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“Wow. What’s going on, honey?”
She shrugged and opened the door wider for me to go inside. “You look good,” she said, looking me up and down. “You look like you got some sleep.”
I hoped I hid the flush rising in my cheeks, and I tried not to stumble over my words. “Thanks. I did sleep well.”
She smiled again, some of the tension leaving her body. “You wanna grab a drink and sit by the pool?”
I nodded. I absolutely adored Leah and Radleigh’s back yard. It was huge, but surrounded by large trees and fences so nobody could see in from outside. Not as intimidating as it sounds. They had a fantastic gardener who kept the bushes and flowers in excellent shape, and the pool was the centrepiece, surrounded by sun loungers much like the ones on my balcony. What I loved most about it was the total privacy it provided, and how easy it was to hide away from the world there.
With our drinks in our hands – orange juice for me, water for Leah – we headed out to make ourselves comfortable on the loungers. The afternoon sun was hot, but not uncomfortably so, and for a while we just lay back and sat quietly together.
“I think I’m fucking up my relationship.”
I snapped my head towards Leah, her sudden openness surprising me. “Erm… what?”
Unable to turn onto her side with her enormous stomach, she heaved herself into a sitting position and faced me. After a moment she sighed and shook her head. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
“Er, yeah, it kinda does.” I sat up too and Leah’s eyes softened. I could virtually see her berating herself for talking me about her “insignificant” problems, compared to what I was dealing with. “Leah, come on. Not you too. I talked to everyone else about this last night. At some point, you’re gonna have to start treating me like a normal person again. Maybe we can start here?”
After another pause, Leah nodded. “Okay. I’m sorry. It’s just… this is something silly and-”
“Leah.”
This was going to be harder than I thought.
“Okay,” she said with another sigh. “I’m sure it’s just being pregnant, but… I feel… hideous.” She gently poked at her swollen stomach. “This is making me feel hideous. I can’t wait to meet my baby but carrying this bulk around is killing me
. Everything hurts. My back hurts, and my hips hurt, and my boobs weigh a bloody ton. At night I’m too hot and I can’t sleep and it’s making me cranky. I feel frumpy and unattractive, and instead of sucking it up and dealing with it, I’m taking it out on Radleigh.”
“Wait. He didn’t talk to you about this yet?”
Leah’s head tilted to the side. “Talk to me? How did you…? Did he talk to you about this?”
Crap. Way to go, Freya. You just made this worse. I was so out of practice with this friend thing.
“Freya.” Her eyes widened, flashing with anger. Radleigh was right; she actually was turning into an angry monster right in front of me.
I held my hands up. “Leah, it wasn’t like you think. He didn’t call me up to bitch about you. I saw him at the club last night.”
“He went to the club?”
She pulled herself up and paced around the sun lounger she’d been sitting on. I hoped the speed she’d picked up would help her burn off the rage inside her, but equally, I was worried that if she didn’t calm down she’d make herself sick.
“Leah, take it easy.” I rose from my sun lounger and grabbed her by the shoulders, forcing her to stand still. “Please. Calm down, honey.”
As she drew in a few deep breaths, I was struck with guilt. She should have come to me sooner. She should have come to me. Okay, her sanity wasn’t solely down to me being there for her; we had other friends too, but she and I had always been the closest and I’d let her work herself into this rage by being so consumed with my own problems.
“What did he say?” she asked, quietly.
I smiled. “It won’t mean half as much if I tell you.”
“He was so angry when he left last night. I really didn’t think he’d come home.”
“What happened?”
“I’m a bitch,” she said, as we both sat down again, and her head flopped onto my shoulder. “A cranky, unreasonable bitch. Radleigh came home with a pizza, which is a nice thing to do, right?” I nodded. “He even picked my favourite. Said I could choose a movie for us to watch, and we’d spend the evening curled up together. Instead of saying ‘thank you’ like a normal person, I flipped out about how fat I already I am, and asked why he would bring me food that would make me fatter. I mean, really? How ungrateful can I be?” She sighed. “It’s just… at the time, everything I said seemed reasonable to me. Like he was trying to purposely make me look disgusting so he has an excuse to leave me.”
Wow. This wasn’t Leah. She had always been confident, feisty, and wouldn’t take any crap. Pregnancy hormones – based on what a couple of other people I knew had experienced – had the power to drag up deep-buried concerns and bring them to the forefront. I’ve no idea if there’s any true science behind it, it was just something I’d spotted. When Leah first got pregnant, she was happy and scared. Scared because she and Radleigh had only been together officially for around four months when they found out. Nothing between them had ever been simple, and adding a baby to the mix so soon had forced their relationship farther forward than they’d expected. Whatever Leah was throwing at Radleigh, I was sure, were her un-voiced concerns that he wasn’t ready to settle down.
