I paced the living room of the apartment and switched between nibbling on my thumb and on the corner of my cell phone.
Calling Josh was useless. Texting him was the same. So I sent a picture. Of the positive pregnancy test.
It was the only thing I could think of doing.
His response?
Be right over
And nothing else.
Grace asked if she wanted me to have her stay or go.
I told her to leave.
I waited as long as I could before I opened the front door. I leaned out and looked at the door to the steps.
Right on cue, Miss Laura opened her door.
“Amelia!” she said in a happy voice. “How are you?”
“Oh, I don’t have the-”
“Let me tell you about my day,” she said.
I cringed.
“I really can’t…”
“Cable went out today,” she said. “Did you know that? Well, I bet you didn’t. Because I called them right up. I told those people they’d better get their act together. There’s an entire building here of people who…”
The door was ripped open from the stairs and Josh appeared.
He looked like a mess.
It wasn’t even eight at night and he had the look of someone stumbling home at three in the morning with a broken heart.
He was scruffy and his hair was as messy as ever. His clothes were cleaner than I expected.
“Oh, look at this,” Miss Laura said. “My boyfriend has come home. Why don’t you-”
“You’re pregnant?” Josh called out.
I gasped.
Miss Laura gasped too. She touched her chest and covered her mouth.
My cheeks flushed as I nodded. “I’m pregnant, Josh.”
“Oh, my dear,” Miss Laura said. “I think I’m going to go back inside.”
Josh didn’t break his stare from me as he stepped toward me. “Pregnant…”
“Pregnant,” I whispered. “Josh…”
Without warning, he reached for me.
For my stomach.
His strong hand touched against my still flat belly.
I jumped back but grabbed his wrist and pulled his hand to my stomach again.
We just stared at each other.
Just like before.
The night of his gallery showing when I had turned up. Years since I had last seen him, but the same feeling. And now it was just days. Twenty-nine days. But it felt like twenty-nine years. But the feeling was the same.
My eyes filled with tears again, waiting for him to do something.
Josh lowered his head down until his forehead touched mine.
He shut his eyes.
“Amelia…”
“You love her,” I said. “Delilah. You still love her. Don’t you?”
“Of course I do,” Josh said. “But you need-”
“Then you need to tell me everything about her. About the letter. I need to know how to live my life as the mother of your child.”
Josh stepped back. “That’s what you want to be?”
“That’s what I am, Josh,” I said. “We’re forever connected now.”
He laughed. “We’ve always been connected.”
“Then tell me. Everything. Please…”
I wiped a tear off my cheek.
That was your tear to wipe away, Josh.
He touched my stomach but not me. He didn’t wipe away the stray tear.
I was going to be the mother of his baby and nothing more.
And that meant a piece of my heart would always be broken.
“I can’t believe I have to do this with all these fucking cats looking at me,” Josh said.
“We can go to your place if you’d like,” I said.
“No. We’re here. We can stay right here, love. You want to know everything… here it is…”
Josh stood while I sat on the edge of the dining room table. The back of my mind raced over what was to come over the next nine months of my life. And the nine months of being pregnant was just the start. Nothing would be the same ever again. I was a struggling waitress living in an apartment dedicated to cats. I used to have a dream of being a writer and surviving that way. Now everything I knew had to shift to the life inside me.
And the life that stared at me with his strong arms crossed.
“I’ve been going to talk to someone for a while,” he said. “To… I guess help with things.”
“A therapist, Josh?”
“I hate that fucking word. That makes me feel weak.”
“You’re not weak.”
“I did it as a promise to Aaron.”
“Why?”
“Because of Delilah.”
“Who is she, Josh? What happened to her? Is she… dead?”
“No,” he said. “She’s not dead.”
“And you still love her?”
“With everything inside me,” he said without hesitation.
My heart ached even more. I swallowed as much down as I could, wanting to give him his chance to talk to me. My hands protectively touched my stomach. I already started to negotiate with myself, saying that as long