The Trouble With Before (23 page)

THE LAST TIME
I felt anything close to this type of loss lasted only briefly. It was after I left Michigan and stayed with Aunt Danni in Chicago. I was pregnant with Willa; my heart was broken into a million pieces. I had left the only life I had ever known and was shell-shocked. As my stomach grew, the pit of despair I was in seemed to grow deeper each day. I felt as though I was losing my identity each time I looked in the mirror.

I wanted to hate Will with everything in me. I wanted to be over him, but each month that passed was a reminder that he was the only person who made me feel alive. Even though I was in a new place where people didn’t know my mother’s sins, they read my own. I was a teenager and pregnant, and the father was nowhere to be found. I felt like a statistic, a walking billboard of my mistakes. I was in a nightmare I wanted nothing more to wake up from, yet I couldn’t.

When I hit six months, everything changed. Willa kicked me so much every day that I swore she was going to be a championship soccer player. I could sometimes see the imprint of her foot or elbow through my skin, and even though at first it looked like something out of
Alien,
eventually it became normal. I grew accustomed to it and almost welcomed it. I stopped seeing her as a problem I couldn’t wait to pass along to Aunt Danni; she had become my friend. A friend who knew all that I knew and would never judge me. She was the only piece I had left of the one man I loved and sacrificed everything for. She was my internal diary. I told her how much I missed home, and for me, home was my friends: Amanda, Chris, and even Aidan. She’d listen to me talk about what I wanted to do to the people who gave me looks at the school I went to.

I tried not to look at her as a daughter because I knew when she came, she wouldn’t be mine, and I knew with everything in me that was what would be best for her. So when I made it to seven months and she stopped kicking or elbowing me, I was terrified. I waited hours to tell Danni because I didn’t want to worry her even though I was scared out of my mind. After dinner, when she still hadn’t moved, I broke down in tears and told Danni. She tried to stay calm, but I could see in her eyes how afraid she was. As we drove to the hospital, I saw her hands trembling on the steering wheel. Yet she kept telling me it was going to be okay, that everything would be fine and to stop crying and we were going to laugh when the doctor told us we were two big scaredy cats.

When we made it to the ER, I felt as though I had to make myself breathe, and when they did an ultrasound and Willa was okay and I heard her heartbeat, I let out the longest breath I ever had. It was the first time I had ever cried out of sheer joy. I realized that as bad as my life looked and even though the circumstances that brought Willa into our lives weren’t the best, I wouldn’t have changed anything I’d done. I wanted, more than anything, for her to take her first breath and wrap her little hand around my finger.

The day she was born, I knew it was all worth it, even though I knew I wouldn’t be called her mom and she’d only know me as big cousin Lisa. I knew that I’d done the right thing by giving her a chance at life. She was the best parts of me, and without me there to ruin her, she’d be a better woman than I could ever hope of being. I wanted to name her Hope, because she was that to me, but Aunt Danni hated the name. She thought it was cliché, and when she asked what other names I had picked out, the first word that popped out of my mouth was Willa. That was the name I had picked during those days before my common sense kicked in and I realized the baby I was having wouldn’t create a happily ever after for Will and me.

I realized hope and fate had gotten me through, but today I realize that fate has caught up with me. She’s exacted her revenge, reminding me that I gave up my chance to be a mother and it was for a good reason. The little fantasy I had about actually giving it a try and being able to pull it off was laughable. I don’t have what it takes. The blood that runs through my veins comes from a mother whose best advice was to give my child away and a father who walked out and never looked back.

I had begun seeing myself as someone I had never imagined, and it was all because of Aidan. I thought he was my lifesaver, but he wasn’t. He was a pawn in fate’s sadistic game. I’d seen a glimpse of what I thought could be something . . . but Aidan and me as possible family was a fantasy, and a stupid one at that.

Me and Aidan? Yeah, right.

He’s never even looked at me as anything but a friend, and to think he would have been okay with raising Brett’s kid when he can’t even commit to a girl he’s been with a year was ridiculous. The worst part is . . . just as my life . . .

He makes me
feel
.

Even when my emotions were like a storm around me—hurt, pain, loss, regret—he steadied me and made me feel as though I was somewhere else. He made me feel as though even after everything that’s happened, something good could still exist.

But that’s just another one of fate’s cruel tricks. I’ll only ever feel something for men I have zero chance to be with. At least I see that now. She won’t ever get me again with dreams of a family, of true love. I had imagined it with Will, hoped for it with Brett, and saw glimpses with Aidan. Now I’m done with it. No more mirages for me.

I see things
very
clearly now, and I’ll
never
get things misconstrued again.

