31. AVA
AVA
Three on the Roster
Seventeen missed calls to a man who reads every text I send but won't answer a single one.
I know because the read receipts are still on. Kai, the most annoyingly thorough person I’ve ever met, hasn't turned them off.
Which means he wants me to know he's seeing my messages. He just doesn't want to hear my voice.
I'm lying on my side in the dark, phone pressed against my cheek, listening to his voicemail greeting for the fourth time tonight. It's the standard one. He never recorded a personal message because Kai doesn't believe in wasting words on things that aren't direct communication.
I used to find that attractive.
Now it's just the sound of a door I can't open.
Biscuit is curled behind my knees, her warm weight the only thing keeping me from pacing the hallway again.
My hand rests on the swell of my belly where I can feel the faint shifts, the small turns that tell me everything is functioning the way it should.
I close my eyes and try to sleep. Behind my lids, I see Kai's face in the bathroom doorway, holding my phone, the screen glowing against his fingers. The way his expression froze. Controlled and exact and devastating in its stillness.
It’s been three days since he found out.
Three days since he told me to take my prenatals and drove me home with both hands on the wheel and nothing left to say.
I roll onto my back, stare at the ceiling, and count the hours until the blood transfusion.
When the time comes, Lucy drives because I can't stop my hands from shaking.
"You need to eat something before the procedure," she says.
"I ate toast."
"Half a piece of toast with no butter doesn't count."
"It had butter."
"I saw the bread, Ava. It was dry."
I don't argue because she's right and because fighting with Lucy about toast requires energy I no longer have.
The clinic is cold and bright. Lucy fills out the forms I can't focus on while I sit in the waiting room chair pressing my palms flat on my thighs to keep them still.
A woman across the room is reading a parenting magazine, her belly enormous and round beneath a floral top. She looks calm. Content.
When they call my name, Lucy stands up with me.
"You don't have to come in," I say.
"Shut up."
She follows me through the door.
The procedure room smells like antiseptic. I lie back on the table while the nurse straps the fetal monitor around my belly. The baby's heartbeat fills the room.
Lucy's hand finds mine.
I stare at the ceiling tiles. Last time I was in this position, I gripped the edge of the table alone, crying without making a sound, watching a needle slide through my abdomen toward my baby's umbilical cord while nobody held my hand.
Kai should have been here then.
He should have been here for every appointment, every blood draw, every terrifying minute I spent in a waiting room wondering if the antibodies in my blood were winning. He should have known his baby existed before the baby needed saving.
But I never let him know.
The needle goes in. I squeeze Lucy's fingers hard enough to hurt.
"You're doing great," the nurse says.
I'm not doing great.
But I nod. Because that's what I do, hold everything together until I'm alone and then I fall apart where nobody can see.
"The baby's vitals look strong," the nurse says, checking the monitor. "We're about halfway through."
I focus on the heartbeat. Steady. Fast. Alive.
Lucy doesn't let go of my hand.
When it's over, I sit in the recovery area with juice and crackers while Lucy scrolls her phone in the chair beside me. The adhesive bandage on my stomach pulls every time I breathe.
She refills my juice without being asked. Adjusts the blanket over my lap. Drives fifteen minutes out of her way to the good bakery and buys me the lemon scone I’ve been craving lately.
Once we’re back home, she grabs my wrist.
“I shouldn’t have blocked his number.”
I wait.
“I thought I was protecting you. I was hurting you instead. And I’m sorry.”
"Thank you."
"But if he hurts you again, I'm not blocking his number. I'm blocking his kneecaps."
A surprised laugh comes out of me. She squeezes my wrist once, hard, then lets go.
And just like that, whatever anger I had left disappears.
I understand why she did it. Fear makes people do desperate things. God knows I’ve made enough bad decisions trying to protect myself from getting hurt.
Lucy stays with me for the rest of the day, but that evening, she finally gets ready to leave.
After she’s gone, I find myself standing outside the room I’ve been avoiding.
The spare bedroom has been empty since I moved in, used mostly as overflow storage for fabric swatches and client samples.
Two weeks ago, when I still believed Kai and I had a future that included cribs and midnight feedings and arguments about whose turn it was to change the diaper, I started clearing it out.
Now I stand in the doorway and look at what I've done so far.
