Lib Novel Page 5
But Joy put those to rest real fast.
She’s good like that. She knows when to yell at you until your brain cells snap back in place or shake you until you realize it wasn’t you. It was always him.
Justin is the issue here. He is the manwhore who could never have enough, and it finally caught up with him when over the last couple of weeks, the students he thought it was a good idea to sleep with, decided to come forward and do a little tell all.
Yeah, Justin Hunt is in deep crap now and it almost makes up for everything he has done. Him losing his precious status almost makes up for the fact that I was all but a toy to him. A pretty, willing distraction when he needed one. And not once did he try to contact me or offer a single explanation for anything.
Joy got one, but not me.
Because who am I?
Just some silly, little assistant he could use and forget.
No, I need to snap out of this! I need to remember what Joy said. “Forget the asshole like dust under your bed. Sweep it and throw it away or else you will keep sneezing.” But it was much easier to keep on track when she was here, working alongside me. However, Joy had to leave a few days ago to go see her father who had been diagnosed with cancer—or that’s what she was told at least—and now I am all alone.
Well, it’s me, the toilet bowl and…ten pink lines.
See? Things could definitely get much, much worse.
A week later I can no longer pretend. I can no longer play the role of a naïve, in denial girl, hoping that somehow five different brands of in-home tests were all faulty because my vomiting doesn’t cease its fit. My period is nowhere to be seen, breasts are slightly larger and hurt like a mother… And those ten pink lines turn into elevated hCG levels on the blood test I drew myself late at night when there was no one else around.
When not one soul could see me sliding down the wall as my tears ran down my cheeks. When no one could question why I smashed half of the glass tubes in the laboratory or why I cried out and kept asking the universe, “WHY? WHY? WHY?” nonstop.
Through my tear-coated eyes, I look down one more time to the paper clutched tightly in my fist where the simple, English, black letters on white, printing paper state one simple truth…
I am pregnant.
Very pregnant.
Very alone and pregnant.
Very screwed, alone, and pregnant.
I am pretty much every kind of pregnant except the happy and excited one, and I think that kills me more than the fact itself.
Becoming a mother never did make it to my life plan. It never seemed like an option with everything I want to accomplish, yet…
Yet before I even think of jotting down the pros and cons or do any of my regular pragmatic brain crap, my heart has decided to take charge and decide that I will have this baby.
And I will protect her or him with all I’ve got.
Despite the tears still making their exit, I let out a long shaky breath, look down at my still flat stomach and lay my shaky hand on top of it.
“It’s you and me, little one. Just you and me.” Strangely, talking to the tiny life growing inside of me—the one I never saw coming—fills my heart with a whole new emotion, one I don’t understand, yet it makes me smile. A small, unsure lift to the corners of my lips but a smile, nonetheless.
Gently, I draw the palm of my hand across my stomach. “I hope you are ready for this, bug. Because I am not sure I am.”
I don’t know what being a mom is, mine never bothered to show me.
But hell, I’ll crawl to the finish line, dragging myself there on sheer will if I must, but I will give this baby the best life I can.
After I finally sit down and write “the plan.”
So, I am giving myself another two minutes to pity little poor me, to pop the last balloons of illusion I’ve created, to cry and scream in the empty lab until I cut that crap right out. I am giving myself the last two minutes to allow Justin Hunt into my head. The very last two to send him to the lowest pits of hell for making me fall for him. Because he doesn’t deserve a second more.
“Deep breath in and out,” I instruct myself, and do just that. Then squaring off my shoulders, I step over the pile of broken glass, pull my chair out and get my notebook out.
My Life Plan two point oh