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I understood on one level. He was only in town for a short while, and Ashe had told me he couldn’t extend his trip due to a new lockdown in Norway.
There wasn’t just the fact that he would lose money on his non-refundable airline ticket, she’d told me. There were also issues of international borders and laws to contend with, especially during times of an international pandemic. It wasn’t like he could have just decided to stay.
That was all very true, but I couldn’t help but wish he could have stayed somehow anyway. And what really hurt was that he had given no indication of wanting to if he could.
What happened between us had been spontaneous, as much my doing as his. Even more so, really. And I knew that was part of what had made it so damn hot. But I couldn’t help but want us to have planned to have made it last longer.
“What are you going to do now?” Ashe asked me now.
“I don’t know, deal, I guess.”
“No, I meant about the little one.”
“The baby?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I’m certainly not telling him. No point in saddling him with that when he can’t do anything. I think I’ll keep it. I might have to move back in with my parents.”
“There are worse things,” Varg said, who I knew had seen a few of them himself. “Theo would want to know, though. He’s going to be a father.”
“You’re right, of course,” I told him, although my heart just didn’t feel ready to truly appreciate the words.
What hurt most was that I really thought we had something that would make Theo stay. I knew we had only been together for one night and it was strange, but I felt like we were falling in love. Like there really was one person we were meant to be with in life and Theo was that person for me.
I had no idea what sort of games fate was playing on both of us, though, if we were meant to be, by having him be from a different country and having us meet so briefly.
The pregnancy was the real cherry on top.
What the hell was I supposed to do with that?
What hurt most wasn’t that he left but that I didn’t know when or if I was ever going to see him again.
“You know we’re here for you, right?” Ashe asked, going into full best friend mode.
“Yeah,” Varg agreed.
“Of course.”
I appreciated the sentiment, but I really just wanted to get on with it. Perhaps it wasn’t the healthiest coping mechanism, but I liked to focus on productive things. It was certainly better than stress-eating, particularly with the graduation concert on the horizon. And now it was just around the corner.
Soldiering on as best as I could, through the morning sickness and all the rest of it, I finished off my seminars and threw myself into work, sometimes pulling fifteen-hour days.
Food and sleep became like after thoughts. I was sure I looked like hell, but I was starting to feel a lot better. I’d almost put Theo out of my mind and was focusing on my future, one that I was increasingly certain included our baby. It was all I had left of him, really.
Despite what logic might dictate, it just didn’t seem right to give it up so easily. I was dreading the inevitable call to my parents, having to inform them that I was pregnant, but since I’d only known them to be practical, it really shouldn’t be that bad.
They weren’t old-fashioned and they wouldn’t slut-shame me. I knew I wouldn’t have to worry about hearing their worries about “unwed pregnancies” or “babies raised without a two-parent household.”
Likely the most embarrassing part to them would be becoming grandparents in their 40s. They had had me when they themselves were very young. And I knew they weren’t expecting me to have a child so soon, since I was single and had shown no interest in becoming a mother until now.
In fact, I hadn’t known I wanted to become a mother until I’d seen the pink plus sign, but from that moment on, my heart was strangely set on the feat. I had even taken to planning out a nursery and buying clothes for the baby when not preoccupied with making the program for the graduation concert, which took up most of my time. I tried to really throw myself into it so as not to focus on missing Theo too much.
My program for the event was finished a couple days ahead of time. Members of the music faculty had already been tapped to serve as players in the orchestra, so there was nothing to do but wait.
And to hold on to my confidence that the program I’d devised really was as good as I thought it was. I already knew all the parts by heart. It would all come down to whether the industry types agreed with me or not.