The walls are a warm ivory I picked from my studio samples. I pinned fabric swatches to a corkboard by the window: soft sage green, creamy white, a pale yellow that catches the afternoon light.
My iPad sits on the floor with the layout sketch I drew last week, the room measured down to the quarter inch.
The crib arrived days ago. The box is leaning against the wall, still sealed. I drag the box to the center of the room, slice the tape with scissors, and start pulling out pieces.
The instructions are twelve pages long with illustrations that assume a person has two hands and no feelings. I spread the hardware across the hardwood: bolts, washers, Allen wrenches, wooden slats that smell like pine and potential.
I build.
I sit on the floor in leggings and Kai's hoodie, assembling the frame piece by piece.
My belly gets in the way when I lean forward to tighten the bolts. The baby kicks twice while I'm on my hands and knees trying to align the side rail with the base.
The frame takes shape. I bolt the side rails on, check the stability, tighten everything twice. But the mattress platform won't click into place. I read the instructions again. I line up the pegs. Something isn't fitting.
I sit back on my heels and press both palms against my eyes.
"Come on," I whisper. "I can do this."
But I can't. Not this part.
The platform needs someone to hold one end while the other end slots into the grooves, and I have two hands and a belly and no one else in this room.
The crib is half-built. The swatches are pinned to the board. The layout is sketched. The rocking chair I found at a flea market sits in the corner with a sage-green throw draped over the arm.
Everything in this room is something I did alone. And it's beautiful and it's incomplete and it looks exactly like my life.
I hear the front door open.
Biscuit scrambles off the couch in the living room. Her bark is sharp, then stops. Then her tail starts wagging relentlessly.
My heart rams into my throat.
I know the footsteps in the hallway. I’ve just registered that they're Kai’s when I see him at the doorway.
He's in jeans and a grey t-shirt. His dark hair is pushed back but not neatly. His eyes are tired and raw in a way I've never seen on him before.
He looks at me on the floor then he looks at the room.
The swatches pinned to the corkboard. The half-assembled crib. The rocking chair. The iPad with the floor plan. The hardware scattered across the hardwood. The Allen wrench is still in my hand.
"You built a nursery," he says.
"I'm building one." My voice comes out thick. "The mattress platform won't fit."
He steps into the room, walks to the crib, kneels on the other side, and examines the grooves. He picks up the platform, tilts it fifteen degrees, and slides it into place with a clean click.
"The pegs were offset," he says.
"Of course they were."
He stays on his knees. Across the half-built crib, he looks at me.
"I went to my mother's house," he says. "She made me sit in her kitchen and pretend to be you."
"That sounds terrifying."
"It was." He pauses. Swallows. "I tried to see what you saw. You driving to the hospital ready to tell me, and I looked at you and said, "Have we met?"
My breath catches.
His voice drops. "You came to tell me about the baby and I couldn't remember your name."
"Kai..."
"I'm not finished." He says it quietly.
"Then I tried to see the weeks after that. Coming to visit a man who didn't know you while our baby grew. Watching me learn to walk again and knowing you were carrying my child and I couldn't even find plates in my own kitchen."
My vision blurs.
"All the times you told me there was something important you needed to say but you couldn’t because your father taught you what happens when men find out they're obligated to stay."
A sound comes from my throat. I press the Allen wrench against my mouth. He reaches across the crib frame and takes the wrench from my hand, sets it on the floor, and holds my fingers instead.
"You carried all of that by yourself because you thought telling me would ruin out relationship."
"I was wrong," I say. "I was so wrong."
"You were scared."
"That doesn't make it right."
"No. But it makes it real."
I'm crying.
Not the pretty kind with a single tear rolling gracefully down one cheek. The ugly kind where my face crumples and my nose runs and my whole body shakes because this man just walked me through every impossible thing I carried alone and he's still here.
He didn't list those things to punish me. He listed them because he needed me to know he'd actually walked through them.
"I love you, Ava," Kai says. "I have loved you since you reorganized my kitchen cabinets and told me I was more than hockey. I loved you before I remembered why, and I love you now that I know everything you kept from me."
His thumb traces the back of my hand, slow and deliberate. "I want to be here. Not because you're pregnant. Not because it's the right thing. Because you're the person who rebuilt my entire life and I'm not willing to lose you."