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That wasn’t Jamie. Logically, I knew that. But facts were facts.
“You know what, Jamie? I don’t know. I thought I knew you, but the way you flip your emotions makes me wonder. Loving and warm one second and ice cold the next. That sounds like someone who could decide seven months into this pregnancy that fatherhood isn’t for him. And I’d be left holding the baby on my own, sacrificing my own goals and dreams for a goddamn fairytale.”
“I wouldn’t. You know me better than that.”
“Fuck you, Jamie. I thought I knew you better but even now you just don’t understand, and worse, you’re not even trying. When I make up my mind, maybe I’ll let you know.”
I tapped that end call button so fiercely I thought I’d break the screen, and when I didn’t get any satisfaction from it, I smashed the damn phone onto the mattress as hard as I could.
Jamie didn’t get it because he didn’t have to. No matter what he said, he could walk away whenever he wanted. He said he wouldn’t, and I knew that wasn’t who Jamie was, but I’ll bet my mother thought the same thing about my father. I’ll bet she thought, this will be the time it lasts, every time she found herself knocked up by another loser. But you know what? Those hopes and thoughts always ended up at the clinic when reality set in.
Jameson: Maddie call me back.
I sighed when the phone buzzed against my thigh, looked at the screen and shook my head. I needed to make this decision on my own. If I was gonna have this kid, it would be because I wanted him or her, because I was ready for the struggle of single motherhood, not because I had some fantasy that I’d get my own happy ending.
Jameson: Maddie, please. We need to talk about this.
“Talk,” I shouted at the screen, “yeah right.” Jamie didn’t want to talk, he wanted to convince me, to persuade me, to promise me that we were a team, that we could do this together. He wanted to give me a false sense of security until it was too late for me to back out, and I wasn’t having it.
Hell no, I wasn’t.
Jameson: We’re not done with this conversation.
No, we weren’t. But there would be no conversation until I had time to think, to figure out what I would do.
I sighed and looked around my bedroom. It was lavish with Egyptian cotton sheets and a duvet that was the softest thing that had ever touched my skin, but the room was basically an empty vessel. There were no personal touches, no photos or little knickknacks decorating the room. It was, in effect, a nice hotel room.
This was not the room of a woman ready to bring a kid into the world.
Moments like this made me wish I made more of an effort to make friends. I hadn’t planned on being in Glitz this long, not that I had friends in California, either, but right now I could use a real friend.
And I didn’t mean Jamie.
There was Maisie. I could talk to her and she would squeal with excitement for the idea of another baby, but she would also tell me to keep the baby and raise it on my own. She would go in hard on the girl power thing, encouraging me until I foolishly believed having this baby was the right choice when I knew it wasn’t.
“Nope.” I shook my head again, feeling my determination rise. “I didn’t need to talk to anyone about this decision because it was mine. Only mine. I would make this decision the same as nearly every other decision I made in my life, on my own.
I cried myself to sleep, sad to say goodbye to someone who was never even here. I woke up the next day perfectly settled with my decision. I made an appointment at the clinic first thing, and then I took the longest, hottest shower of my life.
I would take care of this on my own. I was going to terminate my pregnancy, and I wouldn’t tell anyone.
Talk about fucking my life up without even trying.
Suddenly, I had a lot more sympathy for my mom.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Jameson
After three hours of fitful sleep, I woke up exhausted. Pregnant. Madison was fucking pregnant, which wasn’t as bad a thing to me as it was to her, but the fact that she needed to figure out what she wanted to do, made me sad. I knew what those words meant, and I didn’t like it.
A baby changed everything, and we needed to talk. We needed to sit down like adults and talk about this baby. Talk about the pregnancy and figure out—together—what we would do. I was in love with her, and I knew she was thinking about aborting our baby.
