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“Yuri, dude, don’t do this. I swear to fucking God nothing happened. It was totally innocent.”
He opens the front door wider and focuses his gaze on the coffee table. “Get the fuck out before I do something we’ll both regret.”
My shoulders slump as I heave a deep sigh and head out the front door. As I step onto the porch, I turn around to apologize to both of them, but the door slams in my face.
Fifteen
“This is the last car ride you should take until it’s time to go to the hospital,” my mom says as she pulls up in front of our house.
Kaia helps me unbuckle my seat belt. “There you go, Mommy.”
“Thank you, sweetheart,” I reply, reaching for the door handle. “I’m fine, Mom. Just help me out of the car, please.”
My mom takes my hand as I step out of her Acura SUV onto the curb. By the time I make it to the front door, I’m already out of breath. I can’t wait for this pregnancy to be over.
My lower back is constantly aching, I can hardly eat because there’s nowhere for the food to fit, and the past two days my pelvic-floor muscles have been tight and achy with constant pressure. I constantly feel like I have to take a huge dump. I’m so over this.
My mom follows me to my bedroom, turning down the bedcovers so I can lie down. “Are you hungry? I can bring you something to eat in bed.”
“Mom, we just ate two hours ago at your house,” I reply, grabbing my iPad off the bedside table.
“I know, but you’re eating for three. Those babies need all the nutrients they can get in these final days of the pregnancy.”
I shake my head, hardly able to believe that my mom is encouraging me to eat. “I’m fine, Mom. Can you just put the girls down for the night and get my phone out of my purse? I need to call Adam and see where he is.”
“Of course,” she replies as she sets off.
After she brings me my phone and disappears upstairs to get the girls ready for bed, I dial Adam’s phone, but he doesn’t answer, so I leave a message. “Adam, we’re back from my mom’s. She’s getting the girls ready for bed. Where are you? I thought you weren’t going surfing today… Anyway, I—” I’m interrupted by Kaia leaping onto my bed. “Hey, sweetie, what are you doing?”
“I came to say good night,” she says, flashing me a toothless grin. “I love you, Mommy.”
“I love you, too, baby. I’m leaving a message for Daddy. You want to say good night to him, too?”
“Good night, Daddy. I love you to the stars!”
I laugh and plant a loud kiss on her cheek before she heads out. “Come back soon. I love you,” I say into the phone before I end the call.
I place the phone on the bedside table and turn over onto my other side so I’m facing the bedroom door. I want to be able to see Adam when he walks in. At this stage in my pregnancy, being surprised has the ability to make me piss my pants, which is not at all sexy. Not that I’m going to be having sex tonight or any night for the next two months or more. If Adam were to fuck me tonight, he might break my water.
Hmm… Maybe we should have sex tonight.
I shake my head at this ridiculous thought as I open up my eBook and continue where I left off. But after just a few paragraphs, my eyesight blurs as my mind drifts to thoughts of what’s going to happen after these babies are born.
The nursery is ready, my mom is all set to step in should the babies arrive after Adam leaves for Hawaii, and Adam claims he’s spoken to his sponsors about retiring after Pipeline. Though I’m not sure I believe that.
Adam is notoriously a very bad liar. He knows that, often, people who lie add too much detail to their stories in an effort to add credibility, but it usually has the opposite effect. So Adam will usually skim over the details when lying, because he thinks this makes the lie seem more credible. It’s double-reverse psychology, as I like to call it. And it doesn’t work on me.
My mom comes in to bid me good night before she leaves, then I continue reading for a while until I come to the end of the chapter. As a former English major, I immediately see the parallels in my life and the structure of the story. I’m coming to the end of a chapter in my life. Actually, if my life were a book, we would be coming to the end of the part told from Adam’s point of view. Our whole marriage, even our relationship in college, was always about what Adam wanted. I know having your feelings and desires ignored is not a reason to cheat, but that’s what happened when Adam and I were living together in college.
I played the part of the nagging girlfriend who wanted to know what Adam planned to do after graduation. I thought I had a right to know, since we were living together. He played the part of the moody, angry boyfriend who was being stifled by his live-in girlfriend’s demands. The truth was that Adam wasn’t angry at me. He was angry at his father, and the world, for making him feel like he had to quit surfing and take over the family construction business.
