Chapter 15 The Dad Who Stepped Up Cara
“THIS IS SILLY, MéMèRE.”
“Being dressed to impress is never silly, mon c?ur.”
“Who am I impressing? Surely not Dr. Brenling. He can suck my—”
“Big, fat dick,” she finishes with a sigh, giving me a closeup of her face as she uses the iPad as a mirror to paint her lips. “You don’t dress nice for the doctor, Cara. You dress nice for you. Because it makes you feel good.”
But I don’t feel good today. I feel… tired. A bone-deep exhaustion I can’t put into words. My eyelids are heavy, my muscles sore. Every step I take feels like gravity is pulling me closer and closer to the floor, to collapsing.
I don’t want to look good today. I want to look how I feel.
“You know what I always say, darling? Life could be falling to shit, but when your dress hugs your ass just right and your cleavage makes a man stop talking for once in his goddamn life, at least there’s two things right in this world.
” She brings her tea to her mouth, brow quirking above the rim.
“There is almost never a good reason for a man to be talking. Not when there are much better uses for their big mouths.”
A laugh barrels out of my throat, and I’m reminded why I called my grandmother this morning. She has an uncanny knack for making me forget about the hard stuff, even when it feels like it’s consuming my mind.
Maybe that’s why I let her order me around my closet, pulling out dresses and skirts and denim that hug every curve just right. With each piece of clothing and her accompanying commentary, I feel a little bit more me.
“Gorgeous fit, but that pattern really does nothing for your waist, darling, does it?”
“Better, but it’s giving I got drunk in Cuba and came home married to the bartender.”
“Are you going to church or making a baby, Cara? For Christ’s sake, a little skin, please.”
I free an oatmeal-colored sweater dress from its hanger, slipping it over my head. The wide polo collar dips down to the plunging neckline, and the soft wool hugs my waist before flaring out at my hips, grazing my thighs. It’s warm and cozy, but I still look like I have my shit together.
I step into a pair of pointy-toed vegan-leather ankle boots the same color as my dress, tossing my long braid over my shoulder as I check myself out in the mirror, and Mémère lets out a low whistle.
“It’s nice, right?” My fingers dance over the wool.
“It’s nothing compared to that smile, Cara.
” She points at me, squinting. “Right there in the corner. Small and unsure, but still my favorite sight.” She smiles then, soft and so full of love.
“I don’t care what you wear, darling. But the world loses so much when your smile is gone.
Feel what you need to feel. Just remember who you are through all of this.
Don’t let anyone or anything steal that from you. ”
Shame floods my face, heating my cheeks.
I’ve never had to work so hard to hold on to pieces of myself.
Loving myself has always come so naturally to me, because it’s how I was raised.
And yet when I look down at my hands, the way they tremble, I’m reminded that I’ve been watching myself slip through my fingers for months now, struggling to hang on to what makes me who I am.
I squeeze my fists, unwilling to give up any more of myself to a battle I shouldn’t have to be fighting. I can’t control the outcome of this, but I can control the way it affects me.
Can’t I?
Footsteps thud up the stairs, and Olivia appears with her arms full, breathless and red-faced, dark curls shoved under a Vipers toque.
“Ah, shit. You’re awake.” She looks at the goodies clutched to her chest. “I woke up early and ran to Tim Horton’s.
I got Timbits, donuts, muffins, breakfast sandwiches, hash browns, and…
wow, I really went overboard, didn’t I?”
My heart floods with warmth as I look at her, a tired mom of a rambunctious toddler, currently what feels like three years pregnant with twins.
And still, when she texted last night to ask how I was feeling about today, and I relayed the news from Dr. Donkey Dick, she simply responded Give me 30, and thirty minutes later, like clockwork?
My best friend was walking through my front door.
Olivia places her hand over my stomach, bending to tell it sternly, “I’m putting a baby in you today.” She frowns, standing. “I heard how it sounded after I… I… oh, forget it.” She drags a hand down her face, then grins when she sees my iPad. “Mémère!”
“Oh, sweet Ollie. As gorgeous as always.” Her eyes travel over Olivia, draped in one of Carter’s hoodies. “Cara, do we have time to dress Ollie too?”
Olivia looks down at herself. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”
“Everything,” Mémère and I answer at the same time.
I grin, tugging on one of Olivia’s long curls. “You look perfect.”
She turns around, huffing, and Mémère gasps.
“Ollie, you’re pregnant! Congratulations!”
Olivia’s eyes coast to mine. “I am,” she answers softly as I turn away. “With twins.”
