Ilookedoutatthe seniors dancing to some old hit with bleary eyes. Grandma had tried to get me to dance with her and her friends, but I didn’t think I could even stand up to go to the room we were staying in.
We’d driven to Key West, only stopping so I could take naps when I had to. Nowhere felt safe enough, though. I was terrified that someone was going to recognize me and try to harass us while I dozed. I’d driven the twenty-six hour drive in thirty hours. Every bone in my body ached. My head hadn’t eased up from the pounding headache that had started before we even got out of Virginia.
I felt disoriented. It felt like weeks since I’d last seen the guys, when I’d just left them in bed the morning before. Time was different when all that existed in my head was fear and heartache.
“Come on, honey. It’s time to get you to bed.” Grandma stood in front of me with the young woman who’d been willing and eager to let us crash at the retirement community she helped run. “You remember Mazie? Mazie’s going to help me get you to bed.”
I groaned and pushed myself out of the chair I’d been in for almost four hours. The sun had set around me in that chair. “I’m okay. And of course I remember Mazie.”
Without batting an eye, Mazie hooked her arm through mine and smiled warmly. “Let me help you. I promise this is so much better than what I have to do other times.”
Grandma lowered her voice. “Tell me the details about Noble. He’s handsome. Is he a player?”
Mazie made a noise confirming Grandma’s suspicions. “Total player. I call him Not so Noble.”
The two of them led me to a small house off the main track through the community. Mazie helped me to the farther of the two twin beds in the only bedroom. Once my butt touched it, I slumped over and groaned.
“You rest, girlfriend. You need it.” She pulled a blanket over me and smiled a secretive smile. “Once you’re feeling better, we should chat. Not many people our age around here. Especially ones who have similar home lives as us.”
I raised a single eyebrow because that’s all I could move at that point. It reminded me of Dominic, though, and tears filled my eyes. “Similar home lives?”
“If you’re here for very long, you’ll meet my three husbands.” She winked and turned to Grandma. “And you, lady. Are you going back to the dance floor?”
“You know it.” Grandma kissed my forehead. “I’ll see you when you’re feeling better, honey. I love you. Grandma’s always proud of you.”
The tears spilled after Mazie, who had three husbands, left with Grandma. I curled onto my side and tried to sleep, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the blog post. Knowing people were reading my personal thoughts felt awful. Knowing they were reading them and then deciding that I was a monster who deserved to die? That was a different level of terrible. I’d only had to read three death threats to know that I wanted to disappear.
As it usually went, so far the media focus had been on me. The guys were safe. They’d been talked about, of course, but no one was upset with them. They were just guys being guys, after all. If I stayed away from them, they’d be safe.
I ran through my journal entries again and again, thinking of everything that Samantha might add later. I did the math on how long I’d been involved with them and tried to imagine just how many entries there were about them. Too many.
I’d first slept with them more than a month earlier. Maybe even closer to six weeks. Something nagged at my brain as I thought about the timeline. It was like a name on the tip of my tongue that I could almost just grab, but nothing was there.
It didn’t hit me until I was nearly asleep and finally comfortable. I sat straight up and screamed for Mazie. Out of every person in the community, she’d be the only one who might have what I needed. I was up and rushing to the door when she swung it open, her eyes wide with fear and her hands full of rocks.
Ignoring the rocks, I pointed a frantic hand at my stomach. “Pregnancy test. I need a pregnancy test.”
It took until the next day at lunch to find one. Mazie’s husband, Heath, had gone to four different stores before he found one that he deemed reliable. It took until two minutes after lunch the next day for me to see a positive test result. It only took another ten minutes for the entire retirement community to know that I was knocked up. I knew because at twelve minutes after noon, Grandma came screaming up on a golf cart, half dressed and hair askew.
“Pregnant? Are you pregnant?” When I nodded, she yanked me into a hug that was almost as aggressive as Joey’s rescue maneuver. “My baby’s pregnant!”
With the entire community excited and celebrating, it made it easier for me. Not a single person frowned. They were overjoyed about a new life.
Grandma sat around the dinner table that night, telling everyone stories about when she’d had Mom and then when Mom had me. She made sure everyone knew that my mom was the best mother she’d ever seen. She talked about how Mom had loved me more than anything and how she’d only been sad in the end to die because she wasn’t finished seeing me grow up.
I clutched my positive test stick in my hand like it was a lifeline. It changed me. In an instant, my focus shifted from myself to the bun in my oven. I would do everything I could to be as good of a mother as my mom had been to me. I would give my baby the world. I would show them love and happiness. For Mom, that had been just the two of us. For me, I was missing three very important people to have all the love and happiness Icouldhave.
Mazie helped me get set up in her office with access to her computer. I spent the rest of that evening alternating between writing and holding that pregnancy test.
58
***SJ***
Ikeptasecret.I hurt my best friend. I’m sorry for hurting her. I know that finding out someone you love could do something hurtful to you is hard. I got a taste of that myself this week. I can’t begin to understand why she thought publishing my personal journals to the internet would be a fair punishment for what I did, but she made her choice and now we’re here. I can imagine that she was hurting, angry, and maybe holding on to that childhood hope that your parents do love each other and end happily ever after. Whatever her reasoning for the actions she took, I’m sure this is not the response she thought she’d get. I know my best friend and I know that she’d never knowingly do this to anyone. Because let’s be clear, this thing that is now happening? It’s fucking awful. If I ever write a horror novel, it'll just be this. The entire world reads your journal and hates your guts with a passion that you had previously thought people saved for sports and Harry Potter.
The words that you read? Those were my thoughts as I jotted them down in a specific moment of that specific day. They were random, silly, embarrassing, and showed me that I might need to seek therapy, but they were not a full picture. Missing were the moments that led to, or followed, those thoughts. I never wrote about how H made holding hands feel like the first time, every time. I didn’t talk about how his fingers brushing against mine in a way that children hold hands could set my heart on fire. I didn’t write about the way B always takes an extra deep inhale before he says goodbye to me, like he’s saving my scent deeper than others. It taught me to stop and take that moment while saying goodbye to these men I love because I want to have everything I can with them. I never wrote about how D can walk into his office a hundred times a day and look genuinely happy to see me there each time. Each time, his eyes crinkle in the corners and he drops the boss face to give me a smile that makes my knees go weak.
I never had to debate with myself in my journal about whether they made my life better each day. I didn’t have to ponder if they were making me stronger, bolder, and more confident. The things I wrote in my journal were snippets of my mind fighting over whether I loved my best friend or myself more. Choosingmefelt selfish and wrong. Even though it’s what felt right and what I wanted with every breath I took. The words I wrote were a desperate attempt to somehow absolve myself from the guilt I felt, like maybe if I wrote it a thousand times, how terrible I felt, that would somehow make it better in the end. It was a stalling tactic from a woman who’s never had to hurt her best friend before. I was wrong. I was scared. I’m sorry for hurting her.