Page 40 of Letters to Lily

“What’s the shock there? That it took so long to see her?”

“Nah man, she’s like out to here right now.” He held his hands out from his stomach then, and every ounce of blood in my body seemed to pack up and leave all at once with the implication.

“She’s pregnant?” The words tumbled out of my mouth in disbelief.

“Apparently. Must be that dude’s I told you about. They were inseparable for a while.”

It felt as though I might just throw up on Andy, and he could sense it too, because he took a couple of steps back and gave me a hard look. “You all right man? I know you guys were close for a long while, but no one has ever said what happened between you. Hell, people are saying you guys were never actually dating last year since it was so short lived. I guess the romance finally ruined the friendship, huh?”

I need for him to just shut up. There was this weird static building in my ears though, and as it grew louder, whatever he was saying was lost on me. My feet were moving me along before I even realized as I stumbled away from Andy and back to my Jeep. I was aware that he called out to me for a while, asking if I was okay. There were people around, watching me go, but I took no more notice of them.

Two words kept running through my head. “Sasha’s pregnant.” I am the one who is supposed to give her babies. Just me. I was her first, and I was supposed to be her last, her only. Now she’s having a baby with some random dude she met after I took off like an idiot to save my family? I guess everyone, but my mom, was right. It’s best that I stayed away from her. I hadn’t thought it was possible to hurt more than I already had over Sasha, but I had been wrong. Knowing she was starting a family, with another man, hurt more than anything I’d ever experienced.

I spent the rest of the day drowning my sorrows in a bottle. I also didn’t bother responding to anyone about anything, which is how it came to be that Jenn tracked me down at the house. “He’s in his room,” I heard my mother tell her as politely as she was able to.

“Okay, well, I just wanted to check on him since he wasn’t answering his phone.”

“Sometimes, people just don’t want to talk,” my mother snipped at her.

“Listen, I know you don’t like me, but he always wants to talk to me,” Jenn snapped back at my mother. She was wrong. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, about anything.

“You know what?” My mom shot back, as I continued to just lie there and listen. “I’m going to just let him handle this. Feel free to go find him, and he can send you on the way himself.”

I didn’t send her on her way though. Jenn was just what I needed in the moment. Only, I hadn’t realized it before she showed up. Sex was a line I hadn’t crossed with her yet. Despite my telling her that I would work toward a relationship, it had still felt like too much. I felt as though my actions were betraying Sasha somehow. Granted, Jenn and I had done pretty much everything else, but the ghost of Sasha was always there, holding me back from moving past that last step. Anger bubbled up under the surface again when I thought of Sasha with someone else. She was growing round with someone else’s baby inside of her while I’d been afraid to move forward with another person. Sure, we were 19 and I wasn’t ready to be a dad yet, but that was supposed to be my baby. She was supposed to have my kids – with me.

The door opened and Jenn stepped inside to see the mess I'd become. “What in the world happened to you today?”

“Bad day, want to make it better?” I grumbled out to her.

“That’s why I’m here,” she offered sweetly as she stepped closer.

As soon as she was in range, I grabbed hold of her and pulled her down on my bed with me. She didn’t offer up any protest, and before long, I managed to get both of us naked. I was just about to plunge into her when she stopped me and reached for her purse. She took a condom out and handed it to me. I promptly did my thing with it and then waited no further. I sunk into her depths, and even though it felt wrong beyond belief I just kept pounding away my frustrations with her. We went at it until I was empty, and then I rolled off of Jenn, disposed of the condom, and then sat with my back to her. “You should go now. I just want to be left alone.” Yes, I was that asshole. I couldn’t stop the sick feeling that crawled around inside of me after being with a woman who wasn’t Sasha though. It didn’t matter that my sweet girl had moved on, my heart wasn’t ready.

“That is so not the way I wanted our first time together to go,” Jenn huffed out on a sniffle. Damn, I think she might have been crying.

“You shouldn’t have come. I’ve had a shit day and I’m not exactly thinking clearly.”

She made some indignant noise that was half scoff and huff. “You just made that painfully clear, and I’m still going to forgive you, after you pull your shit together, and come apologize to me later. I get that you’re having a ridiculously shitty day, but I’m the one who was here for you. I came over because I knew something was wrong, and you treated me like crap anyway.”

In my fucked up, inebriated head, I was hearing Sasha chastise me like she did outside of her apartment that day when Mason pointed out what a dick I had been to her. In my drunken mess of a brain I just started chanting, “Sorry,” over and over again while the girl beside me cooed and shushed my painful memories away. At least, she tried to do that, until I finally passed out.

Oct. 3

I managed to pull my head out of my ass long enough to go apologize to Jenn. She wasn’t wrong when she’d sat there and told me that she was the one who was there for me despite my ridiculous moods and hot and cold moments with her. I owed her a little more than an angry fuck and a drunken dismissal.

I went to see her at the apartment, but the girls there told me she was at work. I’m ashamed to say that Sasha popped up in my mind then, and I wondered what I would do to apologize for her. Lilies. That’s what I would have done. I would get her lilies. I could not do that for Jenn though. I went to the florist a couple of blocks down and searched for something that might say ‘I’m sorry’.

“What’s the occasion?” The old man behind the counter was asking me as I touched my finger to a white lily with purple tips.

“I need a really good apology,” I offered up with a fake grin.

“Ah, we’ve all been there, son. Those lilies are perfect for the occasion.” He went to reach for them, and I stilled his hand. “Not these. It has to be something else. Anything else. Not lilies though.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought,” he waved it off then. “No matter, tell me about this person you’re apologizing to. Does she have a bubbly personality or is she quiet and reserved? It helps to know what flowers will work for her.”

“I’d say she’s one of the people full of bouncy energy, but not in the bubbly way. Just intense.”

“Maybe a colorful bouquet of daisies then? You could do roses, but only if the feelings go with the apology. Women tend to read a lot into roses,” he winked at me as he explained his theory.

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