Page 98 of Babies for the Big Shot
I don’t look at her. I can’t. Not now.
I need space. I need air. I need to think.
I can’t do this. Not now.
“I just…” I pause, my hand gripping the doorknob because it’s the only thing keeping me tethered to this moment. “I need to think. I can’t… I can’t do this right now.”
I don’t wait for her response.
I just walk out. I don’t even hear her.
The door slams behind me, but I don’t hear it.
My heart is beating too loud.
I don’t look back. Not yet.
If I do, I’m not sure I’ll be able to leave.
And right now, I have no idea what the hell I’m walking toward.
Only what I’m walking away from.
I make it down the stairs, but it’s a blur. My feet are moving as if they belong to someone else.
I don’t remember the neighbor who might’ve greeted me on my way out. Or the world that’s still moving on, oblivious to the chaos cracking inside me.
The sun’s too bright. The air’s too sharp. It’s too much. Too much of everything.
A baby.
That word spins around my head, a buzzard circling, getting louder, and louder.
Sara’s pregnant.
With my child.
And I didn’t know.
For fourteen days, she knew. And I didn’t.
My jaw clenches so tight it hurts. My hands curl into fists at my sides, but it does nothing to ease the pressure building in my chest.
She looked me in the eye. Kissed me. Let me feel things again, things I thought I had buried years ago. And all the while, she was sitting on the biggest truth of our lives, holding it back from me.
I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting in my car, engine off, hands locked around the steering wheel so tight my knuckles are turning white.
I don’t even know where I’m going.
What the hell am I supposed to do now?
What’s the next move?
How do I even begin to process any of this?
There’s only one person I’d normally call.
Only one.
