3. Alyssa
ALYSSA
Walking inside the diner triggers all sorts of vivid memories.
The smell of freshly brewed coffee and maple syrup revives that fateful evening when I met him, as though it happened yesterday.
I consider turning around and finding somewhere else to go, but my feet hurt.
So I continue on, even though being here and experiencing these memories all over again is a lot harder than I expected it to be.
The weather is overcast, just like it was that day. So much about this diner looks exactly the same, actually.
The waitress behind the counter is the same one who took my order that night.
The music is classic rock, just like it was before, and as I look around the diner, I have to do a double take when I think I see him…or at least the back of his head.
It couldn't be, I think.
It's too easy. Too coincidental. I'm sure there are a lot of men who live in the mountains and dress like a disheveled lumberjack, with a large flannel shirt stretching over their massive shoulders and a wild beard over their face.
Even though I've since acknowledged that night that we hooked up as a massive fucking mistake and lapse in judgment, seeing him again brings back all of those lustful feelings that I felt when I first saw him.
It's no wonder I let the guy knock me up. He's huge. Even while sitting down in a tiny little booth at the diner, his massive size is undeniable.
I don't know what he does for a living. Never bothered to get to know him on that deep of a level, but I know that his body is rock hard with solid muscle from head to toe, and that his cock -
I keep walking forward until I see the woman sitting across from him. She stands and smiles at him, and it makes me feel uncomfortable. I still don't know for sure if it's him.
But when she leans down to give him a peck on the cheek, he turns slightly, and that's when I catch a sliver of his face. Those long, dark eyelashes framing bright blue eyes that crinkle in the corner as he smiles.
Shoot. It really is him.
Worse than that, he's not alone. He's on a date with whoever the woman kissing him on the cheek is. They look cozy and familiar, more familiar than I ever got with him, other than the single night that we took our clothes off, and I immediately feel like such an idiot.
I don't belong here. I'm not from Wildwood. I'm from New York. We couldn't be more different.
He has a whole life here. Friends and family…and a girlfriend, it seems.
I was only ever meant to be a visitor, just passing through, not a permanent fixture in Wildwood or in his life.
All I have is his first name, his address, and his genetic material growing in my womb right now.
But this life, this world, it's not for me. It belongs to him, always did and always will, and my existence and this baby's existence were never part of his plan.
After all, if he wanted to talk to me after the night we spent together, he would have called me. I left my phone number on his nightstand.
I waited to hear from him. The whole plane ride, I expected to turn on my phone when I landed back in New York and see a text message from him, maybe a phone call. When that didn't happen, I waited another night and then another.
Because I didn’t have his phone number, all I could do was wait for him to reach out to me…and he didn't. I took that as the door closing on this whole crazy maybe-I-could-have-a-relationship-with-the-guy-from-the-mountains dream.
It was a stupid dream to begin with, I guess. Just an escapist fantasy about how I could abandon my ho-hum life in the city and run away with a man strong enough to throw me around the bedroom like a doll…and gentle enough to hold me in his arms afterwards.
I put the whole silly fantasy to rest, trying to forget the very hard to forget hookup.
That is, until I missed my period. Then I took at least two dozen pregnancy tests, each of them with that double pink line, confirming to me that although Jack from Wildwood might like to forget all about me, and although I might like to forget all about him, it seems that Mother Nature – or fate, or the universe, or God, or whatever – had other plans in mind.
The woman who kissed Jack on the cheek passes me on her way to the door.
She's completely unaware that she's just kissed the cheek of the man that I am here to confront, to tell him that he's gonna be a dad.
Except I'm not so sure that this is a good idea anymore. I've never liked to feel like a burden. All my life, all my childhood, I felt like one. My mom never made it a secret that I wasn't wanted, especially after my dad ran off and left us all alone.
I couldn't wait until I turned eighteen so that I could stop being a burden and stop depending on people who would rather I not be there.
When I turned eighteen, I left for college and never looked back. I didn’t even go back home for the holidays or summer breaks. And my mom never minded at all. It was better this way, for her and for me.
Now I stand on my own two feet. I don't need anybody.
I don't depend on anybody, and that's on purpose.
Depending on people is how you get hurt.
Relying on people, thinking that you belong in their life and that they might just make room for you, that you might be able to count on them in a time of need, is how you get disappointed beyond all measure.
That's a fate that I've always tried to protect myself from ever since I became an adult.
This strategy has worked pretty well so far…until I had the wild idea to come out to Wildwood in search of my biological father.
That's why I was originally here. To find him.
I found out where he was located through an internet search, and on a whim, booked a plane ticket, thinking that I could just have a conversation with him.
Not that I would ask him for anything. I don't need his help.
Not that I would ask him to apologize for abandoning me.
I just wanted to see his face, to hear his voice, to know that he was real, and to see what might come of it.
I never did find him.
But I did find Jack.
His dark head of hair turns suddenly, as though he was made aware of my presence without me announcing myself.
Our eyes lock. He opens his mouth as though to speak but before he can say a word, I’m turning and leaving.
See? It’s never too late to turn back.