My shoulders start to tip my body to the side, but I don’t care enough to even try to catch myself. Let me slam against the cold linoleum. Maybe it’ll wake me up out of this nightmare.
Dr. Walker’s on his feet faster than a post-sixty-year old man should be able to muster, his arm going around my shoulders to keep me from falling off the table. Tears cascade down my face like an open sieve, my wail surely landing on the ears of everyone in the building.
He pulls me to him, and it breaks me that I’m being comforted by a medical professional and not my husband.
Ty. Where are you? I need you.
I hear the doctor whisper to someone to call Lindsay Watson at Blown and I feel like I should tell him not to interrupt her day, but I can’t. All I can do is feel myself die a cell at a time.
“Elin?” Lindsay asks, shaking me out of my head.
I shrug. “What do you want me to say? Everything is peachy? My world is a bright and happy place?”
Lindsay rolls her eyes and drops her hands on the laminated countertop. “No, I don’t want you to say that. You’ve just been lost in your own head more today than usual, so I thought maybe something happened. I’m sorry.”
I look at her features and instantly regret my attitude.
“I just had a bad night,” I sigh, thinking back to the night before and how I didn’t sleep at all. Every minute that ticked off the clock, I was there to watch it.
I’ve only wanted one thing in my life—a family with the man I’m sure, even now, is my soul mate. If I can’t have that, what’s left for me? How do you replace that dream when it’s all that mattered?
“From seeing him?”
“Yeah,” I mumble. “He’s been gone for weeks and—boom! He’s back. And then he doesn’t even speak to me, Linds. Like I’m some stranger.”
“Give it time.”
“Time for what?” I look at my best friend, bewildered. She knows what I’ve been through. She picked me up that afternoon and sat with me in the middle of my bed and held me while I came to terms with losing a baby I never knew I was going to have. It was her that picked up the pieces that day. How can she tell me to give it time?
“Time to work out, Elin. He just came back. He was probably as overwhelmed as you were.”
“He had the advantage of knowing what he was walking into.” I sigh, exhaustion evident in the heaviness of my voice. “Late last night, I was sitting on my bed and a thought hit me: maybe it’s over.”
She blanches, reaching for my hand.
“No, really, Lindsay,” I sputter, my voice cracking. “Maybe it is. Maybe I just accept that we aren’t who we once were and we need to let it go.”
Her eyes fill with tears, her bottom lip quivering.
“What are you doing crying?” I laugh. “You can’t cry or I’ll cry, and I’ve cried enough.”
“I just hate this,” she sniffles.
“I hate it, but I don’t want to hate him. And it’s getting so easy to.”
She looks around the room before settling her eyes on me. “We always said we’d be pregnant together,” she whispers.
I take off around the island before stopping dead in my tracks. A cold rush races across my skin. “Wait,” I gulp. “Are you . . .”
I look up at my best friend and she nods slowly, her eyes filled with trepidation.
“Lindsay!” I exclaim, racing to her side. “Oh my God!”
Tears spill down her rosy cheeks. I grab her and pull her to me. I can’t say anything, the lump in my throat too massive to get around.
I’m thrilled for her, my best friend carrying my niece or nephew that I already know I will love more than any human being on this planet. But at the same time, I’m heartbroken because she’s right. We were going to do this together. Not only are we not doing it together, I’m starting from scratch. Without Tyler.
“I’m sorry, Elin,” she sniffles.
“Don’t you ever say that again,” I laugh, pulling back and wiping the tears from her eyes and mine too. “I’m happy for you.”
“I know. But I didn’t even want to tell you. It just feels so unfair.”
I paste a smile on my face for both of our benefits. “It’s life, and you’re bringing a new one, my niece or nephew, into the world. That isn’t unfair in any way. That’s exciting and exactly how it should be.”
The front door closes, causing us to jump, and his voices rolls through the house. “Jiggs? You in here? Linds?”
I grab the counter behind me for stability. My cheeks are stained with tears, but I’m too frozen, too off-guard, to dry them before he sees.
Ty walks around the corner and his sight lands immediately on me. He stops in his tracks, the playful smirk on his face vanishing. “I, uh,” he stutters, looking at Lindsay. “Linds?”
“Hey, Ty,” she says carefully. “Jiggs is out back.”
He doesn’t move a muscle, only his eyes, and those just enough to find me again. The energy between us crackles, the air thickening by the second.
He pulls his hat off his head, smoothing down hair that’s still damp from a shower. The movement is enough to rustle me out of my daze.