Page 127 of Anything But Lonely

I never dreamed about being a mom. I never had a list of baby names I liked or imagined what my future children would look like. Motherhood was never something I saw for myself.

It still isn’t.

I don’t want kids.

I don’t want to be a parent.

And yet somehow, I feel like I’ve become something dangerously close to one.

Not his mom.

I could never replace Talia—and I would never want to.

But his person.

The one he looks for when something exciting happens. The one he tells his weird little facts to. The one he trusts with all the thoughts that bounce around his brilliant little mind.

That’s what I want.

Not the title.

But the responsibility of being that one he knows will always show up no matter what.

And maybe that’s why this hurts so much.

Because I know exactly what it feels like to lose that person.

The three of us stop at a local restaurant for dinner, and while it’s easy to fall into the normalcy of Crew’s hundreds of questions and arguing with Mateo between two desserts until Mateo just orders both anyway, I can’t ignore the voice in my head telling me something is wrong.

This is wrong.

Not the moment.

Not this life.

The fact that she isn’t here.

I have the life I never envisioned for myself—the life my mom wanted for me.

A man who adores me.

A child who looks at me like I hung the moon.

Love. So much love.

And she’s not here to see it.

She’ll never meet Mateo. She’ll never meet the first man I think I’ve ever loved.

And she’ll never meet Crew.

Sweet, smart, wonderful Crew.

She’ll never hear the questions that come out of nowhere or the random tangents that somehow make perfect sense to him. She won’t get to bake him his favorite dessert or watch him proudly show off his collection of stuffed animals. She won’t sit beside him during his “monster” movies while he somehow ends up closer and closer until he’s practically in her lap, wearing his Halloween pajamas.

She won’t know him.

And somehow, that feels like another loss.