Knights in Shining Armor
April, 2003
Quite frankly I’m torn between the shock of Leo being twenty feet away from my pregnant body, and the audacity of Slutty Co-worker. Forget the unemployment line, that woman will be lucky to make it out of this building alive. I hear her prying little footsteps get closer to the meditation room, and I use up every second until she reaches me to figure out how to deal with the hand she just dealt me. I take notice of the door opening and then closing softly behind, but I don’t turn around.
“Hunny?”
Silence.
As sweet as I’ve ever heard Slutty Co-worker, she chirps, “You look real pretty today.”
“How would you know? You’re staring at my back.”
“Your back looks real pretty today. Can hardly tell there’s an extra twenty-five pounds strapped on to the front of it.”
Brushing off her lame attempt to boost my vanity, I unleash.
“Who the hell do you think you are to ask him to come here?”
“Well, techinically I-”
Turning to face her, she can now see the look of terror in my eyes.
“You had no right to email him. You had no right to…to make me have to see him again. To have to tell him to his face that this baby could be somebody else’s.”
“Chrissy, I-”
“Jesus, don’t you get it? We said our goodbye’s and they were good. I had something special to remember him by. But now? Now there’s just shame, and it’s all because of you.” Letting out a snide snicker, “Oh, but that’s right, you wouldn’t get it because you’ve never been in love. All you have are empty one-night-stands, and a phone book full of phone numbers of men who could care less about you.”
After biting her upper lip to control her own emotions, Slutty speaks slowly and softly when she says, “I’ll let you get away with that because I know what I did was wrong and I can see how mad you’d be at me, but Chrissy all I wanted to do was see if his heart was still connected to yours. And look, it is. He flew all the way here to save you.”
“Save me from what? Myself?”
“No! From making the mistake of throwing good love away.”
From outside the mediation room window I can hear a car door slam. I look at the clock and actually start laughing at the insanity of the scenario that’s about to unfold.
“Welp, Kurt’s here.”
“WHAT?”
“Yep, while you were busy planning my life for me last night, I was busy setting up a meeting with Kurt…here…at ten o’clock.”
Glancing up the clock, Slutty Co-worker starts pacing back and forth muttering, “F*ck, f*ck, f*ck, f*ck, f*ck, f*ck….” And then she worriedly asks, “What are we gonna do?”
“We aren’t doing anything. I didn’t want any of this! You made the mess. You clean it up.” And then I turn back around and resume my meditation pose, faking calm.
A moment later I hear the door close behind her.
I can’t even begin to wrap my head around what’s happening out there. Will there be another fight? I take a deep breath in and a deep breath out to try and relax. Who will be the one to tell Leo I’m pregnant? Deeper breath in. When he finds out it could be Kurt’s, will he bust out in a fit of pathetic laughter at the woman he wasted so many years on? Deeper breath out. Will he rush home and into the arms of L, thanking God I’m out of his life? Now there is no breath to be found. I just sit in breathless silence…waiting to be saved. By what? I don’t know.
I take notice of the door opening and then closing softly behind. Wow, that was fast…and quiet. I don’t turn around. I hear the footsteps get closer and my eyes close tighter. I acted cool when I reprimanded Slutty, but I’m a mess, and scared to death about whatever she’s about to tell me.
“She wouldn’t tell me where to find you, so I started looking on my own.”
Leo.
“I don’t know why I’m here really. Things are finally working out for me.”
Oh my God, she didn’t tell him. He still doesn’t know.
“But she said you were in trouble, and it was crazy, I had to get to you.”
At once, a million thoughts are shooting through my brain. He still loves me. I love you too, Leo. I love you so much that I couldn’t bear to bring this predicament into your life. Is there a way we can make this work?
“I met someone new and I’m about to move in with her.”
With those words, I lower my head in agonizing defeat.
“But all I’m doing is staring at your back, and I feel like a fool for rushing things with her to take my mind off of you. I’m not sure what we have, Chrissy, because it f*cks me up. But what I do know is your smile changed my life. And the way you talked to me, I mean really talked to me. It always felt like you were the only one who ever really knew me. And I know you feel the same way. I know you feel like we saved each other when we met.”
With my eyes still closed as tight as tight can be, he continues.
“Until you, I let no one in. And I’ve let no one in since.” Letting out a surprised quiet laugh, he mutters, “To think I realized all of that from just staring at your back.”
He takes a few more steps forward, rounding my body, and I hear him catch his breath as he’s introduced to my protruding belly. I can sense his mind exploding with the words in the email that Slutty Co-worker sent to him, Chrissy’s in trouble…she needs you.
With a frog in his throat as big as the child in my stomach, he croaks, “Is that mine?”
My eyes still squeezed shut; I breathe deeply…buying myself meditative time to think of the right answer.
“Please open your eyes, Chrissy…Please talk to me.”
Even though my heart rejects the idea that I slept with Kurt, I made a vow to never lie to Leo again, and dammit, that vow meant something to me. I can’t break it. I have to tell him the truth. I have to tell him that I don’t know if it’s his baby.
“Chrissy, please answer me. Is that my baby?”
I slowly open my eyes to look at Leo, hoping to draw strength to tell him the truth. But, when our eyes meet, there is no strength to be found. There is only the drug that I unbearably surrendered seven months ago and it rushes in like a tidal wave, causing my baby to do a happy dance inside of my body. Leo’s eyes are hopeful and for the first time since I became a mom, I feel like I’m part of a family and the emotion overwhelms me.
Kneeling down beside me, he gently whispers, “Please don’t cry.”
Likely due to the massive drug overdose coursing through my veins, I no longer care about the end result of the answer I give to Leo, I only care about hanging onto this feeling and keeping him here with me for as long as possible. For more times that I care to count, I’ve watched things that matter to me fade away. If I have to break a vow to prevent it from happening again, so be it.
He places his hand on my belly and gently asks one more time, “Is this mine?”
Leo and I saved each other before…maybe it’s possible we can we be saved again. With that hope, I place my hand on top of his and confess.
“Yes.”
As Leo pulls me to my feet to take in my different-than-he’s-ever-seen-it body, I see Kurt round the corner to the meditation room and come to an abrupt halt when he looks through the glass door. The seven roses he’s carrying drop out of his grip and to the ground as his eyes squarely focus on the man he was not at all prepared to see.