Chapter 4
Ashley and I sat on her back porch listening to Tyson work in his shed while Tarik napped in the living room.
Ashley chattered about all the happenings in town, but I focused on the whine of Tyson’s buzzsaw to keep the vomit at bay.
We usually had our elbows pressed against her quartz kitchen island and buried ourselves knee-deep in gossip before family events, but even standing in her kitchen made me gag.
“Did you hear about Jessica Stalls?” Ashley said from her end of the porch swing. “Apparently, Clark found out their son wasn’t his and he filed for divorce last week. My mom heard from her friend that the actual father might be Dwayne Gibson.”
I turned to her, lifting my forehead from the cool chain of the porch swing. “Mr. Gibson? Our old gym teacher?”
“Yes!” Ashley shrieked.
I made a gagging noise, trying to not trigger myself to actually gag. “I thought I couldn’t have a worse baby daddy than Beau…but at least it’s not the man who wore knee-high socks and made me run laps until I cried.”
“Speaking of which, did Beau ever specify where he was meeting you for brunch?” Ashley asked.
I took a saltine cracker out of the sleeve that rested in my lap and nibbled on the corner. “No.”
Ashley pushed the toe of her black leather boot against the porch, letting our swing have a bit more momentum. “I’m surprised he waited so long after you told him.”
I swallowed my bit of cracker. “Well, he wanted to meet me sooner, but I told him I had Thanksgiving plans. Then I told him we were shopping the next day. I didn’t have enough energy to make up an excuse for Saturday, so…”
“So the procrastination train had to come to a stop,” Ashley finished before taking a sip of her hard cranberry seltzer.
I buried my hands in my hoodie pocket. Though I always had a tummy, my palms rested against an undeniable baby bump. Ashley never showed this early, not even with her second baby.
I cut a glance at Ashley’s pretty orange smock dress. She looked like a cover model for an autumnal magazine whereas I resembled a pumpkin that would sit in the background.
“I hope you sent Mrs. Copeland an apology text on my behalf already,” I said softly. “My PSU hoodie is all that fits me right now.”
Ashley shook her head. “She wouldn’t care if you showed up to Thanksgiving wearing a potato sack, especially once she finds out about the baby.”
The back door slid open and Ashley’s daughter stomped onto the porch in her pajamas with her pink silk bonnet over her curls.
“What baby?” Kierra shouted.
I winced.
“None of your business!” Ashley scolded. “And why aren’t you dressed, young lady? We go to Granny’s in an hour!”
“No, you said there’s a baby!” Kierra crossed her arms. “I wanna know!”
Ashley had no one to blame but herself. Kierra had to inherit the gossip gene from somebody, after all.
Ashley shot me a questioning look and I nodded, giving her permission to tell. What was the harm in letting Kierra know?
“OK,” Ashley said in a quiet voice. “Aunt Livvy is having a baby.”
Kierra gasped in excitement. “She’s sick like you were with baby Tarik!”
My stomach roiled and I clamped my teeth down.
Ashley sighed and held her finger up. “Yes, but it’s a secret. We can’t be telling people.”
Kierra furrowed her brows. “But you told me kids don’t keep secrets from adults.”
Ashley bit her lip and her eyes glanced up, as if the answer were written on the blue porch ceiling. “It…it’s not a secret. It’s a surprise!”
She pointed to the shed. “Like how we aren’t telling Aunt Destinee that Daddy is making her a bookshelf for Christmas. She’ll find out when the time is right.”
Kierra nodded. “So, everyone should know about Aunt Livvy’s baby when the time is right?”
“Yes, exactly,” Ashley said. She kissed her daughter on the forehead. “Now go put on the outfit Aunt Destinee made for you.”
Once Kierra ran back into the house, Ashley let out a long sigh. “That’s the life you’re in for as a mother, just making shit up on the fly.”
I shrugged. “I’m good at that. I was a trial lawyer, after all.”
