Can't Look Away(19)

“Let’s make Jake-and-Sisi babies,” he whispered one night in July, when we’d been dating a year.

“You want to have babies, now?” I laughed. We were lying in bed; he was playing with my hair.

“Not now. Just, someday. Think about it—how awesome would our kids be?”

And I did think about it. In truth, I’d been thinking about it for weeks, since that night on the East River path: the dream of our life together taking hold in my mind, rooting there, blooming. I would be a loving, adoring mother—the opposite of my own, who spent her days numbed out on Oxy and chardonnay, almost as oblivious to my existence as my father.

With Jake by my side, we’d be an invincible team. We’d fill the void of unconditional love in each other and funnel it down to our children. We’d create the family neither of us had ever had.

The sounds of a lively summer night in the city drifted in through the open window—girls clicking along the sidewalk in heels, cackling with drunken laughter as they headed to meet their friends or crushes at whatever bar or club was calling them. It was fun out there, no question—I’d been a party girl in college and knew just how extraordinary such nights could be. But in that moment, nothing could’ve lured me from the solace of Jake’s warm body, his heart beating steadily against my chest, loving me.

I felt it then, as he ran his fingers through my hair: the certainty that our lives were bound together forever, that this perfect man who held me safely in his arms would be the father of my babies. Besides, he’d just said so himself.

But that October, when I crafted an email with a carefully curated list of StreetEasy links and sent it to Jake, something shifted. He didn’t respond. And for a few torturous days after that, he was distant. He blamed his preoccupation on drama with the band, but I knew something was seriously wrong when he didn’t come over after his shifts at the restaurant three nights in a row. He finally called, said we should meet in Tompkins Square Park when I got off work.

“I don’t want to move in together, Sisi,” he confessed that evening, shifting uncomfortably on the park bench beside me. I’ll never forget the way it felt to hear Jake say those words.

My heart dropped into my stomach. “Jake, I know those apartments I sent are on the pricier side, but you know we can make it work with my trust fund; you wouldn’t need to pay more than you already—”

“This isn’t about money, Sisi.”

I felt my throat dry up and tighten, like it was fighting to swallow sand. “Maybe it’s too soon,” I managed.

“Yeah,” he mumbled, staring at the ground, the dead grass curling below our rickety bench. He reached for my hand, and the relief in my body was so immense I wanted to cry. He wasn’t breaking up with me.

For the rest of the fall, Jake and I fell back into a routine. The passion had cooled, but I knew we would find it again. We were just busy. Danner Lane’s momentum was continuing to build—they were playing more local shows than ever and were finally on the brink of signing a record deal. And I was swamped at work, up for a big promotion. I re-signed my lease at East Fifth Street for another year. We were still so young, I had to remind myself. What was the rush to move in together, anyway? I didn’t mention the idea to Jake again.

The week before Christmas, I got really sick. I threw up in the trash bin under my desk at the office because I couldn’t make it to the bathroom in time. When it happened again the next day, my work friend Kim placed a pregnancy test next to my keyboard.

“I just have a feeling,” she said.

I went home that night and peed on the stick. The test was positive. I froze, staring at the two pink lines in disbelief. I ran out to Duane Reade in my pajamas and bought half a dozen more tests—every brand the store sold. They were all positive.

My heart pounded behind my rib cage. How had this happened? I was on the Pill; we were careful. Had I been sloppy and forgotten a day or two the previous month, with the chaos of work and the stress of Jake’s cooling detachment? It was possible.

I didn’t call Jake. He was already back in North Carolina for Christmas and hadn’t invited me to go with him, even though he knew my parents hadn’t spoken a word to me about joining them for the holidays. I’d only received a rushed, poorly crafted email from my mother, stating that they’d flown to Barbados and hoped I’d have a nice holiday in New York with “the boyfriend.”

Part of me was still too pissed at Jake for leaving me alone at Christmas to call; another part worried about his reaction to the news. Pregnancy was quite a bomb to drop.

But as I lay in bed that night and imagined the growing cluster of cells inside my body—half me, half Jake—I remembered his words from the summer, which were never far from the center of my mind. Let’s make Jake-and-Sisi babies. How awesome would our kids be?

Jake wanted this; he’d said it. There was nothing more miraculous than a baby, a new life, and perhaps that was what we needed to solidify our love, to get back to the place we’d been before.

I woke up the next morning with a fresh perspective, ready to share the news. But when I called Jake, he didn’t answer, and the automated greeting said his mailbox was full. I waited all day for him to try me back, but the only person who called was Kim, and I lied when she asked me if the test had been positive.

Jake didn’t call the next day, or that weekend, or on Christmas. Sleepless nights passed, my body shaking with nausea, my mind churning, my heart sick with desperation. Where was the father of my baby? Why was he ignoring me? Ignoring us?