot ooze of lava deep in my belly where our baby was supposed to be growing, at this very moment. I wasn't safe in public, of that I was certain.

  And today was my birthday. Another year away from optimal fertility. I'd forgotten about it until I'd seen Truman's message late last night. Nick had forgotten, as well, but that was my fault. I'd denied us the opportunity to go through this together. Wasn't that what we were supposed to do now? After everything we'd been through so far, we should've grieved together. Somehow this was different, though. This time I felt totally alone.

  I turned toward him and risked a glance at his face. He was still beside me on the bed. The strain of it was clear in the lines of worry over his face. My need to be alone had meant he was, as well. Fuck, I was failing at everything. I brought a palm to his cheek as a tear dropped from the corner of my eye. "I'm sorry."

  The baby was inside me after all. I'd done everything I was supposed to do, and still my body hadn't been able to sustain a life.

  "Remember, the doctor said this is really common. Happens to a lot of people, Jess. And it happened to us, too. He said there was nothing you could've done differently, so stop blaming yourself, OK?"

  His fingers caressed my cheek, and I sagged into the touch. I was starving for it after my self-imposed exile.

  "Nick..." My voice faded. I wanted to say so much, but words were a poor vehicle to convey my devastation. I squinted toward the window, my eyes adjusting to the brightness. There was a world out there moving along as though nothing was wrong. I'd stared at the ceiling for almost a week, wanting everything to stop, to acknowledge the trauma happening in our little house on our quiet street. Now, I wondered if I needed to find comfort in the fact that it hadn't.

  "Talk to me, baby."

  His voice was thick with worry, with the same regret I was feeling, but his gaze was steady in the way it always was when he looked at me, as though he saw straight into me and loved whatever he found.

  I squeezed his hand. God, I had to give as good as I was getting or this was going to destroy us. "I don't know how to move on from this. Every movement, every word, every thought is a foreign language to me. I feel like I'm in some new reality, but I'm expected to join the flow of everything as though it's the most natural thing in the world. But it's a world I don't recognize anymore. I don't know if I'll ever find me again."

  The tears came, again. I seemed to have an unending supply. I wouldn't have thought it possible for a person to shed so many, and still they kept coming. Nick pulled me into his arms, folded himself around me and leaned back against the headboard as I cried against him, wetting his shirt with enough tearful sorrow for both of us.

  "The world hasn't ended. I'm here, damn it. We will find a way to build our family, one way or another, but maybe not the way we thought we would. I promise, sweetheart. I won't let you down."

  ***


  I want to see you whenever it's humanly possible. Why? 'Cause I love you so much, darlin. When you've been here and we've hung out, I see why I fell so hard for you. I hope this isn't scaring you. I'm being honest. I love you Jess - you're one of the cool people. ~Tru

  My brow furrowed as I reread his private message. I was about to return to Eugene to help my mom, who'd badly sprained her ankle after one of my brothers (God knows if it was Everett or Winston; they were both just as clumsy at twenty-eight as they were when they were twelve) had knocked her over while wrestling over the last beer in the fridge. Of course, they both had high-powered jobs to return to, so it was on me to check in on her, as usual.

  I sat, staring at the screen of my laptop, my small suitcase open, packing suspended.

  A year we'd been meeting for coffee. He was Truman Miller. The man didn't know how not to flirt, but since I'd turned down his first offer and all the others after that, he'd toned it down. Didn't mean his compliments and subtle come-ons didn't feel good. Between the bloating caused by fertility drugs and my actual short-term pregnancy, I hadn't felt very attractive.

  As Nick spent more and more evenings at school or grading papers in his office, I fought to feel anything but relief. I'd pushed him away, and I couldn't seem to stop. Every time I looked at him, I felt robbed of the baby that should've had his dimples, or his dark hair. His smile and laugh.

  I loved my husband, but I couldn't stand the sight of him.

  Truman made me feel like a different person. I had been a different person when we were together. A young woman who had her whole life ahead of her, all perfect and complete, with a nice husband and as many children as she wanted to squeeze out. Reality was a slap in the face, so I visited that younger version of me whenever I was with Truman. We'd flirt and go our separate ways. That was the deal.

  Until now.

  "What the fuck is this?" My empty room had no reply.