When we get home in the evenings, Dallas and I stay up late, talking about every topic under the sun, having hot sex until all hours of the night. Sometimes we talkaswe’re having sex. Then we sleep in. In the morning, we have more hot sex.Sometimes he wakes me upashe’s having sex with me. And sometimes I do that to him too.
Not once have either of us brought up the topic of the Plan B again. I’ve thought about it, of course I have. Or at least I did in the first few days, when I was allowing the decision to make itself. I don’t know if my cycle is regular enough for it to actually happen. But every time I’ve thought about doing something about it … to stop it …I think of Sabine. And I think of Jack.
A piece of me craves them in a way I don’t know what to do with.
I dream about them.Their little faces and their blue-green eyes.
I wake with a start.
My heart’s beating fast and my face is wet with tears. It takes me a few seconds to get my bearings.
It’s the middle of the night.
I’m with Dallas.
I’m safe.
The babies aren’t crying. We’re not getting kicked out onto the streets because our secret room has been discovered.
I’m not alone anymore.
The thing is, losing your family, your home, your possessions, and everything you’ve ever thought was stable and real … it’sstressful. Only now that I’ve stepped out from under the weight of it all can I fully appreciate howscaryit was and still is.
New Orleans has a gritty, very real danger to its underbelly. As a young, broke, down-on-her-luck female who’s very much alone and in many ways always has been, I’ve felt that danger acutely, every day of my life.
I don’t know if the bank account Dallas created for me iseven real. I haven’t tried to use it yet. But I can admit that the thought of it, sitting there, acting as a buffer against me and all my deepest fears, is the greatest gift of all. Theoretically, at least. If it’s true.
If any of it is true.
I have no reason to doubt him. But this isn’t the first time I’ve woken in the night.
Dallas’s big, warm body is wrapped around me and he deepens his bearhug. “You’re okay. I’m here.”
He knows all about my backstory and my nightmares. And he’s had plenty of his own emotional hardships. He’s no stranger to pain. We’ve talked a lot about both.
But he’s never had the floor drop out of his entire life.
What if it happens again?
If it can happen once, it’s more likely that itwillhappen again. Who knows, maybe it’s like a chronic illness that keeps coming back.
What if he sets me up with all these clothes and the bank account and those new friends that are his friends first and this amazing life he lives and then he just … pulls the rug out again?
“Stop thinking like that, Amelie Thibodeaux. I canhearyour thoughts.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, sweetheart. You’ve been scared for a long time. It’s a hard thing to let go of.”
Dallas holds me as I cry my heart out. I cry like I cried that time I took those overpriced flowers and placed them at my family crypt a year to the day after my father died before he even hit the floor.“I hate him so much.”
“That’s good. You’re allowed to hate him, honey. Hating himmeans you’re working through your grief. Which is something he never managed to do.”
Dallas and I both watched our fathers die in slow motion. They both died of grief. A very specific kind of grief caused by lost love.
I start to catch my breath a little. And I look up into Dallas’s eyes. “Do we really want to put ourselves through all this? Maybe we’re just setting ourselves up for the same kind of fall.”
“Maybe we are. But it’s worth the risk.”
