I knew pregnancy wouldn’t be easy. I knew that it would be difficult and tiresome and impede on my everyday life, but what I hadn’t planned for in all of my fantasies growing up was the loneliness.
I hadn’t imagined a life for myself where I did everything wrong. I hadn’t imagined marrying a man I loved in a shitty chapel in Vegas just to feel okay about sleeping with him, or taking on the role of a mother to his child, or having an annulment verified by a judge and avoiding eye contact with my ex husband as I shuffled out of the courthouse, or ending up pregnant with no support except money and a promise to share custody.
Through Ethan, Damien had insisted on covering my lack of wages and my rent. He’d added top-ups of thousands of dollars, little notes left on the transfers that said for whatever you want. Every time I saw one, it brought it all back up, brought up every emotion, every ache, and as I stared down at my banking app outside of the birthing class studio, I couldn’t stop myself from wishing I’d given him a little more grace.
Maybe then I wouldn’t be as much of a shell of myself.
Ethan had kept me updated to an extent on Noah. Three weeks turned into three months, and Noah was off for Christmas break. Damien, Caroline, Lucas, and him were going to spend Christmas and the surrounding days up at Damien’s cabin in Seattle, and I couldn’t help but think about what that would be like, couldn’t help but picture Noah’s face when he saw the settling of snow on the ground in the middle of the forest or his excitement when he realized the cabin had a hot tub.
I missed him. I missed both of them.
I had to hope, at least in part, that by sharing custody of our daughter, she would get to experience all of the things that Noah would. I’d get to hear them through her one day, and although it would be difficult and things would be strained by having one parent who wasn’t strong enough to be around the other, I hoped that the life she could have when she was with Damien would counterbalance it.
“All done for the day?”
Sophie sat in her idling beige Toyota, her window halfway down, her green jacket buttoned tight. She beamed at me as the door locks unlatched all at once.
“You good? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I’m fine,” I sighed. “Thank you for picking me up.”
The dizziness of getting back up onto my swollen feet after the class still hadn’t dissipated, so I placed my hand on the hood of Sophie’s Toyota to steady myself as I came around the front of it. Thankfully I wasn’t overly large yet, but I’d struggled to get used to the bump, struggled to come to terms with how much my body had changed in five and a half months.
I grabbed the handle on the inside of the car just above the window and lowered myself into the seat. My jacket felt almost useless — I was either running far too hot or far too cold nowadays, and as I unbuttoned it desperately because of the heat pouring out of her air vents, she looked over at me as if I was insane.
“It’s freezing,” she said.
“I feel like I just stepped out of hell,” I shot back, wiggling out of my jacket and tossing it over my shoulder and into the backseat. “Excuse me for being fucking pregnant.”
“Sheesh, Liv, calm down,” she grumbled. The car began to move beneath us. “Bad class today?”
I pursed my lips and focused on the tarmac through the windshield. Carsickness was a new problem I was being forced to deal with, and I really didn’t want to throw up in here a third time.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
“Everyone brought their partners today,” I sighed.
She didn’t say anything, and the idle tick of the turn signal filled the empty space instead.
“It just stung a little. And I’m trying not to let it bother me, but everything is bothering me,” I explained, my filter well and truly gone. “This seat being uncomfortable is bothering me. The heat is bothering me. The lack of snow is bothering me. Stupid Jennifer and her stupid husband with washboard abs and a wedding ring were bothering me. I can’t sleep right, I can’t reach my toes, I can’t drink wine, I can’t see Damien or Noah, I can’t take a deep breath without feeling like her foot is kicking me in the diaphragm. I can’t eat blue cheese and I can’t have sushi. My nipples are a different color and that’s starting to freak me out.”
The car came to a stop at a red light and she slowly turned to look at me. “I love you, and that sucks, but I cannot fix the majority of that.” She reached for the temperature dial and turned it down to sixty, and a wave of cool air finally blasted me, wicking away the thin sheen of sweat.
“Thank you,” I said, letting my head fall back against the headrest.
She bit her lip as we took off again, her gaze focused on the road instead. “Do you miss him?”
“Would you think it’s insane if I say I do?”
Sophie shook her head, her blonde ponytail shifting side to side. “No. I think what he did was psychotic and shit, but I think he did it with good intentions. I think he’s done as good of a job as he can in supporting you without being allowed to be present. And to be honest, Liv, I think you’re going to really struggle in a few months when she pops out and needs her mother close by at all times.”
For a second, I let my gaze drift out the passenger window. I didn’t want to see Sophie’s face as she said her words, but as quick as I’d let it happen, the nausea from carsickness started to grow and I was forced to bring her into my field of vision again.
“Have you guys talked about that at all? How is he going to split custody with you if she needs her mother and you won’t be in the same room as him?”
“We’ve had a bit of back and forth through Ethan about it,” I sighed. “We haven’t been able to come to an agreement.”
Her turn signal popped on again, and she took a right where I wasn’t expecting. Maybe there was traffic.
“He wants to be there when she’s born,” I added, my voice barely above a whisper. “I haven’t decided if I can handle that yet.”
An unexpected left, and I started to wonder if maybe she wasn’t taking me home. “I know you probably don’t want to hear this, but if you want my opinion, you should let him be there. It’s his daughter, too. I know it will be hard for you and that will only potentially make it harder, but I think he deserves to be there.”
The backs of my eyes burned for what felt like the millionth time that day. I’d been so overly emotional since getting pregnant. “I know he does.”
“Why are you worried about seeing him?” Another unexpected turn.
“Because if I see him, I’ll forgive him,” I choked.
“And you don’t want to forgive him?”
“I do want to forgive him.” I sniffled and wiped the little droplet of snot from my nostril with the back of my hand.
“I’m struggling to see the problem here,” Sophie chuckled, the first instance of a little bit of lightness in what felt like a far too heavy day. “If you want to forgive him and if you miss him, you’re just hurting yourself by not allowing that to happen.”
“But I’d be betraying what I want.”
The car came to a stop in a turn lane, the click of her signal indicating left. Gashouse Cove Marina was plastered on the cement sign in swirling letters on the other side of the road. “You just said that what you want is to forgive him. I think you’d be betraying what you wanted.”
My stomach turned as I realized we weren’t just making a U-turn. “Sophie.”
“I’m not going to apologize for this,” she snorted.
“Sophie.”
“Face your fears head on, Liv.”
