33. CHARLOTTE
33
CHARLOTTE
“ S orry to drop in on you like this,” I said to Maya when I arrived at her apartment unannounced.
“Never be sorry,” she said and hugged me. “I always have time for you.”
She shut her laptop.
“Were you working?”
“I can work later. It’s the advantage of working remotely, right?”
I nodded and sank onto the couch.
“What can I get you to drink?”
Usually Maya made us coffee or poured wine without even asking—she knew me so well. But wine was off the menu for a while, and coffee made me sick.
Most things made me sick these days.
It felt like I had every side effect of pregnancy, from morning sickness to food aversions to cramps.
“Water, please,” I said. “That’s about all I can hold down at the moment.”
Maya looked worried. “What did your doctor say?”
“She says that it’s nothing to be worried about at the moment—I can keep most food down when I make sure it’s plain, and she says after the first trimester is over it should get better. Apparently some people just have it worse than others.”
“I’m so sorry,” Maya said and rubbed my back.
I covered my face with my hands for a second and took a shuddering breath.
“It’s okay. It won’t last forever, right?”
“You’re right.” Maya didn’t sound as confident as I’d hoped she would, and I understood why.
The pregnancy would only last a few more months, but after that, I would have a baby, and my whole life would change.
And right now, everything felt impossible to face. As well as being sick all the time, I was very down in the mouth, and some days, I just wanted to turn around and go back to bed.
“You still haven’t talked to him?”
I shook my head. “What’s there to say?”
“I think he has a right to know. You deserve help from him if nothing else.”
I nodded. I knew she was right about that, but I couldn’t even think about Alex without crying.
“I just can’t go back to him right now. After the conversation we had… I can’t believe he ended up being exactly the same as my dad when that was what I’ve been trying to avoid.” I sighed heavily.
“Do you really think he’s exactly like your dad?”
“How could he be any different? He made his decision based on how much money he would get.”
Maya hesitated.
“What?”
“I don’t know… I just think maybe it’s not that straightforward. I mean, sure, it’s about money. But he’s the CEO of a company, and he has a lot of people to look after. He’s responsible for the income of a lot of different families and their livelihood, and if he lets them down, it’s not just about choosing money or leaving it.”
I considered it. She was right in a big way. If something went wrong in the company and Alex had to lay off all those people, that would be a lot worse than the environmental damage that was being done right now.
“I can’t tell him,” I said grimly.
“About the baby?”
I nodded. “He won’t want to be a father. He told me before he’s not ready to be a father.” I didn’t tell Maya about him being adopted. I felt like it was unfair to tell someone else that when he’d told me in confidence. I had the feeling that it was a big thing to him, and although I was furious with him, I didn’t want to betray his trust. “I just don’t want to be the one to do that to him, to put him in a situation he didn’t want in the first place.”
“It’s not like you planned this,” Maya said. “I mean, you’re going through it the same way he would be—it wasn’t what you wanted right now, it was unexpected, unplanned… but you’re stepping up to the plate and having this baby. Don’t you think he would do the same?”
“I don’t know.” But that wasn’t true. I did know. Alex would step up to the plate without an ounce of hesitation. He would do the right thing simply because it was the right thing, even if it wasn’t what he wanted at all.
And that was what I didn’t want to do to him. I didn’t want to force him into something I knew he didn’t want and wasn’t ready for.
No matter how angry I was with him, I still cared for him.
A lot .
I was in love with him, in fact.
Which was exactly why it was better for us if we didn’t do this together. We had to go our separate ways. He had a company to take care of, and he wasn’t ready to be a father. And I had the environment to fight for, which went directly against what he was doing.
It was just better this way.
“Look, I know it’s hard right now,” Maya said. “I know you’re going through a tough time, and I wish I could do something to make it better.”
“Just you being here for me is enough.”
“But think about it, okay? Think about talking to him. You deserve someone to stand by your side. You’ve always been there for everyone else, almost putting yourself last for the sake of a cause or for someone else, and it’s time you put yourself first and find someone who will do the same for you.”
“Thank you, Maya. But I think this time around, that won’t happen for me. I’m not going to try to fight that. I just need to get to a point where I’m okay with how things are.”
Maya nodded, and we sat in silence for a while. It meant a lot to me that I had someone in my corner, at least.
I wished Alex could be a part of this, too. But I would do this alone and let him live the life he wanted to live. He’d been through enough pain and destruction for one lifetime.
He deserved a bit of peace, and I wouldn’t be the one to take that away from him.
