“It should probably be me who goes, right?” I said. “I mean, there’s probably some stuff Matt and I have to go over, like what he’s going to do with my last paycheck and whether or not I should call him when I get to Riverside.” I sighed heavily as the elevator took us up to the tenth floor. “God, there’s just so much to figure out with him. I haven’t said a word to him since I stormed out of the house.”
“He hasn’t called?”
I laughed. “Oh no, he’s called. About a million times. And he left me a message telling me that he wants to be involved and that he was sorry for the way he acted when I told him.”
“You didn’t feel like calling him back after that?”
I shrugged. “Well, he was obviously drunk, so it’s hard for me to trust that he felt the same way when he woke up the next morning and was sober.” The doors opened and I went down the hall to my room. “Plus, I’m not really sure I’m ready to forgive him. I know that sounds petty, but he really hurt me, and even though I plan on talking to him eventually, I think I’ve earned the right to have a few days without hearing his voice.”
“Absolutely,” my mom said. “Which is why you should leave the packing of your stuff and the handling of your last paycheck to me.”
In my room, I got her a glass of water and waited on the bed while she used the bathroom. “Do you still have a key to his house?” she asked me when she came out. I nodded. “Then how about I just go over there while he’s at work. I’ll pack up the rest of your stuff, leave him a note to have your last paycheck sent to the house in Riverside, and then the two of us can be on our way without you having to see or talk to him again.”
“But I have to talk to him eventually,” I said.
“Sure,” she said. “You are having the man’s baby, so you are going to have to talk to him eventually. But wouldn’t you rather do it once you’ve both had some time to cool off? And once you’re back home, where you feel more comfortable?”
She was making some very convincing arguments, and the only argument I had in favor of sticking around San Francisco and making an effort to talk to Matt was that my heart ached over the way we left things. But it was irresponsible to let my heart make all the decisions, especially when I was feeling this emotional and downtrodden. My mother was right. I needed to clear my head, and Matt probably still needed to cool down, so it would be best to wait to make contact with him until after I was back in Riverside.
“Good plan,” I told her. “You can go over there tomorrow when he’s at work and Will is at school, get the rest of my stuff, and then the two of us can leave by Wednesday.”
“Why wait until Wednesday?” She checked her watch. “He should still be at work for a while, right? I could go over there right now and then we could leave first thing in the morning.”
I shook my head. “Will gets home from school any minute. If he sees you there packing up my stuff, he’s going to have a lot of questions, and I have no idea what his dad has and hasn’t told him already. I don’t want to confuse the kid any more than I already have.”
“Fair enough.” She smiled. “Well then, I guess that means the two of us have the rest of the afternoon to kill. You want to show me around the city a little?”
I forced a smile, even though I really wasn’t feeling up to sightseeing. “Of course,” I said. “Let me just take a quick shower.”
“Great,” she said. “You do that and I will start looking for a place we can go for lunch.” She laid back on the bed and got on her phone while I went into the bathroom to freshen up. Twenty minutes later, when I emerged from the steamy room, I was relieved to see that she had fallen asleep. I put a blanket over her, got dressed as quietly as I could, and then took my phone with me back down to the lobby. There, I ordered coffee and a donut from the café by the check-in counter and sat down to review the list of OBGYNs in Riverside my mother had sent me the night before.
Before long, my mind began to wander and I thought about Matt. I thought about the way his voice sounded when he accused me of trapping him in a relationship with this baby. Anger rushed through me, but it was quickly replaced by heartbreak when I thought about what he’d said in his phone message. Without really thinking about it, I went to my messages, the deleted file, and listened to it one more time.
His voice sounded sincere. It sounded like he truly meant every single word he was telling me. Perhaps that was just what I wanted to believe though. Maybe I was just so desperate to think that the father of my unborn child was actually going to be a really good co-parent, because why wouldn’t I want to think that?
I knew he was a good dad, that wasn’t what I was worried about. What scared me was the fact that he had never parented with someone else before. With Will, he’d always been the only parental figure in the child’s life. He called the shots, he made all the rules, and there was no one around to question him or fight him on anything. What was going to happen the first time he and I disagreed on something for the baby? What if that moment came long before the baby was even born?
Panic gripped me as I thought about the fact that he could very well argue with my decision to go back to Riverside. He could take me to court over it, if he really wanted to. I hoped he wouldn’t take things that far, but then again, for someone as rich as he was, paying legal fees wasn’t really that big of a deal.
And that was just one decision out ofthousandsthat he and I were going to have to make from now until our child’s eighteenth birthday. And then we’d probably still be making quite a few, like where our kid was going to attend college, and whether or not we would pay for her to do a semester abroad. He and I were going to be involved in each other’s lives so deeply, for the next twenty years,at least, so no wonder I was so eager to think he was being honest with everything he said in the message. I listened to it one more time, and then let my finger hover over the ‘call back’ button. Before I could build up the courage to press it, however, I felt a soft hand on my shoulder and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
“Oh my God!” I said. It was my mom. She was standing behind me, laughing. “You scared the crap out of me!”
“Sorry,” she said through her giggles. “I said your name first, but I guess you didn’t hear me.”
I shook my head. “I’m—I’m in my own little world over here. When did you wake up from your nap?”
“About five minutes ago,” she said. “And I found the perfect place for us to get lunch. You hungry?”
I actually was pretty hungry, so I threw away the wrappers from my afternoon snack, and the two of us headed out into the busy San Francisco streets, linked arm in arm. She gave me directions as we walked, and I pointed out tourist attractions as we went. Even though I hadn’t wanted to go sightseeing with her earlier, once we were out on the town together, I started to genuinely enjoy myself, and I was reminded just why I had stayed in Riverside so long.
My mom was my best friend.
And at least I knew she would be with me throughout this whole process—even if Matt wasn’t.
ChapterTwenty
MATT