My Life as a Holiday Album (My Life as an Album #5) - L.J. Evans Page 0,10
boy who’d left me at the lake.
Edie stepped off the porch, her baby belly sticking out of a blue peacoat that made me swallow hard. Maybe this was a mistake. Seeing Edie pregnant was what had started my waterworks at Grandma Marina’s house.
Edie used the handrail to help lurch herself into the truck, her once graceful ballerina body struggling with the weight of the baby, and I looked away while fighting the tears that hit my eyes.
Once she had her seat belt on, I turned the truck back down the drive and out toward the interstate. I didn’t know where I was going. Maybe a town over and a coffee shop where no one would know us—or fewer people would know us. All of us kids had been in the limelight off and on growing up because of our ties to Watery Reflection. Mayson and I’d had less pressure because our dad, Blake Abbott, was just the band’s entertainment lawyer versus being on the actual stage with them. Still, our parents had tried to protect us from the relentlessness of the paparazzi.
“You’re awfully silent for someone who needed company,” Edie said after we’d driven for about ten minutes.
“I need to stop driving before I talk,” I told her.
She didn’t say anything. Her phone was buzzing. She glanced down at it, grimaced, and put it in her bag.
“Was that Stephen?” I asked. My heart tightened, and my stomach rolled over again.
“No. Garrett.”
“I’m sorry. Take it. I promise to close my ears,” I told her.
She shook her head.
“It can’t be easy to talk while he’s in Scotland,” I said quietly, feeling remorseful for so many things.
“He can wait.”
We pulled into a coffee shop at the first exit. Edie ordered something without caffeine, and I went to order my regular but then realized I probably needed to order what she had. That just started the tears leaking out of my eyes all over again.
I left her in line and found a seat at a table without ordering.
She joined me, shoving a cookie my way, and I picked at it.
“What’s going on, ‘Ley?” Edie asked softly.
“He’s going to be mad if I tell you. But I think you’re the only one who might understand,” I told her.
“If you need someone to talk to, and he doesn’t understand that, then I’ll tie his shirt around his neck and give him a wedgie.”
I snorted and sort of smiled through the tears. “That’s more something Mayson and Ty would do.”
Edie nodded, and we shared a weak smile at my brother and our almost football star of a cousin who’d always been simultaneously the protectors and tormentors of the group.
“We screwed up. Stephen and I,” I told her.
She frowned, putting together all the clues we’d left her over the course of the day.
“You’re pregnant,” she finally breathed out.
I nodded.
“Oh, ‘Ley,” she said with a sigh of sorrow but also happiness. It was weird to have both of those emotions come together, but it was exactly how I’d been feeling. Sorrow and joy. Hate and affection. Loss and gain.
“It was one time, Edie. One frickin’ time,” I stormed out.
Edie laughed. “You’ve all had sex way more than one time. Remember that time when I came home and—”
“Don’t even,” I cut her off, but I was smiling. “I didn’t mean that. I just meant there was one time we didn’t use something…and he was still careful.”
Edie covered her ears. “Really, I don’t want to know anything about my brother’s sex life or anything he might have done with his…”
She shivered and stuck her tongue out, making a gagging noise, and it made me laugh again, the tight clenching around my throat and heart loosening just a tad.
We sat for a minute, me continuing to pick at the cookie and Edie eating hers. “When you found out about your baby,” I said, barely able to speak, “did you automatically know you were going to keep it? Did you ever consider…” I trailed off.
How was I going to actually go through with it if I couldn’t even say the words?
“Honestly,” Edie said, “we were too far along before I realized.” There was no judgment in her tone. “I guess we still could have, but it didn’t seem right when it had toes and fingers and…”
“It has a heartbeat,” I said, tears escaping. Edie dug in her purse and handed me a pack of tissues. When I was done blowing my nose, she squeezed my hand.