"Yeah." Swallowing deeply, I steeled what resolve was left in me, and choked out the words, "Okay, Mam."
Less than a minute later, Mam’s face contorted in pain.
She turned a dark shade of red as her entire body racked with tremors.
And then I heard it.
The sound of high-pitched wailing.
Stunned, I watched as the midwife lifted a small infant, caked in bloodied mucus, out from between her legs. “Congratulations,” she said with a smile. “It’s another boy.”
I watched as they clamped the umbilical cord that connected him to our mother, and I wondered if the cord that attached me to her had ever been truly severed. It was invisible but still connecting me deeply to the woman who bore me. I wanted to let it all go. To just let the pain and pressure fall from my shoulders.
The midwife wiped the screaming baby down before bundling him up in a towel and placing him on my mother’s chest.
“Jesus,” I choked out, feeling my own body shake, as I stared down at the tiny purplish creature in her arms. “He’s tiny.”
“Is he okay?” Cradling the tiny bundle to her chest, Mam continued to cry and ask, “Is he okay?” over and over, as she pressed her cheek to its head.
“He’s perfect, Marie,” the midwife assured her. “A little on the small side, but then again, he’s a couple of weeks early. He’s more than making up for that with the pair of lungs on him.”
“What are you doing?” I demanded then, watching in horror as one midwife stuck a syringe into my mother’s thigh while the other began pushing down hard on her stomach. “Stop it, will ya? She’s only had a baby. You’ll hurt her.”
“It’s okay, Joey,” Mam said. “This is normal.”
“The fuck?”
“I promise your mother is perfectly fine,” the midwife explained calmly. “This is all very normal. We’re helping her uterus to contract so that she can deliver the placenta as quickly and as easily as possible.”
“The pla-what-a?” I gaped at the nurse and then swung my gaze to my mother. “There’s more?” I shook my head, horrified. “How the fuck can there be more?”
HE CALLED ME FAT
DECEMBER 18TH 2001
AOIFE
“It’s not true.”
“That’s what you said last time.”
“It wasn’t true last time, either.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Listen, just come over to my house after school. We can talk properly there.”
“So you can think up another bullshit lie to feed me?”
“Aoife, come on. We’re supposed to working through this. How can we do that if you won’t talk to me.”
“Why don’t you drag me to your house? You’re getting pretty good at forcing things.”
Blowing out a frustrated breath when I refused to relent, Paul stalked over to his desk at the far side of the classroom.
Almost two months had passed since the Halloween disco at the Pavilion, and to say that Paul and I were back on track would be a drastic overstatement –if we ever had been on track to begin with.
I wanted to end it on Halloween night and Paul didn’t.
In the end, we had agreed upon taking a temporary break from each other, which had actually helped our cause for a grand total of three weeks until I caved and agreed to try again.
After that, everything went back to exactly how it had been.
Within a matter of days, we were back to basics, and I was pretty fucking fed up with the whole damn thing.
I knew that Paul was sorry for being rough with me that night and calling me names and had been trying to make it right. Problem was I couldn’t seem to muster up the energy required to join him in fixing our relationship.
Because I wasn’t sure if I still wanted to have one with him.
I missed Paul the boy.
I wanted to stick around for that boy.
I did not miss Paul the boyfriend.
I wanted to run for the hills from that handsy, possessive bastard.
The only time I seemed to meet the former version of Paul was when we were on the outs.
Only then did he show me affection, take interest in what I had to say, and most importantly of all, treat me with respect.
When he was that version of himself, he was a pretty great guy.
The only problem was that great guy disappeared the minute he slapped a girlfriend label on my forehead.
The minute I had given him what he wanted, the controlling, self-absorbed asshole resurfaced.
Furious with myself for not holding firm but letting him sweettalk me back into a half-hearted relationship, I fought his shitty behavior at every hand’s turn. I knew deep down that I needed to woman up and end it for good, and to hell with the consequences. Because being stuck in this limbo, waiting around for things to change was making me miserable.
Paul’s latest display of assholeness, and the issue that I was currently fuming over, was the fact that there was one rule for me in our relationship and an entirely different one for him.
Flipping out at every hand’s turn if I so much as smiled too long at one of the lads in class, he had no problem doing the same with girls.
The double standards and hypocrisy set my teeth on edge.
He didn’t believe me when I told him that I wasn’t messing around behind his back, but I was supposed to turn right around and swallow every bullshit line he fed me when another rumor about him arose.
This morning, for example, Casey heard from Mack, who heard from Dricko and Sam, that Paul had been seen hooking up with some girl from Tommen College when we were on our break.
When I confronted him about the rumor, he swore it was lies, which led us to our current predicant.
I didn’t know what to believe anymore, but if it was true, I knew that I would respect him more if he would just be honest.
This latest rumor almost felt like the final nail in the coffin for our relationship. If Paul was sneaking around kissing other girls, and I was holding onto my heart for dear life, too afraid to part with it for fear of missing out on a never-was never-will-be relationship with Joey, then we were doomed.
Therefore, it was safe to say that I was coming to the conclusion that I would be better off alone.
Deep down in my heart of hearts, I knew that my giving into giving our relationship another shot had a lot more to do with the hoe-bag who was supposed to be sitting next to me than any of Paul’s apologetic proclamations.
And when I said hoe-bag, I meant Joey.
After our parting of ways at the disco that night, he had wholeheartedly thrown himself into contention for the school slut award.
Unlike before, when he seemed to have a little class and discretion about his conquests. Since that night, he didn’t seem to give a damn about who was watching.
Or that I was watching.
In the weeks that followed since the Halloween disco, we had resumed our comfortable little routine of throwing shade and exchanging banter.
Joey literally never brought up what had almost happened, and acted like nothing had so convincingly, that I sometimes wondered if I dreamt the whole thing up.
I knew I hadn’t, though.
The image of him kissing our classmate was scored on the inside of my eyes.
According to the rumor mill at school, Joey and Danielle had slept together the night of the Halloween disco.
Well, I suppose comparing ‘fucking each other’s brains out against a brick wall at the back of the GAA Pavilion’ to sleeping together was a bit of a stretch.
What I had felt when I first heard about it was worse than bitterness.
It had almost felt like heartbreak.
Rumors had continued to circle through the halls at BCS, horrible, vicious rumors about how they regularly hooked up. Rumors which shredded me every time they came my way.
Sick with jealousy every time I had to endure watching her fawn and paw at him during class, I didn’t even try to fight the murderous feeling that ignited inside of my chest when I saw them together.
Because the truth of the matter was that I felt something for him.
Something I shouldn’t, and something that definitely wasn’t good for me.
But I still felt it.