“Oh my. Twins? You brave soul. Who’s the lucky man and why haven’t I met him?”
My heart clenches as I shove my things inside my purse. “You remember Carter, Mémère?”
“Carter, Carter… Oh! Fiercely handsome but a tad bit slutty.”
Olivia snorts. “Spot on.”
“Yes, I could never forget him. He’s the father? Oh boy. You know, something tells me he’ll be a wonderful father.”
I don’t bother reminding Mémère that Carter is already a father, because this is Olivia’s second pregnancy.
I don’t remind her that when Carter proposed to my best friend at my wedding, Mémère downed her wine and toasted to the end of an era, and then clarified that she was talking about his slutty era.
I don’t remind her that she was at their wedding later that year, or that she held Ireland when she was two months old, remarking that Carter’s dimples were endlessly more charming in his daughter’s cheeks than his own.
Instead, I force a smile and say, “I think you’re right. Carter will be a wonderful dad.”
“Emmett too,” she says happily, and my blood runs cold. I want to find comfort in the hand Olivia lays on my back. Want to close my eyes and drift away so I don’t have to hear the next words out of my grandma’s mouth as her memory fails her again.
“When are you and Emmett finally going to get around to having a baby?”
FERTILITY TREATMENTS, I’VE FOUND, mean straddling a fine line between wishing you were numb to it all and begging to feel something, anything, to remind you you’re alive, that you’re still here, still fighting.
But the truth is, some days the fight just hurts too damn much.
Some days it’s an obsession, a brain focused only on calendars and symptoms, sex timed exactly right, thousands of dollars spent on vitamins, and trying every silly superstition just in case.
Some days it’s bitter, ugly resentment. Hours upon hours spent searching for an answer I’ll never get, an explanation that doesn’t exist. A vicious game of self-loathing, picking apart every piece of my body, a body I’ve spent years loving and respecting, suddenly hating every useless fucking inch of it.
It’s a never-ending cycle of grief, one that starts over every single month, forcing you to shove aside pain you haven’t healed from yet or fall behind. And every day? Every damn day it’s fucking terrifying.
Even now, as I lie in this room, dressed in a blue paper gown and clutching my best friend’s hand in mine, I’m… scared. Scared of the procedure. Scared of the future. Scared of the state of my brain, and whether Emmett can love me enough for the both of us.
Scared of whether my love will be enough for him.
Because at the end of this, that might be the only thing I have to offer him in this lifetime.
And that? That’s what makes me wish for the numbness.
“We’re ready to get started.” The nurse smiles patiently, eyes flitting between the digital clock on the wall and Dr. Dipshit, who’s been tapping his fingers on the counter and huffing as if I’m not paying him out the ass for every second of his precious time. “We really can’t wait much—”
“Can you just… just…” Panic flares in my chest, and I squeeze my eyes shut. He was supposed to be here, on the phone, his eyes on mine through the screen. “Can you try him again?”
Olivia pulls out her phone, and tears sting my eyes, blurring my vision as I listen to the call go directly to voicemail for the umpteenth time. “Hey.” She cups my face in her warm hands. “You’re not alone. I’m here, and Emmett is always with you.”
“Why isn’t he answering?” I shake my head, biting my lower lip as my chin trembles. “I don’t want to do it without him.” My chest heaves as I struggle to hang on to what little of my composure I have left. “I’m scared,” I cry softly.
“I know. It’s okay to be scared.”
“I want to hear his voice.”
“I—” Olivia snaps her mouth shut, brow furrowing as a door slams somewhere beyond this sterile room. She twists, looking toward the sound as voices erupt out in the hallway.
“I’m here!”
“Emmett?” I rocket up so fast I topple sideways. Olivia barely catches me before I can roll right off the bed and tackle her to the ground with me.
“Sir, what are you—”
“My wife! I’m here for my wife!”
“Excuse me, sir, but you can’t—”
“Respectfully, please shut up!”
The door flies open, and my heart pounds out of my chest as the frame is filled with my favorite sight: six feet and three inches of broad muscles, wild blue eyes, dark blond hair in perfectly tousled disarray.
“I’m here! Fuck, I’m here.” My husband keels over, grasping his knees as his chest heaves.
He thumbs over his shoulder. “I ran. From the parking lot. Got the elevator but… some asshole kid… pressed every button. Lit it up like a… goddamn Christmas tree. Ran up”—he pauses to gasp for air—“all six flights.”
My body sags, heavy with relief. I breathe in the scent of him as he sweeps me into his arms, painting my neck with kisses. “What are you doing here?”
“You said you needed me.”
“You came back for me?”