Page 26 of Plunge

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Thistle

FOR SOME REASON, I let Indigo talk me into a week night circus class at Ivy’s studio. Not circus, exactly. Aerial silks, Diana said it was called. When I walk into the brightly colored room, I have to admit it does feel warm and inviting. The last time I was in here, it was a plant store or something. Diana used to run it and live upstairs.

“Pretty nice upgrade, right?” Diana comes in the door behind me dressed for a workout. She grins and nudges me with her shoulder. “It’s ok. We are all a little disoriented by this place.” I follow her over to a corner of the room where Indigo is stretching out along with Opal.

“Abigail is slowly improving. She went back home today,” Opal says as she pulls her ankle up toward her butt, stretching out her quad. She sighs. “I just wish her recovery were a little easier.”

I’d just heard whisperings about Abigail the past week. “Is she going to be ok?” I ask, leaning against Diana for balance while I, too, stretch out my quads.

Opal nods. “She will be. We’re watching her really carefully. And Fletcher has been a godsend for them.”

“Hmm,” I groan before I can catch myself. I don’t want to think or talk about Fletcher. Tonight was supposed to be a girls’ night. But Diana pipes up about how Fletcher is a natural with the baby and seems to know exactly what to do to calm him down.

“Nobody wanted to hand him the baby at first,” Diana says. “I think they thought he’d give Louie syphilis or something. But he’s really amazing. Total pro uncle.”

And then there’s a big silence. I don’t do anything to fill it. Just continue stretching and waiting for Ivy to start the class. A few young women I don’t recognize come in the studio—they look like college students.

When I was at Oak Creek College, we never ventured over the train tracks into town. The campus is small, but had a sort of cocoon feeling, like we had everything we needed right there. Which was great because while a few of the professors lived in town and knew my backstory, I was able to just blend into the student crowd on campus. Nobody knew where I was from. They all just knew where I was going.

Indigo squeaks out an “oooh” and says, “So tell us about your date with Alfonso.”

“Antonio,” I moan. I see Ivy setting up some silk hammock-like equipment, so I have time to give them the whole run-down. And since Fletcher’s sister and his brother’s girlfriend are here, I feel like I have to include the part where he swooped in.

But not the part afterward.

“Oh my god, you guys sat and talked?” Diana’s eyes go wide. She was already gone at college by the time Fletcher and I graduated, but I know she knows about the flaming disaster of our breakup.

I shrug. “He walked me to the train station,” I say and flush. I bite my lip and wish Ivy would start this damn class already.

“Do you know he was the Claus this year?” Opal asks. She sighs like Fletcher is some kind of heartthrob. “And the way he’s just dropped everything to help Hunter and Abigail…what a hero!” Opal smiles and clasps her hands together. “I wish all postpartum patients had support like this.”

I furrow my brow. Helpful and hero are probably the last two words I’d used to describe Fletcher. Fun, energetic, sure. Maybe even kind if it meant helping someone pack so he could leave for a ski trip sooner…but hero?

My mind flashes to him confessing his difficulty, how his panty-chasing habits got him into a boatload of trouble. Is that the same man dropping everything to help his brother and baby nephew?

Ivy clicks on some instrumental music and says, “Welcome, everyone. Please move toward a set of silks.” She gestures around the room and I hurry over to a set, but Opal follows.

“What happened between you two?” She ties her hair back into a ponytail and looks at me, her green eyes wide and wondering. I know she’s referencing Fletcher, and I don’t want to answer her.

Ivy instructs us on how to sink into the silks for a spine stretch to get started, but Diana blurts out from Opal’s other side, “My brother knocked her up, she decided not to keep the baby, and small-town gossip ensued. Thistle miscarried after all that and Fletcher left for the wide world of racing sports and hasn’t looked back.”

I look at Diana, arching her back in the silks, her hair dangling on the ground. “What?” She says, somehow managing to shrug despite being inverted. “Doesn’t that pretty much cover it?”

Before I can say anything, Opal clears her throat and starts gesturing at Diana. “We talked about this,” she whisper-shouts above the music. “Remember, I gave you a list of forbidden postures?”

“Aw, hell,” Diana says and turns right-side-up. She raises her hand. “Ivy!” Our instructor turns toward her, questioning. “I need the Abigail treatment for class, if you catch my drift.”

The women around me erupt into squeals and applause. Indigo climbs out of the silks and starts hugging Diana, and I gather that this is Diana’s way of telling everyone that she’s pregnant.

I stay where I am in the silks, noticing how different the reactions are for this news when a woman is married and financially solvent. And when it happens on purpose, I think.

I remember again that my plan was to never have children. Sure, these women are overjoyed for Diana now, but where will they be when she’s having to choose between one of her industry conferences and a feverish child.

I just saw my mom sacrifice absolutely everything for us. Here I am sacrificing absolutely everything to take care of her now. That’s not what I wanted.

But is it such a sacrifice?A small voice inside reminds me of the town women coming over to take my mom for walks, of the community they’re building with her. Then the voice starts to suggest I’m really not as necessary here as I think, and I start to get upset again about my unclear future.

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