A
S HUMANS, WE
get used to things. We come to rely on routines, patterns to make sure things are okay. At least that’s what I do. Disruptions to patterns throw me off. I think that’s what threw me from Hillary more than anything. She went from being the cool, fun girl, to being overbearing and demanding, and it came off to me as kind of psycho. Well, maybe psycho is too strong a word, but things like that rattle me.
But
if there was any pattern I’ve ever wanted to break, it’s the one Lisa fell into . . .
after.

The first night was her hardest.

I know because as she lay beside me, pain radiated off of her. I could feel her holding on and trying not to float away. I tried to be her anchor, her reminder that it’d pass and she could get up and keep going. That’s what I always did.

I didn’t want her to let go of the person I’d seen her becoming. I wanted her to hold on to her hope and let it bring her out of the darkness that seemed to be swallowing her.

At that moment, she just needed me there. She didn’t want to hear words or for me to try to fix it; she just needed me. So for two weeks straight, I’d climb in beside her at night and she’d drift off to sleep.

Until the night the door was locked when I tried to go in.

I was shut out. Scared she couldn’t handle her pain alone, convinced that she wanted to drown in it, and I didn’t want her to drown. I wanted to be her lifesaver.

I think she wanted to learn to swim alone.

Letting her felt wrong, and I missed lying beside her, having her near me in bed. Holding her was a pattern I started to like. It never felt awkward or uncomfortable. It was easy, nice, and I wanted to be there.

I thought maybe it was a step in the right direction though, her getting her getting peace back. Maybe she needed to handle things alone. But I wanted to tell her she wasn’t by herself in this, that as long as I was breathing, I’d do whatever I could to help her get through it. But patterns are hard to break and habits even harder. I had a pattern of not getting close enough to girls to miss them, and a habit of not sitting around and moping about it.

I’m not the guy who pores over feelings in his head. I want to tell her that I see her differently, that I miss being around her, miss us hanging out with Willa. Even though I’ll never get the extent of what Lisa’s dealing with, I just want her to let me in and let me help her. I want her to talk to someone who will understand what’s going on, and I can think of only one person who can do that, but it complicates everything.

I pull my head from under the hood of the 1962 Chevy Bel Air I got last week. It’s a mess, a broken but beautiful catastrophe, and it’s exactly what I need to throw myself into to get my focus off a girl who’s locked me out of her thoughts and room.

“Hey.” Her voice throws me off because I haven’t heard it in so long.

I turn around. She doesn’t look anything like how I expected her to look right now. I kind of imagined that when she ventured out of the house, she’d be in clothes too big for her, her eyes red and her hair a mess, but instead, she looks right out of a dream, a sort of X-rated one.

Her black jeans might as well have been painted on, her white leather jacket is unzipped low enough that her cleavage is out, and her long blond hair falls over one shoulder. She walks toward me, and I take a deep breath as she gets closer. Her green eyes find mine. They’re not red and puffy; they’re bright with a black line along the lids. She looks seductive, her lips covered in kiss-me-up-against-the-wall red.

Fuck.

What the hell is wrong with me? This is Lisa. Lisa, who just went through a traumatic experience, who should be in pajamas and eating ice cream, not looking as if she’s on the way to get fucked.

“Whose is that?” she asks.

I glance behind me, having totally forgotten about the car. I clear my throat. “Mine. I bought it last week.”

“Cool,” she says as she walks around it.

I try to rip my eyes off the way her ass pokes out in her jeans and the way her high-heeled boots make her hips sway. She slides her hand across the car as she examines it.

“You’re doing it. You’re living your dream, huh?” she says with a soft smile that makes me forget for a minute that this is strange.

Where the hell did this one-eighty come from?

“Right now she’s a nightmare, but with some work, who knows,” I say.

She grins, leaning back on the car. “Or you could keep her. One man’s nightmare is another man’s dream.”

Her eyes are seductive, as though I’m being ensnared, but I know that’s not what’s going on.

“Um, where are you going dressed like that?” I ask, trying to hide the surprise in my voice.

“Oh, I got a job.”

“Don’t you have a job? And when did you do this?” I ask.

“I had the interview last week,” she answers as if it’s not a big deal.

“What about working at the school?” She hands me a towel from the trunk of the car, so I wipe oil and dirt off my hands.

“It wasn’t really me.”

“What do you mean not you?” I ask, walking toward her.

For a second, the confidence in her eyes disappears and she seems caught off guard, but it doesn’t last long. “I was doing that for . . . it doesn’t matter anymore.”

For a second, I see a flicker of the pain she’s in and trying to hide behind the red lipstick and leather boots. A distracting disguise, but I see through it.

She swallows hard and tosses her hair, giving me a self-assured grin. “Things have changed, and this is a better fit.”

I let out a deep breath and run my hand over my head.

“Don’t you want to know where my job is?” she asks in a playful tone.

“Do I want to know?” I ask with a chuckle, and she frowns at me.

She rolls her eyes. “It’s just Ardeby’s.”