Page 62 of Embers in Our Past

The high is heavenly; my senses are at an all-time high. Once I get my sight back, I take in the beauty in front of me. Abby has laid her upper body down on the table, her hair splayed out, those chestnut waves a mess, with her eyes closed and a soft smile spread across her face.

I bend down and plant soft kisses up her body, starting at her navel, then up her sternum, paying close attention to her breasts, then moving up her neck to her jaw, and finally resting on her lips.

“By the way, good morning,” I say.

She laughs but can’t seem to form words. She moves her arms up and runs her hands through her hair. Finally, she opens her eyes and takes my face in her hands.

“Good morning,” she finally says.

We stare at one another, and it’s hard to ignore the way she’s processing the emotions going through her mind.

I know she’s not sure what comes next.

“Clay—” She’s about to ruin this moment, and I refuse to get in a fight.

“Don’t, Abby—” My tone has a finality to it, and I hope she doesn’t push.

“We should talk about this,” she tries to push, and I move off her and straighten, grabbing my shorts and pulling them on.

“Why? So, you can ignore what we just did?” I throw back at her.

“That’s not fair!”

“Wow! That’s rich coming from you. What’s not fair is you ignoring we have something more than a living situation going on here before our baby is born.” I move around the table, picking up her thrown clothing.

“You act like I haven’t explained myself,” she says, pulling the clothes out of my hands as if I’m the one she’s irritated at.

“No, what you’ve done is not give this a chance. You’ve given me excuses, Abby. Don’t you get it? You’re not the shell of yourself anymore.” I throw my hands out, annoyed she doesn’t see what’s in front of me. “You’re the person you always were.”

She covers herself with the ripped tank, along with her underwear, her shorts forgotten. She stands in silence, not cowering to my words, but still not able to respond, so I continue.

“I don’t understand what you’re so afraid of with me. Is it me? Am I what you’re afraid of? I mean, you think being with me again, as a partner, will dull something in you?” I finally ask, somewhat afraid of what she’ll say.

She bites her bottom lip and looks away. I see her chin wobble like she’s holding back a sob, and I feel a mix of anger and hurt, but I don’t say anything. If she has something to say, she needs to use her words. I’m not going to outshine her if that’s how she was feeling prior to our marriage crumbling.

She finally finds her voice and speaks. “Maybe?” It comes out more like a question than a statement.

“Elaborate,” I say, waiting for more.

“When we got married and decided to throw away the birth control pills, it was freeing for me. I remember feeling like a true adult.” She has this soft smile on her face as she looks off in the distance to the water like she’s thinking back to that day. I don’t remember it with that much clarity. Maybe for her it was a special day, but for me, I was just excited to start a life with her. I decide to stay quiet, folding my arms across my chest, and let her speak further.

“I was sheltered most of my life. I was confident I would be a successful artist but wasn’t sure in what capacity. I was always good at art—be it on a canvas, on paper, or whatever medium. When computer design, then web design, was something I mastered, it took off for me, and I fell in love with it. My confidence only grew. I was good at that.

“But I remember always dreaming of being a mother. I babysat all the kids in my neighborhood growing up. I think it was the one thing I knew I was better at than my mom because I connected with kids better than she did. When we started dating, and I knew we would get married and want children together, it felt like the universe brought you to me. Clay, I dreamed of our kids, and the moment we started trying, I had never felt more alive.”

She walks closer to the window and leans against the glass, crossing her arms across her chest, mimicking my gesture.

“At first, I assumed it could take us a few months. I heard stories of some couples taking a while to get pregnant. I spent the nights you worked at the firehouse looking up cute ways to tell you. I remember dreaming of the announcement we would do. Even little boots we could get and maybe using the firehouse as the background to take a photo. I mean, I had the whole thing planned out.”

She looks up at me as a lump forms in my throat. She’s never told me any of this—in all the years we tried, she never shared an ounce of her plans with me. She always kept it close to the chest. I’m frozen in place, feeling exposed as I feel the weight of her pain from all those years ago. I begin to understand how much she carried; I never really absorbed what she was feeling, even though I thought I did.

“Yes, I love you, Clay. And back then, I loved you so much that each time we went into those appointments, I smiled and acted like I would do anything to try another type of treatment. I’d take an injection; I’d take whatever hormone I needed to in order to try because I was fucking desperate. But what I didn’t tell you is that each time you poked me, I lost a piece of myself. Each time I peed on that damn stick and it was negative, it felt like a piece of myself died, even though there was no baby.”

She sighs, putting her hand on the bump, on the life she now carries.

“This baby, our baby, it holds so much meaning to me. It’s a piece of all those little lives we didn’t get to meet. It’s not just a part of us, but it’s a piece of all the layers of me I lost. And yes, I want to run right back to you and forget about all the parts of me that felt so shattered. But I also don’t want to ignore all the progress I made. I feel conflicted, Clay. I feel like I want so bad to run toward you and fuck all the feelings of the past, but I also want to remind myself that I’ve made it so far.”

I blink and finally let a tear fall, wiping it quickly. Hearing Abby explain how she feels, the way she teeters from how she feels like her past and her present keep battling with her is a struggle for me. It’s hard to know that despite this chemistry that obviously exists between us, she can’t simply accept it. She fights it. But now I can’t argue with her. I see her side. I don’t like it, but I see it.

---