Page 29 of Letters to Lily

“Oh, are you finally going to work on getting the nursery together?” Kristin clapped her hands together excitedly. “I can’t wait.”

I smiled. “This weekend, I was thinking of doing some painting. If you know of anyone…”

“Me, me, me!” She squealed. “I want to help paint Lily’s room!”

“Great, well that worked out better than having to ask you for help,” I snickered.

“Crap, I’m already wrapped around her finger and she’s not out here yet. See you later today, baby girl,” she called out to my stomach.

I spent the next few hours dodging snickers and smack talk from the mean girls on the college campus. I would have thought I could have left that petty bullshit behind in high school, but no. The number of comments about how I was overachieving while putting on the freshmen 15 was astounding. Obviously, hiding my baby bump worked, but now people were just picking up on the fact that I had indeed gained weight. I groaned through the last few minutes of my shift at the coffee shop as a couple truly heinous bitches decided to dole out some unwanted advice. “You know, just because you work here doesn’t mean you need to snack on all the pastries,” one of them said.

“Seriously, just say no. You were in my Lit class last semester, and girl, if I didn’t know you were all broken hearted and man-less I would think you were pregnant.” The others snickered. One even tossed out, “Damn Stace, that was kind of a low blow.”

I knew why. Stace had been one of the skanks who had hooked up with Kade during fall semester, and she was trying to get him to be more with her when he finally decided he saw me as more than a friend. She was bitter. I wasn’t exactly sure why, because it obviously hadn’t worked out well for me either. All the years of me being Kade’s best friend ticked a lot of girls off though. They always saw me as the reason he wouldn’t get serious, or the reason they broke up, or whatever. If they only knew how far from the truth their thinking was. It took all those years for Kade to finally see me for more than a buddy, and when he did, he just walked away from me the same as he had done to all of the others. I’d switch places with them in a heartbeat so they could feel the kind of pain that came with a lifetime worth of loving someone and meaning nothing to them. It certainly trumped unrequited crush any day.

By the time my shift was over, I still had another hour and a half to kill before my evening class, so I walked over to my favorite diner to treat myself to one of their fabulous milkshakes, and probably some dinner too since I was growing little Lily-bit. It’s funny how quickly Kristin and I had gone from calling the gender-unknown baby Lil’Bit to Lily-bit. I had to physically remind myself not to rub my pregnant belly as I thought about her, because that was a dead giveaway that I was baking a bun in the oven.

As I was about to cross the street, the young waitress I always saw in the diner was hopping out of a silver Jeep and waving over her shoulder to the person inside of it. I glanced down as the Jeep pulled away and could have sworn that I saw Kade. “Not again,” I told myself. Every time I managed to move on with my life in the least little bit, I swear I caught sight of this guy and his stupid silver Jeep. I never got a really good look, but it was like a kick to the gut every time. Something about him must remind me of Kade though, because it was like I could feel him near me even though, logically, I knew he wasn’t here anymore. He’d left for a new life across the country and made sure I didn’t have a way to contact him there.

I sat down in the diner and ordered my milkshake and the burger special. Then, I pulled my journal out and began to write, like I always did.

Dear Lily,

I thought I saw your dad again today. I swear, he’s not even around anymore and I’m still losing my mind over him. One day, when you’re older, we’re going to sit down and have a talk about how to avoid the hazardous boys and how to spot the good ones. I thought your daddy was a good one, and I don’t want to speak ill of Kade, because honestly, I don’t even know if he knows about you at this point. I haven’t told him, because I have no way of doing so. But damn it, he fooled me pretty good anyway, I guess. I still don’t understand how we could go so long as best friends and have him just walk away like he did. Even if he didn’t think we fit as a couple, his disappearance made absolutely no sense. Besides, if he had thought that we didn’t work as a couple, why in the hell had he asked me to move in? Even if we didn’t work in a romantic way, why wouldn’t he just end things the right way, so we could go back to being friends? Sure, that would have hurt too, but not as much as the not knowing does.

I’m probably going to have to filter which of these letters actually makes it to you later on. I just need to get these things out sometimes. Mom wants to hire a private investigator to try to find Kade. Jared, her boyfriend, suggested it. He’s a single dad. Well, he was before my mom came along. He knows how tough it is to do it all on your own, and he doesn’t think Kade should just be able to walk away from his responsibility, from you. Honestly, with the way his dad treated him when everything went sideways with his own parents’ marriage, I can’t believe he’d just walk away from his own kid if he knew. No matter how many times someone suggests it, I tell them I think they’re wrong. If he knew, he’d be here. Then again, he left me, his best friend, without a word. So, sometimes, I doubt him too.

The problem is, I still love him, and I just don’t understand why this happened…

It felt like someone was standing over me, so I put the journal down and looked up to see the young waitress staring over my shoulder as she held onto my plate of food. Correction, she hadn’t been looking over my shoulder she’d been reading what I was writing in my journal.

“Excuse me?” I spoke up.

“Oh, sorry, here you go. I didn’t mean to pry, but you’re always writing in that thing when you come in here.” She smiled down at me then. “Who is Lily?”

“My daughter,” I spoke without thinking as my hand found its way to my stomach.

Her eyes widened then. “And that Kade fellow you were writing about is the baby daddy?”

“Yep,” I said before stuffing a way too hot French fry in my mouth.

The waitress - Jenn - according to her nametag, swallowed hard for some reason. “And he just left you? Pregnant?”

“He had to leave town around the same time that I found out, and I haven’t been able to track him down to let him know,” I huffed out my answer in frustration. Not that I was fond of her intrusion, but having to talk about it, out loud, was yet another stab at my heart, and I didn’t want to endure that type of pain again in that moment.

“Look, no offense, because I really love the shakes and everything here, but I don’t know you. This is not an easy subject for me, so if you don’t mind, I’d rather not break down to a complete stranger.”

She had the sense to look at least a little embarrassed by her prying as she tossed her hands up in the air in surrender. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to. I was just curious about you since you’re always in here.” She turned and went to the back of the restaurant. The girl didn’t return to the front for the rest of my meal. Instead, the older waitress that was usually here took over the table.

“I didn’t mean to run her off,” I told her.

“No worries, she’s just embarrassed that she was being so nosey, sweetheart.” The kindness that shown through the woman’s eyes reminded me a lot of my mom. “How far along are you, Sugar?”

“I’m 24 weeks, almost 25.”

“Oh, you broke past the half-way mark. Time both slows down and speeds up from here on out.” She smiled at me again. “Do you know what you’re having yet?”

“A girl,” I said as I offered her a genuine smile. I don’t mind talking about my baby with people who know. I simply don’t want to discuss her daddy with strangers, because it cuts me open and leaves me raw just to say his name out loud. Thankfully, this woman is keeping clear of the daddy questions.

---