Tyson shut off his saw and the crisp November air suddenly became too quiet. My stomach turned, but not with sickness for once.
“Ash, I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I’m sorry I told you to buy Miss Kaye’s house. I’m sorry I had you sign that contract with the city and then—”
“Don’t,” Ashley said, short and clipped. “You couldn’t have known they were going to fire you.”
I closed my eyes and held my tongue against the roof of my mouth so I wouldn’t be sick.
Although, I would have rather vomited my crackers all over Ashley’s porch than remember the morning when one of the partners walked into my office, said the two fateful words, and I was escorted out by armed security like a fucking criminal.
The bankers boxes with all the shit from my office were still stacked in my backseat, but I was finally coming out of denial that my career, my insurance, and my $2. 9 million were gone.
“Your law license is still good, right?” Ashley said with an optimistic lilt. “Why work for some assholes in thousand-dollar suits when you can open up your own firm?”
I shrugged. “Opening my own firm would mean a lot of upfront costs—money I don’t have.
Right now, my best option is working from my apartment and taking on contract work from other firms—you know, like reviewing documents and writing briefs.
Might not be enough to pay all my bills and it wouldn’t come with insurance, but I’ll just have to try. ”
Ashley glanced at my belly. “You could tell the other lawyers you’re pregnant. They’d feel bad for you and want to help you out!”
I snorted a laugh. “City lawyers don’t feel bad for anyone. If they can’t use you, they want to destroy you.”
Ashley pulled her seltzer from her lips. “Jesus, Liv. How you survived three years in that hellscape is beyond me.”
Late-night happy hours every week and meaningless sex with strangers—that’s how I survived it.
I patted my belly from within my hoodie pocket.
All my favorite coping mechanisms were out the window now.
If I hadn’t been fired, I don’t know how I would have survived the stress and long hours while being pregnant.
Sacrificing my own health while pushing toward the finish line was fine, but I couldn’t do that to my baby.
I would just have to be like Mom and…make it work somehow.
“Regardless, don’t worry about us—we’ll figure out how to fund the renovation,” Ashley promised. “We have over a million followers across all our platforms, I’m sure we can get some of them to chip in. Maybe we’ll give donors exclusive renovation content or something.”
I glanced at Ashley as she took another sip of her seltzer.
Going viral our senior year of college with that clip of her strangling me had been like catching lightning in a bottle.
What would have been a week of internet fame for most people, Ashley and Tyson had turned into a career.
That one viral moment snowballed into recognition when they started filming their house renovation, then became credibility when they documented turning the abandoned department store into Copeland’s Corner.
If anyone could get the eyes and support needed to turn Miss Kaye’s house into the most-booked event venue in the state, it was Ashley and Tyson. They had better fortune than anyone I had ever known.
I ran my hand across the swell of my belly. If only I could be so lucky.
Ashley spared me the embarrassment of squeezing between Tarik’s and Kierra’s car seats by letting me ride shotgun as Tyson drove us to his mother’s house for Thanksgiving dinner. I balanced the pies Ashley had baked on my lap while Tyson led the entire car in the Plains State school chant.
“Ride on, Stallions!” Tyson chanted as he pumped his arm.
“Ride, ride, ride!” cried Ashley and Kierra from the back seat.
I wanted to chant along with them, but I was too afraid I would vomit if I opened my mouth. Besides, I couldn’t stop thinking about my upcoming meeting with Beau.
Beau had sent me the address of where he wanted to meet to discuss the pregnancy, but I couldn’t find any information on the place.
My phone’s map showed that it was near a small lake—maybe the brunch spot didn’t exist and he was going to fill my shoes with concrete and throw me in the water to cover up a scandalous pregnancy.
I tapped my nails against one of the pie dishes.
As much as we hated each other, Beau was too cowardly to kill me.
No, he was probably sending me to an exclusive lakeside country club—so exclusive that the poors weren’t able to even look at it online.
We’d probably sit at a table with crisp white linens and drink grapefruit juice from crystal goblets as I explained that I was carrying his child.
