Chapter 7 Remy
REMY
Two days before the beginning of the new semester, nerves are starting to kick in with a vengeance. After I quit the casino, and on Ariel’s advice, I changed my cell number and email address, cut all ties with Bastien Murray, and convinced myself that it was the only way.
Out of sight, out of mind.
At least that was the premise. Only, no one ever tells you that it doesn’t always work.
For the first few weeks, I felt torn. With his connections and the resources at his fingertips, Bash could’ve found me if he wanted to.
That he didn’t come to the residence halls and recreate a Pretty Woman moment by climbing up to my window and handing me flowers was proof that I meant nothing to him.
It hurt like crazy, but it should’ve been enough for me to let it go.
Only it wasn’t.
My heart, and every other part of me that remembered how it felt when he kissed me, clung stubbornly to his voice in my head. I think you’ve bewitched me.
How does someone forget that?
I never told anyone, not even Ariel—especially not Ariel—but I stood outside the Rinse too many times, battling the need to ask him directly if I was just a quick fuck.
I wanted an answer to put me out of my misery, but at the same time, I didn’t want to hear it.
It would’ve been too final, and I wasn’t prepared to switch off the light and lock the door behind me.
So I never went through with it.
While the door was still open, there was always a tiny glimmer of hope that he would find me one day and tell me that he felt the same way. Tell me that I was the last thing he thought about when he closed his eyes at night, and his first thought when he opened them in the morning.
But as the days turned into weeks, I was forced to accept that I was fooling myself, and perpetuating the dream was doing more harm than good.
I avoided the Rinse. I stopped scrolling through social media, my heart pitching every time his name appeared on my feed. I tried to control my heart rate whenever footsteps approached our dorm room from the corridor.
The tears kept coming though.
I spilled coffee on my T-shirt and cried.
I gave someone a lemon and poppy seed muffin instead of blueberry in the café where I now work and cried. Even though the customer was fine about it.
I saw an old couple holding hands on a bench in Central Park and cried like it was a scene from The Notebook.
Now, I’m so consumed by my crazy erratic emotions that I can’t eat, and the smell of coffee is making me feel nauseous. Not ideal when I work in a café.
Gagging at the mere thought of going to work, I dash into the bathroom I share with Ariel and barely make it to the toilet before I’m sick.
Panting, I sit on the floor and rest my head back against the cold wall tiles.
I need to get a grip. How can I let one man have this kind of effect on me; I can barely function without feeling queasy, semester starts in two days, and Ariel has already threatened to hide my cell phone until I can prove to her that I’m over it.
There’s a knock on the bathroom door, and Ariel comes in without waiting for me to reply. She takes one look at me on the floor, takes a deep breath, and sits next to me.
“How are you feeling?”
“Do you want the truth or the polite answer?” I manage a small smile.
“This is me you’re talking to. Don’t sugarcoat it for me. I’ve got little brothers and sisters which means I’ve seen more puke than you’ve seen hard di—”
“I think I get the picture.” I stop her before she can finish. I fill my lungs with air and realize that I’m trembling. “I feel like shit.”
“Uh-huh. Anything else you want to tell me?”
I roll my head against the wall to look at her. Now that I’ve been sick, the nausea is passing, but I still can’t shake this uneasiness that has been weighing me down for weeks. “Like what?”
“Oh, I don’t know, like you might be pregnant.” She holds my gaze, and I don’t even try to look away.
“No,” I say eventually.
“No, you don’t want to tell me, or no you’re not pregnant?”
“I can’t be.” My voice has either shrunk or flushed down the toilet. I sound puny, feeble, and with it, I feel my body curling up and trying to make itself invisible.
“You do know how this works, right?” She furrows her brow, but I see the concern in her eyes. “Boy meets girl. Boy fucks girl without protection. Boy gets girl pregnant.”
“Yes, I did sex-ed in high school.”
“Just checking.” She raises both hands in surrender. “Don’t shoot the voice of reason.”
“It’s don’t shoot the messenger.”
She grins at me and pulls a small, slim box out of the pocket of her voluminous cardigan. “So, I’m safe to give you this then.”
It’s a pregnancy test.
I stare at it but don’t take it from her. “Ariel, I…”
“Have you seen the size of your breasts?”
I peer down at them. It’s unnecessary because they feel the size of soccer balls squashed between my arms.
“When did you last get your period?”
Tears sting my eyes. I’ve been so consumed by disappointment, so angry at myself for falling for my boss’s Irish charm like a na?ve teenager, that it completely slipped my mind.
“I don’t remember.”
Ariel squeezes my hand. “I blame myself for being a shit friend.”
“You’re not a shit friend, you’re the best.” Tears spill over my bottom lashes now, and I wipe my cheeks with my fingertips.
“I should’ve paid more attention. I should’ve noticed sooner, spent more time with you than with Tristan.”
“It isn’t your fault, Ariel. You’re the only person I know who can make me smile when I really want to cry.”
“You’d have noticed if I was pregnant though, right?”
I shake my head. “This is me you’re talking to. I barely notice when you’re in the room. Sorry.”
“Strangely, that makes me feel better.” She grins.
