When I Wasn't Watching (34 page)

“What about some ginger tea?” Martha suggests. “It's supposed to settle the stomach.”

“I'm fine,” I say. “Really. It was just a one-time thing.”

And still Martha says nothing.

I have this horrible feeling she knows, and I feel worse for trying to hide it from her, although, really, I didn't exactly have time to tell her. Still I feel a certain cool kind of assessment coming from her, and I don't remember what we talk about for the rest of the evening. Not much, anyway.

I'm exhausted by the time I head home on the subway, and then take the 14th Street crosstown bus all the way over to Avenue C. I live on the top floor of an old tenement building, which is as bad as it sounds, although I've never minded before. At least I have my own place.

Yet now as I climb the stairs I'm thinking all kinds of ridiculous thoughts. Like how hard these stairs would be if I were nine months pregnant. And how there is no way I could haul a stroller up six narrow flights.

It's past eleven by the time I finally get back to my apartment, and I see it all through this new lens of quasi-motherhood, these critical and despairing eyes I don't like. It's one little room, about fifteen feet by ten, with a tiny sink, a two-burner stove, and a mini fridge tucked in one corner. The bathroom holds a shower stall and toilet, no sink, and besides the futon, a table, and a bookcase I have no real furniture. I keep my clothes in a jumble of plastic crates stacked on top of one another.

I sink onto my futon, and I no longer have the strength not to think about it. Not to realize how ridiculous and impossible and
stupid
this all is, to contemplate for one second the possibility of actually having this baby. Of being a mother.

I don't even
want
a baby, do I? I'm pretty sure I don't. Yet this isn't even about want; it's about something deeper, something fundamental and biological.
This might be my last chance.
My last chance for a life I never even wanted before.

Three days go by and I still don't call that number.

CARINA™

ISBN: 978 1 472 09643 2

When I Wasn't Watching

Copyright © 2014 Kelly Lawrence

Published in Great Britain (2014)

by Carina, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited, Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR

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