“You have to tell him.” Her hazel eyes pleaded with me, like a desperate mother afraid of her whole world crashing down.
“You have nothing to worry about. I promise,” I assured her. “I’m going to tell him when the time is right.”
“How do you know?” Rebecca whispered, bringing her fingers to her lips and tracing her lips. “What if he…?”
“He won’t. I know him. He’s not like that.” I lied. I didn’t know him anymore. I didn’t know what he’d say or do or think or feel once I dropped the bomb on him. All I knew was how he’d reacted years ago, and that was with cold, hard silence.
Chapter Eleven
10.5 years ago
Sitting straight up in the most uncomfortable wooden chair in the world, I listened to my Communications professor drone on and on about American dialects in popular media culture. As my mind wandered on that breezy October day, it occurred to me that I hadn’t had a period since August. Immersed in homework and classes and social obligations, I’d completely spaced it off.
The next day I sat in the exam room of a local pregnancy center as a nurse asked me a few questions, had me pee in a cup, and then walked me to a dark room. I waited alone until a sonographer rolled in a machine and started whispering casually with me about how maybe there was still time to do something about my “little problem”.
With numb fingers and stunted anxiety, I called Beau’s phone over and over beginning the second I left the clinic. He didn’t answer once. And later that night, I’d received a call from someone in his camp saying he couldn’t take my call. In a desperate state of not thinking clearly, I blurted out my message, “Tell him I’m pregnant!”
The man on the other end met my message with silence before exhaling. “Yeah, okay. I’ll tell him the big news.”
The man hung up, like an asshole, and I waited by my phone for Beau to call me back. Twenty-four hours passed, then forty-eight. Then a week. And then two. I tried calling him again a month later, but the line had been disconnected.
In a last ditch attempt to reach him, I called his parents’ house on the off chance he’d come home for Thanksgiving, but much to my dismay, his mother answered.
“How’s school going, Dakota?” Cybil asked, her voice as natural as a three-dollar bill.
“Fine,” I said, trying my hardest to hide the bitterness toward Beau that seemed to creep up in my tone when I wasn’t careful. “Do you know how I can reach Beau?”
Cybil paused. “He’s still on tour. I think he’s down in Oklahoma this week, making his way down into the deeper parts of Texas. We haven’t been able to reach him for weeks. Boy doesn’t answer his cell phone anymore.”
Her words mixed with the unknown, and my raging pregnancy hormones gave the sensation of someone clenching my head with a vice grip. “It’s really important. Is there any way I can reach him?”
“If I hear from him again, I’ll have him call you,” she said, though not in a way that convinced me in the slightest.
I waited for months for a call that never came.
The following February, I sat in the living room of Sam and Rebecca’s apartment in Lexington. Sam was attending med school at UK, and Rebecca had become my rock shortly after getting the news.
“Grammys are on tonight,” Rebecca said, handing me a big bowl of microwaved popcorn. I placed it on my belly, which had become a convenient shelf in the recent months. She flipped to the award show and took a seat next to me, covering my bare feet with a fuzzy blanket.
Two aging country singers stood at the microphone, reading off a teleprompter before the crowd went wild.
“Wait, what did they say?” I asked. “Turn it up.”
“They just introduced Beau Mason.” Rebecca seemed slightly less shocked than me. As far as I knew, he was nothing but a big deal in smaller circuits. Beau going prime time hit me like a ton of bricks all at once.
A black curtain raised, revealing the father of my child with his guitar slung around his shoulders and a shiny, six-piece band; a bunch of strangers who got to spend day in and day out with him.
“Good evenin’,” he drawled, his voice lower and his accent a bit thicker than before. His lips spread wide and carefree as he strummed his guitar, sending the crowd into an uproar. He wore the spotlight like a well-tailored suit, and damn, it looked good on him.
Electric currents of invigorating excitement and boiling rage prickled up and down my arms, and my heart sank down to my blanket-covered feet as a lump settled in my throat.
“Have I been living under a rock?!” I picked up the popcorn bowl and placed it on the table. “When did this happen?”
Rebecca shot me a concerned look. “You really don’t keep up on him?”
“I mean, I’ve looked at his website to see where his tours are headed. If he ever came to town, I’d go see him,” I said, running a hand over the underside of my belly. I’d imagined running backstage and showing him my condition. Maybe he needed to see it in person in order to dislodge the giant stick from his fame-whoring ass. “But I didn’t know he was this big.”
“I heard he secured some endorsement, and he’s going to be a mentor on some country singer reality show,” she said, throwing me an incredulous look from the corner of her eye. “He was on The Tonight Show a couple weeks ago. You honestly didn’t know about any of this?”
“I’m trying to focus on other things right now,” I said, neglecting to add that I thought about him every single second of every single day. Crossing my arms over the top of my belly and sinking back into the sofa, I watched as Beau and his band performed some upbeat, feel-good number before he shook his ass in his tight jeans and finished with his signature dimpled smile.
One performance on national T.V. was all it took for me to realize the man I’d loved more than anything in the world was suddenly a complete stranger. He’d moved on and left me in the dust, despite the promises we’d made to each other just six months back.
I couldn’t blame him. You give a twenty-year old kid from the middle of nowhere a fat stack of cash, millions of fans, and throw his name up in lights, and his priorities were going to change. I hated myself for believing him, and I hated myself even more for believing our love was special enough to transcend our destinies.
I watched as the stranger on the T.V. gave a final wave and a wink before disappearing off stage.
“You okay?” Rebecca asked, her hazel eyes kind. Though we were cousins, she was always more of a big sister figure to me. She’d been married to Sam since they were fresh out of high school, and they’d been trying to start a family for years before finding out Sam’s interior plumbing didn’t work right and it never would.