“Besides, it isn’t morning. I’ve probably got a virus or something.”
“You tell yourself that, baby girl.” She hauls herself back onto her feet and drops the pregnancy test into my lap.
“You can do this while you’re thinking about it.
” She hesitates by the bathroom door. “And don’t even think about putting it off.
I’m not letting you out of this room until it’s done. ”
Ariel comes with me for the ultrasound. Moral support.
She’s also on tissue and therapy duties.
I can barely function from one day to the next, so I haven’t thought about The Future.
It’s a concept that applies to other people.
My life has been on hold since I met Bash Murray, and now it’s catching up too quickly, gaining speed, and hurling rocks at me as it cackles at my shit luck like a demonic witch.
We had sex twice.
Two times.
Two times in the space of forty-eight hours.
Okay, so I know that once is enough, and I should’ve mentioned to him that I don’t use contraception, but it all happened so fast, and in the heat of the moment, it was the last thing on my mind.
That’s how accidents happen. Even my thoughts have adopted Ariel’s voice.
It’s how accidents happen to other people though. It wasn’t supposed to happen to me. I’m at college. I’ll be forty before I pay back my student loan, and my parents are too busy with their midlife crises to help.
And I can’t even think about telling Bash Murray that he’s going to be a father.
It’ll be the classic gold-digger conversation.
Nope. Not happening. I’d rather poke my own eyes out with chopsticks than tell him I’m pregnant and have him look at me that way.
It all feels surreal. I lie down on the bed in the ultrasound room and stare at the screen in front of me. The nurse tucks a paper towel inside the waistband of my pants and squirts cold gel onto my stomach.
“Sorry, it’s a bit cold.”
“That’s okay.” The fawn in me speaks before I can stop it.
I reach for Ariel’s hand. She’s warm and strong, and I don’t know what I would do without her, but it crashes through me like an avalanche that she isn’t the one who is carrying a baby inside her. She can’t do this for me. No one can. This is all on me, and I’m not ready for it.
I try to sit up, smearing gel all over the paper tucked inside my waistband. My breathing is all wrong. I feel dizzy.
“Remy?” Ariel grips my hand tightly, and I lean against her.
I know I need to calm down, but once I’m holding that ultrasound image of my baby, there will be no turning back. It will be real, and I’ll have to think about The Future, and I don’t know if I can.
“Do you need a moment?” The nurse rubs my back.
Maybe she has seen this reaction before. Maybe I’m not the cowardly maniac I thought I was. This is perfectly normal, I tell myself. A few deep breaths. Regulate my pulse. Once I see that ultrasound image, I’ll realize that I’m carrying a tiny miracle of life inside me.
Ariel’s face is in front of me. “You’ve got this, baby girl. Come on, breathe with me.” She sucks in a deep breath, expanding her sizeable chest, and I mimic her. It helps. “Better?”
I nod.
The nurse helps me to lie back down. Her tone is soothing and I can almost hear the gentle waves of background music used in spas. “It’s alright, Remy. It’s natural to be worried, but I’ll check the heartbeat first and put your mind at rest before I start taking all the measurements.”
She thinks I’m worried about the baby’s health.
I should be worried about the baby’s health.
I need to get out of my own head and get back into the real world. This is my life. My baby. Bastien Murray made his own choices, and I will not be the person who can’t survive without a man in her life.
I won’t!
“I’m fine.” I swallow the panic that feels like an apple core stuck in my throat, and squeeze Ariel’s hand. “I haven’t eaten today; it’s just my sugar levels crashing.” The fawn will need a lot more persuasion to back down, but perhaps we’ll learn to get along in time.
“Okay.” The nurse rolls her seat closer and places the transducer on my tummy. The screen above the bed stays blank while she studies a different screen that’s outside of my peripheral vision. “Can you confirm the date of your last period for me please, Remy?”
I tell her the date I started working at the Rinse.
I haven’t had one since then, and sure, I should’ve realized sooner, but a certain Gaelic-speaking adonis was playing havoc with my prefrontal cortex.
Not to mention certain other parts of my body.
Why couldn’t I get employed by an eighty-year-old dude about to celebrate his sixtieth wedding anniversary? Why did I have to get Bastien Murray?
I don’t believe in fate. But I’ll make an exception for you, baby.
Ugh!
“Everything is fine, Remy.” The nurse’s voice cuts through my reverie.
I’m not doing such a great job of getting out of my own head, but it’s become habit. A bad habit. An addiction. I’m addicted to thoughts of the man whose child I’m carrying, and that scares me more than anything else because I’ve seen what addiction can do.
She flicks on the screen above me. I don’t know what I’m looking at, but everything else evaporates when I watch the tiny flicker of movement inside me.
Images of me and Bash are replaced by this tiny human that we created together in a moment of pure passion, and my heart wants to explode with the wonder of it all.
There’s another blip of movement, and another, the shape on the screen blurring and morphing as my baby wriggles around.
My cheeks ache from the smile on my face.
“Oh. My. God,” Ariel murmurs.
Then the nurse says, “You’re having twins, Remy,” and the avalanche of panic rumbles somewhere deep inside.