The Space Between Us(60)
When Reeve made it back to our room I’m sure she was paralyzed by what she saw. I was on my way to a complete mental breakdown. Everything that had been on my desk was now on the floor. My bedding was torn off and crumpled by the bathroom. The mattress sprawled on the floor. I sat on the overturned desk, leaning my back up against the wall, sobbing. She ran over to me and pulled me off the desk.
“Charlie, what’s going on? Where’d Asher go?”
“He left me.”
“He left you? What do you mean?”
“He doesn’t want me anymore.”
“You must have misunderstood him,” she said, shaking her head, just as surprised about it as I was. “What did he say?”
I sniffled and wiped my nose on my shirt sleeve, stalling, not wanting to relive what had happened. “He wants me to have an abortion. I told him I didn’t think I could. He said he couldn’t stay with me.” Her eyebrows furrowed and she looked confused.
“Couldn’t stay with you right now, or couldn’t stay with you any more at all?”
“Is there a difference? Right now is when it’s most important that he stay with me. So, if he’s gone now, he’s gone.”
Chapter Nine
A week went by and nothing changed. Reeve put the room back together, but I barely got out of bed. If I wasn’t sick from the pregnancy, I was sick from the hurt. Reeve called, pretending to be me, and made an appointment for me to see a doctor. She was on a mission to keep me focused on the baby and I knew she was right.
By the time a second week passed, I was out of bed and going to class, although my mind was distracted and my grades were slipping rapidly. I tried to focus but my mind constantly wandered to Asher, wondering what he was thinking, wondering if he missed me, wondering if I would ever hear from him again. I had to, right? No one would just walk out on their pregnant girlfriend and never speak to her again. He wasn’t that guy. My mind wandered to Asher often and my hand started wandering to my belly.
I’d never really known anyone who had gone through a pregnancy before. I was full of questions and no one had answers for me. But each day that passed I started to feel more and more connected to the baby growing inside of me. I wasn’t sure how far along I was. I was hoping to learn that at the doctor appointment the next week.
I might have been crazy or paranoid, but I started to see my belly poke out just a little bit. I would lay in my bed at night and pull up my shirt, gazing down at my stomach. I was a little in awe of everything. I was scared shitless, no doubt, but I was also mesmerized by the tiny hill of a bump that I could see beginning to grow. I was creating a person. A baby. My baby. Asher’s baby.
It was times like these, quiet moments in the evening when I was alone with my baby bump, that I started to feel really close to my mom. I could imagine how she felt about me as I grew in her belly. I could feel the love I was already developing for my child and I knew she had felt the same way. It wasn’t short of magical the way I loved this baby.
It was my love for the baby that made me hold on to hope for Asher. I hoped, every day, that he would show up and hold me and tell me everything was going to be ok. I wanted nothing more than for him to want me, to want our baby, and for us to all be together. I knew we could figure everything else out as long as we were together. But I knew there was no choice left for me if I had to choose. I would always choose my baby. Always. I knew that if Asher came around and was suddenly ok with choosing adoption, I wouldn’t be. That first day, when I was still in shock from being blindsided by an unexpected pregnancy, I thought I might have been capable of letting someone else raise my baby. But two weeks later, now that I bonded with the baby in my belly, I knew I could never choose adoption. I’d move home with my dad if I had to. I’d make any changes necessary to keep my baby.
I was still getting sick in the mornings, but the nausea seeped into the evenings as well. I was losing weight because I couldn’t keep anything down. Reeve was obviously worried about me and her patience was wearing thin with Asher.
“He should be here taking care of you,” she said to me the morning of my doctor appointment. “He should be the one going with you today, not me.”
“You don’t have to go with me,” I said, feeling guilty about everything she had done for me in the last three weeks. She was right though. She shouldn’t be the one going with me.
“Hey,” she said as she came to stand in front of me. “There’s nothing in the world that would keep me out of that exam room. I’m here for you, one hundred percent. I just wish Asher would get his head out of his ass.”
“Have you spoken to him?” I asked hopefully.
“No. He won’t answer my texts. I will text him today and tell him when and where the appointment is, and hopefully he’ll surprise us both and show up.” I didn’t expect a different answer, but knowing that he wasn’t talking to either one of us somehow hurt more than I had anticipated. I just wanted to know how he was feeling. I’d given him the space he asked for, but being apart from each other didn’t make me any less pregnant.
I sat in my first class of the day when I felt a tight pinch very low in my belly. It made me wince, but was gone quickly enough. I took a few deep breaths and tried to concentrate on the lecture. In my next class, I felt the pinch again and it was more painful. I clutched my stomach and gave a small gasp. The girl sitting next to me leaned over and asked me if I was ok. I tried to keep a small smile on my face and nodded at her. She didn’t look like she believed me, but turned back to the professor at the front of the class. A few minutes later the pain was back and I had to leave the class.