“Ohmygod! Will you stop and listen? I am not pregnant with your baby!”
Patricio’s eyes went wide and then wider. His handsome face went from upset to enraged. “You…you…” He shook his finger in my face. “I knew it! I knew you were fucking that Max behind my back.” He began ranting in a long string of Italian words I did not understand spare one: puttana. “Slut” in Italian.
I crossed my arms over my chest. Lorrrd, if he’d just shut the hole in that hot head of his for one minute and listen.
I stood there as Patricio screamed at me, his arms up in the air, waving all around. Strangely, it sort of reminded me of the way he danced.
After several moments, me waiting patiently for him to finish his giant man-tantrum, he said one final thing: “You and I are through! Finito!” He turned and headed for the door.
“Wait, but…”
He was gone with a jingle before I could finish, leaving behind only the angry static in the air.
So…Max thought I was pregnant with Patricio’s baby and he still wanted me. Patricio thought I was pregnant with Max’s baby and then called me a whore and dumped me.
Wow. Just wow. But my brother had been right. The baby variable really had shown me their true colors.
“Well, you’re right about one thing, Patricio. We are finito,” I mumbled to the closed door. I would never let a man speak to me like that in English or any other language. He hadn’t even given me the opportunity to explain. Still, I needed to set the record straight. I couldn’t have him going after Max or taking some sort of revenge.
I slid out my phone to text Patricio.
Me: I’m not pregnant, you idiot. But, yes, we are over. Arrivederci!
I set down my phone and covered my face. Dammit. How had things gone so quickly from walking up a hill toward a happier place in life to sliding down back into the muck?
But as I stood there, looking around my empty store, at ten past the hour—not a customer in sight—I felt that churning in my stomach. Discomfort, knotting, nausea. It was like my body wanted to tell me something that my mind didn’t want to accept. Could it be the fact that I had been seriously considering marrying Patricio without really getting to know him? Was it that I’d opened this store, knowing my chances of making it a success were nearly impossible? I had ignored the facts because I’d been focused on having something of my own, something to control, perhaps? Or was it the fact that I kept lying to myself, looking for distractions and pretending I was over Max when I really wasn’t?
I groaned. “I need my shrink.”
“So you’re having doubts about your recent choices.” Sitting in a brown armchair in front of me, notebook in hand, Clara looked over her black reading glasses at my face. “Tell me more about that.”
I looked out the window to our side, which overlooked her English garden and the stone pathway leading to a small dirt lot on the other side. It was the one thing I loved about Clara’s home office, the whimsical countryside charm as you approached the separate back entrance of her two-story cottage-style house. It made a person feel like they were somewhere safe and happy. Even her clothes—white cardigan, jeans, and flip-flops—made me feel more relaxed, like I was only talking to a friend. Who charged one hundred bucks an hour.
“It’s more than that,” I said. “It’s like a part of me knows I’m going in the wrong direction, but I don’t know what the right direction is.” Even now, as we spoke, I felt all twisty inside. “And the other part of me feels angry as hell because this isn’t me. I don’t do self-pity. I don’t wallow.”
“What do you do?” She pushed her dark bangs off her forehead.
“I focus and go after what I want. I fight. I knock down barriers.” It was the only way I knew how to live.
“Maybe you need to use that same wonderful drive of yours and focus it inward for once. Use it to figure out what you really want—actually, strike that. Use it to figure out what you need. But, Lily, promise me you’ll take some time and really think about what your stomach is trying to tell you before throwing yourself into something.”
“You mean something like Max?” I asked.
“You can’t deny you have very strong emotions for him.”
“No, I can’t. But I’m not going to risk getting hurt like that again, if that’s what you’re worried about.”