Page 14 of Before I Loved You

A distraction.

And because I made the stupid decision of not exchanging names, I’m never going to know who the father of my baby is.

My baby.

I sit up, eyes widening.

My baby.

This is the first time I’ve thought of those two words together.

And as if a light bulb turned on above me, I know what I’m going to do. I stand up and pick up the brochures, throwing out all but one.

I’m Ready to Be a Mom stares back at me. A woman on the cover is smiling, holding her stomach proudly, and I wonder if I’ll ever feel like that.

Maybe this isn’t the typical pregnancy per se, but I firmly believe that everything happens for a reason.

So maybe there’s a reason I can’t find this man.

Maybe I’m meant to do this myself.

And that’s okay.

I’ve managed to take care of myself perfectly well for this long, so how hard could it be to add a baby to the equation?

* * *

After waking up at the crack of dawn with a stiff neck, immediately regretting falling asleep on the couch, I throw back my prenatal vitamins while turning on my computer to look at the Excel document I spent the whole night creating, preparing to be a mom.

There’s tab after tab of everything I need to know in order to take care of a baby. One tab consists of different baby foods organized by the overall consumer rating. There’s a tab with everything I should be taking now, like vitamins and supplements to keep me and the baby healthy. A tab of everything I need for a nursery.

That’s the tab that has me stressed out the most because of the cost of each item.

Financially, it’s going to be tight. Very tight. I reviewed the numbers three times, and even with my salary from my internship, the cost of caring for a baby will eat over half of my income, which doesn’t leave a lot left over for rent, bills, and essential items like food. A baby crib alone averages around five hundred dollars that I haven’t saved up. And when I researched the cost of diapers, it stated to add one hundred dollars a month to my expenses—one hundred dollars just for something that gets shit on and thrown away.

Baffling.

But I suppose this would qualify as a time I am justified to use my emergency credit card, which I got when I first came to school and haven’t touched since it arrived.

I’ll spend the afternoon trying to find as many items as possible and make the best of the last weekend before my classes start. Guess I never really imagined myself shopping for baby supplies while still in college, but here we are.

Life throws things at us when we least expect them, or maybe it’s when we need something thrown into our lives the most that it happens.

Change.

I’ve never been a fan of it, but as someone who has experienced enough change to last a lifetime, I can handle one more curveball thrown my way.

As I lock my door behind me, my ears perk up to recognizable voices down the hall. I walk toward the apartment with the door left wide open and see my neighbor, Natalie Spencer, standing inside, causing a sudden burst of warmth to fill me. I haven’t seen her since the beginning of the summer, but I’m sure glad to see her familiar face, especially with everything new going on in my life.

Although, I’m going to hold off on telling anyone I’m pregnant for as long as I can. I don’t need people’s pity as I explain to them that I have no idea who the father is.

I internally shake my head, putting that thought to the back of my mind for the moment.

Everything happens for a reason.

I knock on the side of the doorframe and smile, looking over at Natalie as she turns to face me, beaming. I’m assuming this is her new apartment because she told me that her best friend, Vanessa, was going to be rooming with her, and they needed a bigger space, so they took the vacant unit in the same hall, and her brother, Jason, took her old one.

“Sarah!” Natalie’s beautiful grey eyes widen. “Perfect timing. We were just about to have some pizza. Did you want some?” Her long, blonde hair falls over her slender shoulders as she wraps her arms around me.

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