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“You’re worse than my dad.” I huffed.
“You’re my best worker, but you remind me of my foolish daughter.” She patted my shoulder. “I’m not looking forward to losing you next year.”
“I’ll still come to see you,” I told her and then held up the stick, waving it around between us. “Now… Are you going to congratulate me or not?”
“Go to the doctor first and make sure.” She saw me sulking and added, “I’m happy for you.”
I held my stomach and beamed down at it. “I can’t wait to tell Scott. I wonder if we’ll have another girl or a wild little boy?”
“Lucy’s wild enough for ten boys.”
I laughed at her statement. “She’s rotten.”
“Go on,” she shooed me away.
I glimpsed at the watch on my arm. “I still have another ten minutes on my break.”
“No, I mean go home. We’re covered for the night for once, and there’s no need for you to be prancing around, waiting to tell your man. Go on.”
I grabbed her hands and squeezed them. “Really? You’re the best.”
She pulled her hands away and scowled. “Here the best student I ever had grabbed my hands before she washes hers with her pregnancy stick still in one.” She shook her fingers and walked toward the sinks. “See, this is why you need to go home tonight.”
I grinned as I shoved the pregnancy test into my scrub pocket and went to wash up. “Now you know I don’t leave this bathroom until I wash my hands. I just got a little excited.”
I shuffled up the last set of apartment steps. The area wasn’t the best, but I just kept telling myself once I get out of college we could leave this place. I’d chant the same words over and over—Only three more years… Only three… Before I knew it, I was chanting only two more, and now I was chanting only one more... Just one more, and I’d be able to afford a mortgage since I’d be done with school. I’d go on to pass the National Council Licensure Exam—NCLEX for short—and become that registered nurse I was meant to be. In the meantime, I built up my credit score preparing for the day we would move out. It wasn’t easy finding a credit card company that would work with me since I had no credit starting out, but now I was proud to say I bought my first car—a white Ford Focus that was amazing on gas and affordable to purchase—last year because of my efforts.
Dad nagged on me about Scott, and I would never listen to him about my love life, but I let him aggravate me about everything else. Growing up, he always told my sister and me to never depend on a man. The day we got our licenses, he bought us each a hunk of junk car and said that was all we would get from him. Dad taught us to change the tires and the oil. And the day I told him I wanted to build up my credit, he told me it was a good idea. Afterward, he told me he’d skin me alive if I let Scott get a hold of my personal information or anything else. Dad even went with me the day I got my car. He had something to say about every vehicle and stood there beside me as I spoke with the salesman. I knew what he was doing. He wanted to see if I’d let the car dealer cheat me because Dad often said I was too soft. He believed I gave people the opportunity to take advantage of me. Said I was too much like Mom. Mom didn’t seem too softhearted to me when she was making him shut up though.
But apparently, Mom and I were soft. When I was ten, I gave the five dollar bill I earned from doing chores to a man sitting on the sidewalk at the gas station. He held up a sign saying he needed food. Mom also gave him money. Dad had warned us that the man was a fake homeless person. I didn’t even know people faked doing that until we saw the same man dressed cleanly a few hours later getting in his truck to drive—a twenty-four pack of beer in his hands. Dad shook his head and said nothing.
My dad loved Lucy. Loved her with his entire being the same way he had been with Olivia and me, but when I told him I wanted the baby I was carrying, he tried to talk me out of it. He couldn’t get past his judgment of Scott. He always said we weren’t meant to last, but I begged to differ. We were young, but I had my crap together better than half of the thirty-year-olds. Scott and I weren’t the first young parents. All around me I saw so many like us, making it work. The world was full of young sweethearts living their lives together…forever and ever, old and wrinkly.
I grinned as I punched my passcode in to unlock our apartment. Scott was my first, my only, and I knew he would be my last.
I loved Scott, Lucy, and our little speck in my belly. Papaw Will would come around the moment he saw the baby. He was easy like that. We’d get past it. In a few years, my dad would see that all my struggles were worth it.
It was a little after one. I left for work around eight every day and came home around five or six every morning, then took a quick nap before I’d leave for class. Scott was probably sleeping or playing the PS4 that I’d gotten him with my credit card last year for Christmas. When I entered the living room though, it was completely dark. The TV and game were as quiet as the room was until I startled at the little figure on the couch.
“Lucy?” I whispered as I bent down to get her.
“Mommy?” she mumbled, lifting her head slightly.
She was sleeping sitting up. “What are you doing? Why aren’t you in your bed?” I scooped her up in my arms and kissed her forehead. Her tiny little arms went around my neck. Her legs instinctively knew to wrap around me. Such a thing always made my heart melt.
“BeeBee’s giggles kept waking me up.” Just like that, a bucket of ice fell over me. My smiled waned as my heart fell to the floor. Beebee was Lucy’s nickname for my cousin Briana. She could never say her name right.
“Briana’s here?” I asked slowly. I thought maybe Lucy was having a weird dream. Briana never came over. Briana and I barely hung out since high school. I wasn’t as much fun to her with a kid.
“Yeah, she’s in your bedroom with daddy.”
And because life knew I needed confrontation, Briana’s laughter rang out through the thin walls, followed by Scott’s.
“I don’t like when she comes here,” Lucy whispered as she hugged me tighter.
I staggered but held her tight, blood rushing up my neck and face.
Young love turned old and wrinkly. My one and only. My faith all but crashed and burned.
Life chewed up my ideas and spat them out.
Oh, Hadley. What a freaking idiot you were.