When I finally got home, it was getting dark, and I was painfully aware of how quiet and lonely my apartment was.
I flicked on all the lights until at least there wasn’t any darkness and opened the fridge to try to figure out what I could make for supper that wouldn’t upset my stomach too much.
Someone knocked on my door, and my stomach twisted.
I’d been determined to stay away from Alex, but I hadn’t considered what I would do if he came to me.
When my visitor knocked again, I couldn’t just pretend I wasn’t home. All my lights were on, after all.
“Coming,” I said, and I swallowed hard, my hand trembling when I reached for the door.
Gabe stood in front of me.
Equal measures of relief and disappointment washed through my body and I struggled to understand what exactly those emotions meant.
“Hey, Gabe,” I said, immediately emotional. “You have no idea how happy I am to see you.”
He pushed past me into the house, a scowl on his face.
Oh.
He was angry.
This wasn’t the warm, happy reunion after he’d been away for a while.
“What were you thinking?” he demanded right away, whirling around to face me.
“You’re talking about Alex.” Alex had told me that he’d gone to see Gabe and that my brother was furious about it.
“Yeah. I thought you knew better than that.”
I was suddenly angry. “Excuse me? Better than what, exactly? Having fun? Meeting someone? Falling in love?”
Gabe narrowed his eyes. “Don’t tell me you’re in love with that asshole.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I demanded. “Am I not allowed to live my life at all? I know you’re protective, but Jesus, Gabe.”
“You deserve so much better!” he cried out. “You have no idea what the real world is like, what men can be like—”
“Do you think I’ve been living in a bubble all this time? Do you think I don’t know what men can do and what life can be like sometimes? Hell, we’ve been through it, you and me, but you left to study, remember? There was a time when I had to figure shit out for myself, without you, and I did.”
Gabe shook his head. “It wasn’t my job to stay back there and look after you forever.”
“And I didn’t expect you to. But you have to understand that it means I had to look after myself, and I know what I’m doing.”
Gabe pinched the bridge of his nose and groaned.
“I’m supposed to keep you safe.”
“No. You’re just supposed to be my brother, to be there for me.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“There was nothing to tell.”
Gabe laughed sarcastically. “Yeah, sure. Because fucking my best friend is nothing, right?”
“It was nothing at first,” I said. “It changed after that. But there’s nothing you need to worry about now. I broke it off with him.”
“Good.”
I stared at him, shocked by how cold he was being.
“Good? You don’t even want to know why?”
“I don’t need to know,” Gabe said grimly. “My sister and my best friend is not an image I want in my mind so the sooner I can forget about it, the better.”
“Well, it’s nice of you to be so worried about my emotional well-being.”
Gabe shook his head.
“And for the record, I’m pregnant.” The words just tumbled out of my mouth before I could even catch myself. I was so frustrated that he didn’t want to acknowledge that our relationship, our breakup, meant something, I just threw it in there.
Gabe stared at me as if I’d sprouted extra heads.
“What?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper.
“You heard me.”
“And it’s his?”
I gasped. “Who else’s would it be?”
Gabe shrugged. “I don’t know. You’re so wise in the ways of the world these days, God knows what you’re up to.”
“Gabe!” I cried out. “You’re being such a dick!”
“Yeah, I know. But I’m fucking angry, okay? I just don’t want you to get hurt, and it doesn’t matter what the hell I do; short of losing myself, I can’t fix the shit they caused in our lives. First Mom and then Dad…” He turned away from me. “Damn it,” he muttered.
“Gabe,” I said softly.
He was furious, and he was being hurtful, but it came from a place of pain and guilt. Gabe had always felt like it was his job to look after me since our parents had fucked up and not done their job properly. But that wasn’t fair on him, and I didn’t want him to think it was all on him.
“I can’t deal with this shit right now,” Gabe said and shrugged me off when I touched his arm. “I’ll talk to you later, but right now… I just need to go.”
“You’re not even going to talk to me about this?”
“Later.”
He left, and I stared for a long time at the door he slammed shut behind him, shocked that he’d shrugged me off and iced me out like that. I knew Gabe needed to process, needed to think, and he always took a step back when he did that. But right now, I needed him to be there for me.
No one else was there for me—except Maya, of course—but I really needed my brother.
And he wasn’t there for me.
I felt completely forgotten and completely alone.
It wouldn’t last forever, that was what Maya and I had agreed, but God, right now, it felt like this darkness would never end.