Page 94 of Storm in a Teacup
Mel claps her hands together excitedly. “I’m getting married tomorrow!” She spins around and goes back into the party.
We follow Mel so we can say our goodbyes to the rest of the wedding party, then start our journey back to Linny’s place. I don’t ask to walk her home—I just do, and she doesn’t complain. She holds my hand the entire walk.
When we get to her door, she asks, “You want to come in?” Then, almost as an afterthought, she adds, “To see Oscar Wilde?”
“Sure,” I say, following her inside, wondering if she is just inviting me in for a hello to her cat or if she will let me spend the rest of our night with my head buried in her thighs.
As per usual, Oscar Wilde comes hopping up to us as soon aswe walk through the door. I bend down to greet him as Linny heads to her bathroom. She crosses the hallway to her bedroom a bit later with her face washed, glasses on, and hair pulled into a haphazard bun. Oscar Wilde seems finished with me, so he slumps away. I stand up, not sure what I’m supposed to be doing.
When Linny comes back out, she’s in sweats and an oversized T-shirt, which I think answers my question of whether or not this night will continue as it did in the cloakroom. It’s perfectly fine that it won’t. I’m her friend first. I figure she has invited me into hers tonight to be her friend and nothing more.
She stops before me. “Why are you just standing there?”
“I don’t know,” I admit.
Amusement crosses her face. “Well, take your coat off. Stay a while.”
She helps me pull my coat off, then hangs it on a hook by the front door. Then she comes back and removes my tie, tossing it on her coffee table, then unbuttons my top two buttons. Lastly, her fingers trace through my hair, messing up the style she helped me get it back to in the cloakroom.
“Och, not the hair,” I say, even though my head is pushing into her fingers like a cat wanting to be pet.
“I love your hair,” she says absently before pulling away.
My tongue clicks. “I knew you only liked me for the hair.”
“Caught me.”
As I roll up the sleeves of my shirt, she switches off the overhead light in favor of a lamp on the side table. Then she sits down on the couch, angling herself against the arm and pulling her legs up to wrap her arms around.
“I’m ready to talk about Atti,” she says quietly.
A rush of anticipation hits my chest. This was the one thing. The one thing she was using to keep a distance between us, andnow, she’s ready to offer it away.
“Okay,” I say just as quietly, taking a seat across from her on the couch, one leg propped up on it so I can face her.
She loses my eye, picking at her fingernails as she says, “I had a miscarriage.”
I jerk up straight in my seat. “Oh, fuck, Lin.”
She adds unnecessarily, “When I was with Atti.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say. I hold my arms out to her. “Come here, sugar. Please.”
She nods barely, scooting over on the couch until her back is pressed to my chest. I swing an arm around her shoulders and place a kiss on the top of her head as she snuggles into me.
“Talk to me about it,” I softly plead.
She burrows deeper into me, scooching lower so she can press her head to my chest. “It happened while we were engaged. We got engaged, and then about two months later, I found out I was pregnant. We weren’t ready for it at all, but we were happy about it.Iwas happy about it. I was excited because I thought I was having a baby with the man I loved, and I thought because of that, everything would work out.”
She swallows. “But, four months in, I woke up in so much pain I couldn’t see straight, bleeding all over the bed.” She clears her throat. “We went to the hospital and they told me I lost the baby. I don’t think I have ever cried that hard. So hard I could have thrown up.”
I don’t say anything, just continue to stroke her hair as I let her tell me this story at her own pace.
“We went home, and I stayed in bed for a solid week. During that week, Atti was great. He took care of me. He held me when I needed to be held and gave me space when I needed space. I mean, we were both going through this loss. When I finally gotout of bed, I guess he figured I was over it. I still wasn’t okay, but I was showered and eating breakfast in the kitchen. While he was making coffee, he said…and he said this so casually, he said, ‘It was for the best.’ I didn’t know what he was talking about at first because in my mind, there was no way he could be talking about the baby. But then he kept talking. ‘We weren’t ready for a kid.’ I remember nodding, thinking he was trying to make me feel better, even though it was a bad method. I said, ‘Probably not. We can try again after we’re married.’ But then he shook his head and said, ‘I don’t know, Linny. I mean, doyoueven want a baby?’ And it was the way he said ‘you’ that I knew I did not like where this conversation was heading.” She swallows again and is quiet for a long while.
I keep my mouth shut, pressing another kiss to her head.
She starts speaking again. “He said, ‘With your eyes, it would be easier on us to just not have kids.’ And of course, I argued and said, ‘My dad did just fine. My aunts did just fine. My grandmother did just fine.’ But he said, ‘You know what I mean. Hell, you said yourself you were worried about it. What if you pass it on to our kid? I don’t know if I can take care of more than one of you.’”