This is exactly why, when Adam and I got back together, I set aside any dreams I may have had and threw myself into being his number-one fan. I wanted him to know that I supported his surfing career wholeheartedly. I thought this was the right thing to do. But it seems the more I give Adam, the more he takes. And the moodiness and anger are still there, unless he’s getting high.
I have no problem with his smoking weed. I do have a problem with his refusal to put his family first. His refusal to put me first, the way I’ve done for him for the past nine years.
He hasn’t even bothered to ask me what I want in the nine years since we’ve been back together. I’ve tried talking to him about it a few times, but it always seems like a passing thought shared over dinner. Oh, yeah, that sounds nice. Pass the potatoes, please.
I’ll admit I should have been more assertive about having my own life, and what’s in the past should stay there. But I’m ready to be more than just a mother now. I’m finally going to talk to Adam about my dream of working with girls and boys with eating disorders. I’ve already spoken to Dr. Broadbent of the Chrysalis Center for Eating Disorders and she’s very excited to bring me on and start training me in about six months, when the twins are old enough to be left alone with Adam or a nanny.
I still have setbacks related to my anorexia every day. Sometimes I catch myself purposely skipping meals, throwing away food when I’m still hungry, or obsessing over calories. I’ve been in recovery for more than eleven years and I still have to take it one day at a time. I want to be able to do for others what Dr. Broadbent and the other counselors at Chrysalis did for me. If I can give just one person hope when they’re at the point in their life where they feel like they’ve lost control of everything, I’ll feel like the past eleven years of struggle will have been worth it.
I tap the home button on my iPad so I can see the time. It’s 9:42 p.m. Where the hell is Adam?
I set the tablet on the bedside table and pick up the phone to dial his number again. This time, he picks up on the first ring.
“I’m right outside. I’m coming in,” he says, and I can tell he’s walking.
“Where were you?” I ask, but the line goes dead before I can get the last word out.
I get a sudden sickening feeling in the pit of my belly, and the hairs on my arms stand on end. As if my body can portend that something bad is about to happen. Or has it already happened?
I try to push aside the thoughts that have plagued me for the past few months. Like dwelling on the fact that Adam had a girlfriend when we met in college, but I didn’t find out until we had been dating for a couple of weeks, after he broke up with her. Or the fact that Adam has been propositioned by hot girls in bikinis at every single surfing event he’s competed in since we’ve been together. Or the fact that I haven’t been to his past three events with him, but Lena has. Or that Lena and Adam have been spending more time together than Adam and I have.
As Adam walks into the bedroom, I get a sharp pain in my abdomen, just above my pubic bone. I wince at the pain and Adam rushes to my side.
&nb
sp; “Are you in labor?” he asks, his voice fraught with worry.
“No,” I reply, though the word comes out more like a growl. “Where were you? Why weren’t you answering your phone?”
“I’m taking you to the hospital,” he says.
I grab his wrist before he can get up. “It’s just a mild contraction. The doctor said not to worry unless they’re coming closer than six minutes apart.” I look him in the eye. “Answer the question, Adam. Where were you?”
He stares at me for a moment, then his shoulders slump and his gaze falls to the mattress. “I was at Yuri’s. I… I went there after the interview because I told Surfline that I’m not retiring.”
The angst is like a rope being tightened around my insides. “I knew it.”
He holds up his hand. “Lindsay, listen. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I—”
“What have you been thinking about?”
His eyebrows scrunch up in confusion. “About me retiring.”
“About you retiring? About you? Is that all you ever think about?”
He stares at me for a moment before he turns away to face the wall. “This is so fucked up.”
“That’s one way to put it,” I reply, clutching my belly as an uncomfortable heat builds at the base of my abdomen. “Adam, you’ve been living your dream for nine years. For nine years, you’ve been the comeback kid, traveling the world to exotic locations, being adored by fans, not for being a great husband or father. For being one of the best surfers in the world. When will it be my chance to be more than a wife and mother?”
