It takes over an hour for him to answer, but I grin like a dope when he answers: Just landed. I’ll call.
We watch a movie, then Melanie hops up from the bed. “Hey, Chicken! Did I tell you? Next guy I sleep with is in for a treat. I just took pole-dancing classes!” She grabs my floor lamp and proceeds to show us just what she learned, moving sinuously with her body, one jean-clad leg wrapped around the stem. “Kyle, that get your motor running?”
“Dude, it would be like incest if it did,” Kyle says, from where he straddles my desk chair.
“Why? You’re not my brother!” she protests. “Come on. Does it get your motor revving?” She moves her tush for him to see.
Kyle sits there, looking exactly like Justin Timberlake, and he says, hesitantly, “It’s . . . sputtering.”
“Pan, come here. Peter Pan, move with me so Kyle can get his rusty motor up and going. I’m going to teach you what I learned for free.” Pandora goes to the iPod dock and sets her phone on the base. A rock song immediately blasts inside my bedroom.
“All right, let’s get Kyle hard over there!” Discarding her leather jacket as if she’s stripping for the poor man, she heads over to Mel. And then she and Melanie start bumping asses and having a blast, and I find myself listening to the song, trying to find the lyrics through all the noise, wondering if it’s even something I’d ever play to him.
It’s useless, so I grab Remy’s iPod and put in my earbuds and listen to Avril Lavigne’s “When You’re Gone.” It’s so nice to listen to a song that you get. Or that gets you. That makes you realize what you’re feeling is human, and normal, even if it may be a feeling you wished you didn’t have.
I text him the YouTube link. He doesn’t text back, and I assume he’s in the gym, punching his bags unrecognizable.
How is he going to cope these two months apart?
I can’t shake off the thought that, even though I’m the more emotional one, this will test him more than it will test me.
I’m still wondering about it when the cramps begin. I shift on the bed as my friends keep talking and all my awareness hones in on the god-awful cramps that make my fight or flight surge to life. If feels like someone is hurting my baby. My own body is hurting my baby. I search the iPod for songs that calm me, and the only song that succeeds is “Iris.”
But the pain intensifies. I quietly remove my earbuds and slowly get up from the bed. My friends fall completely quiet when they see me walk, folded over, to the bathroom. I shut the door and when I check, I realize the blood is back. And heavy.
For a moment I just breathe roughly through my nose and lean my head against the tile, trying to calm down. I touch my stomach lovingly and try to talk to my baby in my head, telling him that nobody is going to hurt him. That he is very wanted and already very loved.
I imagine looking into the blue eyes I love while having to tell Remy that I lost his baby. A well of emotion seizes me again, and tears I thought I no longer had threaten to surface once more.
“Mel,” I shout through the door. “Mel, I don’t know if this baby is going to make it.”
She opens the door with a forlorn expression. “Brooke, he’s calling. It’s been ringing several times. Do I answer?”
“No! No!”
“You look bad, but he told me to tell him the instant you needed him. Brookey, I think I should let him know—”
“No! Melanie, NO. Look, he can’t do anything. He needs to fight! There’s something he needs to do. Our baby and I will support him, not hinder him. Do you hear me?”
“Then at least let me take you to the hospital—you look like you’re being torn in two!” she says.
“Yes—no! I shouldn’t move around. I need to . . . rest. I am not . . . losing . . . this baby. . . .” I drag in a breath and shake my head; then I sniffle. “Please bring me my phone?”
She brings it over and I text him instead. My friends are still here. Maybe we should talk tomorrow?
Same time?
Yes, any time
Ok
Good night Remy
You too.
I set the phone aside and close my eyes as another tear slips free. He’s a good and a quiet guy and he doesn’t text, but I already feel torn apart from him. Deep breath.
“Help me pull the progesterone cream out of my suitcase?” I say out to the room.
Mel comes out to the bathroom and starts clapping like some fifth-grade teacher who’s had enough already. “Guys, playtime’s over, I’m tucking Brooke into bed.”
Kyle and Pandora clean up their snacks, and I’m embarrassed to look at them with my swollen face, but I can feel their concern as I come out and lie down on the bed. When they leave, I smear myself with the cream, getting it on my stomach, my thighs. Then Melanie comes out of the bathroom in an old T-shirt.