“We will never be together.” I refill my own glass.
Together. I don’t even like saying the word, having it pertain to Tiffany.
The past is in the past, I remind myself.
“But we,” I move my finger through the air, pointing to her, then myself, “are nothing but potential co-parents.”
If this even is my baby, which it is not.
I check the time.
We’ve been here, going back and forth like this for long enough. I need to get back to Emmeline.
I stand, buttoning my jacket. “Enjoy your meal. I’ll book a room for you tonight. We can figure out logistics in the morning.”
She gives me a look of disdain as I leave.
The driver is going a normal speed, but it feels painfully slow, each second dragging by. I need to see her face.
When I get home, the apartment is dark and quiet. Emmeline’s probably already asleep. Baskins pads up to greet me. Where is Mr. Whiskers? I look over at the sofa, but he’s not there either.
Then, I see the note.
A little cream colored piece of paper that turns my world upside down.
My heart is tearing from my chest before I even read the words. It’s penned in Emmeline's handwriting.
Her familiar pretty little swirling loops.
Rawley,
In a perfect world, we could be together, and you could care for your child and its mother, and I could be at your side, loving you all the while.
But this isn’t a perfect world, and I’m afraid I’m not a perfect person. I’m selfish and as much as I love you, I won’t be able to take it.
I want to be with you. But I don’t want to be attached to a man who is already tied to another woman, and a child is a strong bond that shouldn’t be broken. I refuse to be the person that keeps you two apart.
And I deserve a man that can be solely my own.
Please, if you find out the baby is yours, don’t contact me. This is going to be hard enough as it is.
I’m sorry, but it’s over.
All my love,
Emmeline
My chest tightens. She’s gone.
And, I can’t even blame her, not with what she thinks. She doesn’t know it isn’t possible. She might believe that’s really my child.
In a perfect world, yes, I would want her to stand by my side, through thick and thin, through surprise ex’s and unplanned break-up sex pregnancies, but I can’t ask that of her.
She needs to have the freedom to live her life.
I’ll respect her request and give her the time and space she needs and deserves.
And maybe, just maybe, if there is a God in that cloud-filled sky, one day, she’ll come back.
Please, God, let her come back.
The next day, I go to GenLabs to have my blood drawn. They already have Tiffany’s sample, and they tell me it takes twenty-four hours for the results to come back. I swear I sweat through three shirts, waiting it out.
The following morning, a woman with dark hair wearing a white lab coat with the GenLabs monogram hand delivers the paperwork. She gives me a tight smile. “It’s a match. Congratulations, Mr. Morrow.”
My heart drops to my stomach, the breath leaving my lungs.
No.
It can’t be.
Please, God, let it not be.
But I scan over the paperwork, and find that it is. Tiffany is carrying my baby.
My future, everything I dreamed of having with Emmeline evaporates in a cloud of despair.
A thousand times over the next week, I pick up the phone to call Emmeline, then put it back. Or I type a text, then erase it. I even go so far as to take a sad looking picture of Baskins, captioning it with the words, We miss you, come home.
But then, I remember her words: Please, don’t contact me. This is going to be hard enough as it is.
The very last thing I want to do is hurt her, more. I think I’ve done that enough, already.
Emmeline
He respects my request to not contact me. And am I surprised? No, because he’s a good man and he knows I need this space, this time. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t checking my phone multiple times a day for a call from him.
The call never comes.
It’s a dark, long week. I lose myself in work, grateful for the distraction, but I can never fully take my mind off of him. A patient comes in with a broken leg and he’s running his hand through his hair, like Rawley does, and my throat gets tight. I’m walking to the coffee shop across from the hospital on my break to get a latte and a man walks by with a floppy-eared basset hound on a leash and I find my chest hurting. A cute baby passes by in a stroller, and I think, I wanted babies with him.
Suddenly, nothing seems harder than living without him.