Page 56 of Dirty Love

You’ve got wings I’ll never have

You’ll fly

So carry my dreams, love

And you’ll be fine

You’ll fly

I push myself onto all fours, then stand. Unsteady, I follow it until I find the source—my phone, and the screen is flashing.

I answer the call, but I don’t say anything.

“You’re crying,” Wilson finally mutters.

“I’ve been crying for weeks.”

“Not like this.”

“No.”

“What is it? What did he do?”

I couldn’t tell him before. But I’ve lost him already. He already knows I’m selfish. And maybe this is the punishment I’m looking for tonight.

So I tell him. I tell him about Keegan, and I start to cry all over again.

—twenty-five—

Wilson

I listen, rage growing inside me, as Tabitha haltingly shares what happened when she was fifteen. I’m so mad at myself for not being there, for being a five-hour flight away, but I’ve been watching her for months now. I know she’s a fighter. I know she doesn’t need me.

But God fucking damn, I want to be there.

She might not be able to tell me all of this in person, though. She couldn’t when we were together before.

I grip my phone so tight it occurs to me I might crack the casing, and I lean in toward the computer screen in front of me until I’m close enough that all I can see is her.

She’s moved to the couch. She’s sitting right in the middle, stiff as a statue.

“I didn’t know I was pregnant at first. I was stupidly innocent about sex. He was the first guy I’d gone all the way with, and he always pulled out. So when I got sick and messed up a studio session he’d lined up for me, I felt bad. I went to a walk-in clinic and paid cash for my appointment. I told them I had the flu. They made me pee in a cup.”

The pause here is longer than in between the other sentences.

“I didn’t tell him right away,” she whispers.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.No, of course you didn’t, baby girl, I want to say.

“I wasn’t showing, and they said it was so small, just a walnut. I’ll never forget that description. A walnut inside me. Then a plum. I found a website that showed me the size of the baby, and every week I would go and look it up. There was an email sign-up, and I couldn’t fill it out because Grant might see it.”

I’ve done the mental math before, and I’ve never liked it, but now I’m shaking with white-hot anger at a twenty-two-year-old fuck face who would terrify his fifteen-year-old girlfriend to the point where she was afraid to get emails about her pregnancy.

“And then we got another break. Someone we knew had to back out of a spotlight on local indie musicians, and Grant got me the spot. He wanted it for himself, but they wanted a female singer-songwriter. I was really tired that day, and he gave me something. For energy, he said.”

On the screen, her shoulders shake, but it’s silent over the phone.

Maybe this is too much. Maybe I’ve pushed her to tell me.

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