9. Alyssa
ALYSSA
I'm in a car with a virtual stranger going down a remote mountainside. All of my survival instincts have gone out the window, though, because all I can think about are the words that I just overheard from the very man whose genetic material is currently growing in my womb.
"Maybe you should think twice before setting me up with some woman who wants to tie me down with the burden of kids."
That word, burden, sticks in my mind like unwelcome superglue.
Burden, burden, burden.
It's the same thing that my mother used to call me. The same word that I internalized before I was even six years old. I didn't understand what the word really meant. All I knew is that it defined me and that it was a bad thing.
And then, as I grew up, I learned what the word meant.
A burden is something unwanted that a person is saddled with. They wish they could get rid of it, but they can't. They're stuck. They resent its presence. They would remove its presence if they knew how.
That's what a burden is…and that's what I was to my parents.
And it's how Jack is going to see our baby.
Dammit! I was just about to figure out how to tell him. I had the ultrasound photo and was going to hand it to him and tell him that we needed to talk. And then this guy showed up.
“Adam, right?” I ask him out loud.
He raises a brow but doesn't take his eyes off the road.
"Yeah," he says. "And you must be Alyssa."
"How'd you know?" I ask.
"Because my friend hasn't shut up about you since he met you," he says with a laugh.
A bubble of hope swells inside of me, but I quickly pop it with a needle. The needle of shame, the word burden etched into the side of the shiny, silvery surface.
Okay, so maybe Jack found our encounter just as memorable as I did. Maybe he thought about me, talked to his friends about me.
That's fine.
But that was before he knew about the pregnancy…and once he finds out, he's not going to be happy.
I know that now.
"I've never heard Jack rant and rave about a woman quite like you," Adam continues. "And I've known him for a long time, since high school. The guy is over the moon about you. Of course, he'd probably punch me if he knew that I was telling you all of this."
He laughs.
"You must be pretty special to grab his attention like that."
"I don't know," I mumble. "It was just a one-night stand."
"Jack doesn't do one-night stands," he says. "He had a few girlfriends when we were younger. Got his heart broke, then decided to put it on ice. It's been frozen solid ever since. Till he met you."
I'm quiet.
It's bittersweet knowing that Jack liked me so much that maybe we could have been something. That my delusions about starting a new life in the mountains weren't all that delusional.
Maybe we could have worked.
Maybe if two layers of birth control hadn't failed us, if the fates had aligned differently, maybe we could have really been something.
But that's just not how things worked out.
"So where are we headed?" Adam asks as we get closer to the bottom of the mountain.
"Uh..." I hesitate.
I hadn't thought it through. I had half a mind to ask him to send me back to the inn, where I could see if maybe some rooms had opened up at the last minute.
But then I remembered that I left all of my stuff in Jack's cabin – my duffel bag and everything in it.
I open my phone and look at a note I made weeks ago.
"Take me here," I say, reading out the address. "Do you mind staying in the car for a little while after we get there, just in case he isn't home?"
I can sense Adam's unasked questions in the air between us, but he simply nods, turning right at the base of the mountain instead of left.