Page 94 of Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire)
“No,” I said. “She’s not coming. Let’s go.”
He studied me. “Now, what’s got you messed up this time?”
“Nothing that’s going to affect my workout. Go.”
He shot me another hard look, but he did it.
I’d canceled Saturday, and it had been a mistake, because I’d needed this, so much so that I’d left work at five-thirty to get it. I’d been useless anyway. And for the next hour, I threw myself into exercise, trying to drive out the anger and the frustration, or at least to exhaust myself enough for sleep to come, as it hadn’t since Friday.
I needed to hold her, that was all. I could barely sleep without her. Karen kept me company during my brief hours at home, as much as her important work and social schedule permitted, but eventually, I had to go to bed.
I lay in the dark night after night, staring at the ceiling after another day of working to keep the ship afloat, with nobody to wrap my arm around. Nobody’s flower-scented hair against my cheek, nobody’s soft skin under my arm. Nobody’s head pillowed on my chest, and nobody to listen to the beating of my heart. Because she hadn’t come home, and in the dark hours, at two and three and four in the morning, I was afraid she never would. She called Karen, she didn’t call me, and I missed her with an ache that was physical. The pain of a phantom limb, something that had been part of me and was gone.
I was angry—still, always—and I was as confused as a bull in a field of rocks. If she loved me, she’d be with me. She seemed to be trying to teach me a lesson, but if she was, I wasn’t learning it. She wanted me to love her less, to need her less? She said she loved me, but she’d left me when I most needed her?
Of course she left you,the evil voice whispered. The voice I heard at two and three and four o’clock and was hearing again now, because there was no work and no exercise and no music that could drown it out.They always leave you. You’re too hard to love.
“Whoa,” Eugene said after I’d pummeled the living hell out of the punching bag and was standing, head down, arms dropping, breathing hard and my sweat dripping onto the floor. “It ain’t the bag’s fault. That ex causing trouble between the two of you? That why Hope’s not here? That sounds like a big ol’ mess.”
“Oh,” I said, accepting his help in stripping off the gloves, hoping he wouldn’t notice that my arm muscles were trembling with fatigue and knowing he did. “You heard about that.”
“If you’re going to be a big shot, everybody’s going to pay attention. Guess that’s the downside. But you think Hope’s believing you did something wrong, or worried about the money? ‘Cause I got to tell you, man…”
“No. Of course not.” I didn’t ask what Eugene believed. I didn’t want to know. Instead, I reached for the towel and rubbed my head down. “I’m ready.”
“Well, don’t start thinking it,” Eugene said. “Got to be obvious by now that she ain’t in it for the money. And I notice you didn’t ask me if I believed it, which shows me you ain’t quite as dumb as you sometimes act. So I got to ask myself—where is she, and what’s got you so twisted up?”
I just stared at him, and he said, “No? Give me twenty pushups, then, to finish off. Twenty regular, that is. And then ten one hand, ten the other. You need to work it out? Work it out.”
He was pushing me, but I wanted to be pushed. By the last two reps on my weaker left side, my entire arm was shaking, and when I got to my feet, Eugene shook his head.
“Adrenaline running the show again,” he said. “Get on the bike and take one more shot at letting it go, and we’re done.”
When I climbed on, he pulled out his stopwatch, pressed it, and kept his eye on it. Finally, I said, “She left.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, still not looking up. “How come?”
I shrugged and kept pedaling, and he waited without speaking until I said, “Because she doesn’t want to work at the company, doesn’t want my help. Says I’m…”
I stopped, but Eugene had no trouble filling in the sentence. “Taking away her air. Holding her so tight she can’t breathe.”
I glared at him. “If you know, why are you asking?”
“Man, I’m not the one brought this up.”
“Ha.” He wasexactlythe one.
He looked at the watch some more. “You ever think she might be pregnant?”
My feet stopped pedaling, and then I did the math and started up again. “No. That’s not it. She had a period, what, a few weeks ago. Three, four, somewhere like that, so she couldn’t be having any…what? Effects yet.”
He snorted. “Got a lot of experience with pregnant women, do you? She ain’t been progressing in here one bit the way she ought to’ve been. She’s trying, but her heart rate shoots up there right away, and then it stays up there like it shouldn’t. Gets tired too fast, too, ever since we started, and it’s not getting better like it ought to do.”
“But I told you,” I said. “Even if she were…” I had to work to get the word out, “pregnant, it’d be, what? A week? Two weeks? Barely a…an egg. And this started before then.”
“Uh-huh. It’s like I thought. You don’t know nothing. A woman gets pregnant, she’s got all this extra work going on right away. She’s making extra blood, heart’s pumping harder to move it around, lungs got to work more, too. And them hormones…I got three kids, two of ‘em daughters. Got two grandkids, too. You know how a guy takes ‘roids and gets all ragey? That’s male hormones, what they do to you. So what do you think happens when a woman’s got all themfemalehormones going wild in there, not giving her a moment’s peace? She ain’t never felt that way before, thinks she’s losing her mind, that’s what. Laughing one minute, crying the next, so tired she can’t hardly get out of bed, and trying to go on like normal. You think she’s bad when she’s having her period? That ain’tnothin’compared to pregnancy. A pregnant woman—you got to cut her some slack. Anything hard you think you’ve done in your life, you better believe she’s working harder than that making your baby for you, and it starts way,waybefore she’s showing.”
Making your baby for you.
