Page 110 of Good as Gold
You know, right? You had a shitty dad, too.
God. I thought that if I put it off, it might seem easier. Like, at some point I wouldn’t feel like such a loser. I’d know what to say to my own kid if I had one.
He takes a ragged breath.
Well that never happened. And Leila started to hate me for it. So you know what I did? Maybe she told you already—I cheated. One night after we had a fight, I picked up some woman in a bar and went home with her.
Leila left me two weeks later. I think I knew she would. Maybe that’s why I did it.
“You idiot,” I whisper. And for one shining minute I feel superior to Rory. He cheated? I’m gobsmacked.
But then he keeps talking.
There has never been a single day when I thought I’d be any fucking good at being a daddy. So I let her go, even if I did it in a shitty way.
Still hurts, though. Like a knife to the heart. She got pregnant with some other guy.
Lotta people are saying maybe it’s you.
I stop breathing.
You’ll hate me for saying this. Go ahead and hate me. But the only comfort I got is knowing itwasn’tyou. Nah. Not a fucking chance, right? Because you’re smarter than I ever was. And if you got Leila pregnant, you wouldn’t be in fucking Colorado.
So that’s how I know. If it was you, then you’d be here by her side.
No question.
The recording ends.
I push my dinner away and set my head in my hands.
CHAPTER42
LEILA
I study the schematic again, trying to figure out how I’m going to attach the short side of the crib to the long side.
The first few steps went fine, but now I’ve hit a snag—I don’t have enough hands to brace the long side while I screw the short side onto it. And I’m afraid to prop it up against the wall, because it might scratch the paint job that my mother and I did last week. It’s a mural—a mountain landscape, with the moon in gold.
This is so frustrating. And I can’t ask my mom for help again, because she’s playing bridge today. It’s a big tournament, and she’s trying to defend her title.
In these moments, my traitorous brain always offers up an impossible scenario—a mental picture of Matteo screwing the bed together while I hold the sections steady.
Thanks, brain. I feel guilty every time I wish he was here. But the more I try not to think about him, the worse it seems to get.
As a cure for guilty yearnings, I’ve tried to dial back my contact with him. When we do speak, I try to keep things simple. I give him updates on the pregnancy.The doctor tells me the baby is the size of a grapefruit. My blood-sugar test was normal.
He seems a little gruff with me lately. He worries about me, and that’s not healthy, either. I’m pretty sure Matteo thinks I’m in over my head. Like, I’m going to drive around in a broken Jeep, or that I don’t make enough money to feed this child we created.
Why else would he do so much online shopping? The man has systematically purchased nearly everything I’ve added to my baby registry. The crib? Purchased by Matteo. The mattress? Matteo. The sheets I picked out? Matteo.
See also: the bottles, the baby carrier, and the nursing pillow. Plus, a case of diapers and a white-noise machine.
Last week my college roommate complained that there was nothing left on the registry but a bottle sterilizer. “And that’s no fun, so I’m sending you a cute baby outfit instead.”
I don’t want to sound ungrateful. Matteo’s generosity is lovely. But I don’t want him to go broke on baby gear just because he’s having regrets about my pregnancy.
The worst part is that I still ache for him. I miss his face. I miss sleeping in his arms. I miss the way he teases me. I miss everything about him.
