Page 8 of Forbidden Pregnancy
I don’t know what the hell brought me to this side of town, but maybe it’s a good thing that I ran into my old pupil. There’s more to life than having kids of your own, right? There are plenty of kids out there who need love, support, help and human kindness. You don’t have to be a biological mother to take part in raising kind-hearted and resilient children.
CC sips her vodka cran while I get a toe-hold on sobriety. I’m just tipsy.
“Are you seeing someone now?” CC asks. “Because if it makes you feel any better, Michael is still single. I hate how he treated you when he worked for us. Such an asshole.”
She was just a kid. She had no idea what happened between me and her brother – or how complicated it was.
“Not seeing anyone. Just had some bad news about my prospects today, too.”
My emotions are too raw for me to get into the details with Cosima. Michael might be single, but he’s had enough time to have at least two divorces and a handful of kids by now. He won’t have to die completely alone.
“What did the last guy do to screw up?” Cosima asks, wide-eyed and genuine. “I can ask my other brother Peter to step in and break his shins if necessary.”
Once she sees the disturbed expression on my face, Cosima pulls me in close for another hug and pokes my sides, assuring me that she was only kidding around. I don’t know if I believe her, but I laugh because Cosima always had that dark sense of humor, even as a little girl. Her brother and everyone in her family seemed to want to suppress the parts of Cosima that made her fascinating and different. I wonder if she still loves drawing and doodling the way she did as a kid.
CC wraps her arms around me and I return the hug, oddly comforted by her presence. “Tell me who hurt you, and I swear, I’ll end them.”
“You may look all grown up, Cosima, but trust me, this is not your problem. I’m just happy to see you grew up to become such a vibrant young lady.”
“Vibrant!” CC says, finding the adjective hilarious. “That’s a good way of putting it. Michael calls me an annoying cunt.”
Hearing that he calls her an “annoying cunt” causes me to bristle. After so many years, you would think the man would learn how to treat his own flesh and blood.
Despite my frustration, I keep my response neutral. “Michael has always struggled with patience.”
I don’t want to call him an asshole, even if that’s what I really think about him. Did I really expect him to change? He was a dick when I last saw him, and now he’s still tormenting his sister.
Cosima wraps her arms around me. “Ugh, I’m sorry. If it makes you feel any better, you were the best teacher I ever had. Dad took me to Paris after you left because I was so depressed.”
“Did you love it?”
“No,” Cosima says honestly. “Italy ismuchbetter. But you made me want to love it, and I always thought about how nice you were.”
She nestles in closer to me before taking a little space and staring into the ice piled into her empty glass. There’s a littlepain on her face which she never bothered to show when she was a kid. Of course she must have felt it. The men in her family treated her like nothing more than a nuisance. Her father might have invested in her tutoring, but I never witnessed Michael treat her with a word of kindness in my presence.
It hurt me for years to leave them behind, but I put myself through grad school and became a professor at SUNY Buffalo. I got lost in teaching introductory French, and fell in love with that emotional high you get giving a struggling student the breakthrough moment that changes their relationship towards French. A lot of people might find what I do to be too stressful or not rewarding enough to make the work atmosphere worth dealing with, but I love my job. This close to Canada, learning French can really help people in the job market too. My dad was a Congolese immigrant in Montreal, and even if I never met him, my mother made sure I learned his native language and over the years, that language has built some of the strongest bonds in my life.
Hearing that Cosima felt such an impact from my teaching when I barely knew what I wanted out of life and kept making mistake after mistake makes me feel like I’m not a failure even if I won’t ever give my mother the grandchildren she wants so desperately.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you by leaving,” I tell her. “I know I should have stayed in touch but…”
“But my family is fucking crazy?” CC asks. “I don’t know what happened, but it must have been either dad or Michael screwing up.”
“Hey, we’re here now, right? Do you still live in Buffalo or are you just visiting?”
Cosima doesn’t answer. Her gaze fixes over my shoulder and the color saps out of her face. A war begins within my body. Part of me wants to freeze in place but another part of me can’t help but follow Cosima’s gaze. I look over her shoulder and see the monster from my past. The man who took my virginity.
Michael Corsini.
But he looks different – and worse, he looks pissed off.
Chapter Four
Michael
“You little brat, I–
I freeze. After a full fucking hour scouring the streets of Buffalo for CC, I find her at Belladonna’s, where she’s in danger from any number of our current enemies, and she’s not alone. She’s with Myra.How dare this woman show her face on my turf?My anger immediately fades to embarrassment.
