How was I going to feed them? I only had two breasts. I had two nipples with two sources of milk and three children who were going to be hungry at the same time. How was that going to work? How was my body going to produce that much breastmilk? If I assumed I wouldn't be able to breastfeed more than one of them, that meant I would have formula to buy. Which was more money every month I didn't have that I would need to eventually spend.
I felt tears cresting the lids of my eyes as I sank deeper into my train of thought.
My television was droning in the background and the only thing I could think about was the electricity it was using. I reached for the remote and shut it off, then got up and turned off all the lights in my apartment. If I was going to start saving money, then I needed to start being more energy-conscious. I needed to make the most of my paychecks so I could put as much away as possible.
Then, I started thinking about my retirement account. If I dipped into my 401k so I could pay off my car, I could take that car payment and set it aside. I could get by with the car I had until they grew out of booster seats. By then, I could have enough money saved up to buy an SUV to cart us all around comfortably. That would give me four hundred dollars every month over the course of nine months, which equated to three thousand and six hundred I would have in a savings account.
It wasn't much, but it was a start.
My exhaustion started to kick in and my mind started to slow down. Beethoven had finished off my ice cream and was padding back to my bedroom. I slumped down into my couch, allowing my sweatpants to ride up my crotch. I was a mess. I was so exhausted in the mornings that I wasn't showering as normally as I usually did. I was wearing clothes to work that weren't matching, not that anyone noticed in the first place. When I came home, I was living in sweatshirts, trying to make myself comfortable as nausea and exhaustion became my best friends.
I felt my eyes closing, my body drifting back off into a luscious slumber. I could feel my dream-state coming on. A place where my life could be anything I wanted it to be. A place where I wasn’t pregnant with my boss’s children and I wasn’t carrying triplets and I wasn’t so sick that I couldn't keep down chocolate milk.
But a knock at my door jolted me awake.
Sighing, I pulled myself off the couch and walked over towards the door. I didn't think twice about checking to see who it was before I opened it, and my eyes widened when I saw him. Preston was standing there with a massive amount of red roses and a bag of food with a restaurant name that seemed eerily familiar.
It was a bag of food from the restaurant we had our first date at. The restaurant where I had broken it to him that I was pregnant.
“Mind if I come in?” he asked.
“What is all this?” I asked.
“Figured you could use a break from cooking,” he said.
I stepped off to the side and let him into my apartme
nt.
“Are those for me?” I asked.
“Do you see any other beautiful women standing around?” he asked.
“I think there were some on the corner, yeah.”
“Feisty as ever,” he said with a grin.
He leaned in to kiss me, but I backed myself away. What was going on? We had an agreement. My eyes scanned his body as he sighed, then backtracked into my kitchen and began opening my cabinets. He pulled out plates and found the silverware, plating food that smelled delicious onto the pathetic plasticware I had in my home.
A home I couldn’t bring three infants back to.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“For what?” Preston asked.
“For looking so…rough.”
“Nonsense. You look perfect,” he said.
“You’re just saying that because I’m pregnant with your kids.”
“No, I’m saying it because it’s true.”
His head turned towards me, his eyes raking up and down my body. I felt my cheek taint with a flush only he could draw out of me. I felt my walls slowly crashing down. I felt them melting into a puddle at my feet. I watched Preston shrug his suit coat off and sling it over a chair, his broad shoulders tugging at the fabric of his shirt. He turned around, a smile on his face and two plates of food in his hands. There was a grin on his cheeks as he walked towards me, his arms balancing the food evenly in his hands.
Was there anything this man could do that made him ugly?
“Where would you like to eat?” Preston asked.