Page 37 of The Infiniteness of Yesterday
I laugh, staring at what he sees. A photo of me sitting in a chair outside an ice cream parlor here in town. Monroe is resting in my arms in just a onesie with purple Band-Aid’s on her chunky thighs. I’m licking a cookies n’ cream ice cream cone and in the reflection of the window you can see Spencer taking the photo in one hand and holding his cone in the other.
“Show me more,” he practically begs.
And I do, flicking through memories captured on that tiny SD card that we thought were gone.
“God, look at us,” I comment, pointing at the photo I’ve stopped on so my finger appears in his view. “We look so young.”
He laughs and my view of him on the phone shows him leaning forward to better see the image of us.
It was taken at the beach. Sand peppers our shoulders and my nose is red from too much sun. My lips are pressed to his cheek and he’s grinning at the camera. Willa took this picture, demanding we have one together during a day at the beach. Monroe would’ve been nearing a year old at the time this was taken. By the time she turned two, Spencer and I were no more. Looking at this photo we look so in love, and we were, but I was struggling—still dealing with my postpartum depression and only seventeen. I had gotten my GED a few months prior to this photo being taken, and Spencer and I moved into our own apartment, a tiny hole in the wall of a place, but we both did our best to make it home.
“Are you saying we got old?” His joke interrupts my thoughts.
“Only you.”
He chuckles, smiling at my response. “We were happy then … weren’t we?” There’s something in his voice, a hesitation like he’s uncertain. It makes me wonder if that’s something that bothers him. If perhaps he worries I was never happy with him.
“I was happy as I could be,” I say, and it’s the truth. That wasn’t an easy time in my life and it’s not his fault.
Flipping the screen around so he can see me, he says, “What happened to us?”
“Spencer,” I sigh, feeling my shoulders grow heavy.
There are so many different reasons I could name off, some of them juvenile, some of them not, but at the end of the day the blame lies solely on me and I’ll own that.
“We were so young.” My voice is soft, hesitant. I don’t like talking about our demise, even if I’m the one who walked away from us. I loved Spencer. I loved him more than most people my age are capable of, and I know he loved me, but maybe it was age, immaturity, or who knows what else, but I panicked. I didn’twant to live a life trapped to the first guy I fell in love with just because I got pregnant. I wanted to see what else was out there.
“That was the big problem, wasn’t it?” He rubs a hand over his smooth jaw, freshly shaved no doubt after he finished his shower. “We were too damn young for it to possibly last, right?” There’s a bite of anger to his question but he doesn’t give me a chance to reply. “Do you regret it? Getting pregnant?”
I’m silent for a moment.
When Spencer and I sat in my bedroom, waiting for those pregnancy test results, I’ve never been more scared in my entire life. Never in my wildest dreams did I think losing my virginity on my seventeenth birthday to my boyfriend of nearly a year would lead to me getting pregnant. We’d used a condom, but I guess it broke or something.
But even with my fear, I don’t regret Monroe for one single second.
“No,” I answer him. “Monroe is the gift I didn’t know I needed. She’s … she’s everything. Do you regret it?” I turn it around on him. I know his answer before he even says it.
“Never.” Clearing his throat, he sits up in his bed. “If there’s anything I know. It’s that I was meant to be her dad.”
We exchange a small smile. Despite us, despite our past and circumstances, that little girl sleeping across the hall will always tie us together.
CHAPTER 12
SPENCER
EIGHT YEARS AGO
“Fancy running into you here.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying not to squirm.
Fuck. I sound pathetic.
She turns around, hair swishing around her shoulders as she does. The smell of her shampoo reaches my nose. Something fruity and sweet. “This is the sophomore hall and my locker, so not so fancy nor am I guessing, coincidental?”
Harlow looks me up and down with her hazel eyes that seem to see right through me, before returning them to her locker in search of a textbook I assume.
“I ran into your sister.”