My cheeks grew hot as my slightly puke-stained hoodie felt even grungier. Beau wasn’t going to hurt me, he was going to humiliate me. The thought of walking into this meeting when I was about to be a multi-millionaire was tolerable, but now that I again had nothing…
No, I didn’t have nothing. I had savings. Ashley and I were going shopping before our meeting. I could get a new outfit so I could charge into the battle of the brunch with some confidence.
But could I still afford my favorite stores? Maybe with their Black Friday sales, I could get a few pieces…practical pieces…maternity-friendly pieces…
Memories of cabinets full of plastic restaurant cups and packs of ramen weighed on my mind.
I wiggled my toes in my sneakers if only to prove I wasn’t just pretending they weren’t too tight.
I mentally ran through my morning routine—I had showered and put on deodorant so I was sure I didn’t smell, I had brushed my teeth in the sink of Ashley’s guest bath and not with a bottle of water I had filled from the school drinking fountain, and the only reason I hadn’t eaten breakfast was because of my nausea and not because it was the easiest meal to skip.
I grounded myself in the pressure from the glass pie dishes against my thighs.
I was an adult now. I had control over my life and my finances.
My bills were paid. My car wasn’t about to get repossessed.
My Thanksgiving dinner was coming from Tyson’s mother and not out of a cardboard box from the Beau L. Fontaine Family Center.
The back of my head fell against the headrest as I stifled a groan.
When I was in school, not a year had gone by where my mother’s name wasn’t on a list for holiday meals at the F.F.C.
I had always told myself that it was Beau’s grandfather’s name on the building to spare myself the mortification that I was only eating thanks to his charity.
But even if Beau had never set foot in the F.F.C. and never seen that highlighter-yellow clipboard with undeniable proof that my mother relied on his family, he knew what I was. He never had to say it, but I saw it in the way he looked at me and how he talked to me—I was poor, dirty, and worthless.
It didn’t matter that I had beaten him in the valedictorian race, or that I had cleaned up enough for him to want to fuck me on a couch, or even that I was bearing his child, Beau Louis Fontaine III was never going to let me forget that I was beneath him.
I set my jaw. No, I hadn’t let him win when I was a kid and I wasn’t about to let him win now that I was about to be a mother.
I would fulfill my moral obligation to let him know he had a child on the way and leave. I wouldn’t ask for his money or his involvement. My dad wasn’t around and I had turned out fine, and my child was going to be just fine too.
My child would grow up knowing we were strong, independent, and worthy. I had a long road ahead, so I needed to set that example now. I would walk into our brunch meeting, dressed my absolute best, and hold my head high.
I still had my dignity, damnit.
Tyson parked in front of his mother’s house and we all got out of the car.
Everyone except me was dressed to the nines.
Kierra wore the sparkly dress her Aunt Destinee had sewed for her and her hair was pulled into two curly puffs accented with adorable orange bows.
Baby Tarik even wore an orange button-up shirt and tiny black leather shoes.
Ashley had complained about how tough it was finding “Sunday best” clothes in PSU orange and black, but Tyson said we needed school spirit to win the Thanksgiving game and no one was going to argue with the man who had secured our first national championship.
Tyson opened the front door and the cacophony of smells of the Thanksgiving meal hit my nose. My mouth watered. My stomach knotted. Ashley had only just taken the pies from my hands before I turned on my heel and sprinted off the porch.
I threw myself on my hands and knees on the lawn as the first wave of vomiting tore through my throat like liquid fire. My stomach jerked painfully as it purged all my crackers and water from earlier.
I coughed and spat into the brown grass once the sickness finally stopped. If I vomited in front of Beau at brunch, I was going to fill my own shoes with concrete and jump into the lake.
Beau Fontaine would not see me bleed...or barf. I had to get my shit together.
“Don’t worry, Granny!” Kierra shouted from the porch. “Your cooking smells great! Aunt Livvy is just having a baby!”