Page 99 of Pregnant By the Playboy
“Let’s go out for dim sum.”
When I was a kid, this was our big treat. I would walk past the restaurants near our Agincourt apartment and see other families, bigger than two people, eating and laughing and arguing. But Mom and I, we would only go out a few times a year, because she was counting her pennies—back when we still had pennies in Canada—to pay the hydro and phone bills.
Still, sometimes we would go out, and it would be A Big Deal.
Now, we’re lucky. We can’t afford penthouses and the fanciest restaurants and vacations, but we don’t need that. We can go out for dim sum—and not at the cheap place—every week and stuff ourselves silly, and at one point, that would have been an unthinkable luxury.
I ate an hour ago, but whatever, I’m pregnant and hungry.
I manage a wobbly smile. “Yes, let’s have dim sum.”
Chapter 27
Vince
When I leave High Park, the ring still in my pocket, I get a call from my real estate agent. There’s a new house on the market, and I have the cab driver take me to Yonge and Lawrence to see it.
It’s exactly what I want.
I push aside the images that bombard my brain as I walk through the house. Images of Marissa and Baby at different ages.
Instead, I try to focus on what’s here. The immaculate house, everything arranged just so, probably by a staging company.
Afterward, I go back home, and I think about texting Brian. That’s what I used to do when I was feeling down. We wouldn’t talk about anything important, but we’d go out and have fun. Though for most of the past few years, I wouldn’t have been awake at this time on a Saturday.
I wonder if he’s awake.
It doesn’t matter. The last person who needs to deal with my broken heart is Brian. Besides, I don’t actually want to go anywhere.
I head to my living room and take out a bottle of whiskey, but then I put it back.
Instead, I sit vacantly on my couch and stare at the black screen of my enormous TV, feeling utterly useless.
She said no.
I’d been convinced that everything would be perfect. She’d say yes, and we’d feed each other cheesecake beneath the blossoms and try not to jump each other...and sometime before Baby came, we’d have a small wedding and move into a house together. Somewhere conveniently located for our families and her job. Decent-sized, but not huge and showy. Baby would come, and we’d spend the first year looking after our child together, and then she’d go back to work and I’d stay home.
I had it all mapped out. It seemed so real—and so close. Like I could reach out and touch it. Sure, she’d never said she loved me, but it felt like she did, even if she couldn’t say the words.
I didn’t think she’d turn me down. Again.
Am I right about her father?
I don’t know, but what does it matter.
A no is a no.
And I hurt her.
I don’t fully understand it, but I did. That’s my own damn fault, for not knowing shit-all about relationships.
I lie down on my couch, curled up in a ball. I put my hands to my chest, like I’m trying to reach my heart and ease the pain.
Of course, my heart is inside my fucking body and I cannot just reach inside and take it out and if I did it would kill me and I think I saw something like that on Once Upon a Time? One of those shows I binge-watched when I had nothing better to do.
My phone buzzes. Holden is in town for the weekend.
I tell him I’m not up for it.
