AllFreeNovel
Share Us
We’re going to work out what we have to, then we’re leaving Clarissa behind for good.
That’s all there is to it.
TWENTY-NINE
JULIAN
Ibrace myself for the conversation we’re about to have with Clarissa.
The last time we spoke, it was amicable but not great. It’s progressively getting better, but there’s always tension between us, and there isn’t anything sexual about it. This is the kind of tension that leaves me feeling on edge, the kind of tension that makes me want to put my fist through the wall.
And there isn’t any getting out of this meeting.
“She didn’t say what she wanted on the phone?” Caleb asks.
“No,” I reply. “For the tenth time, no. She just said she has something important to talk about with us, and she wants to meet. She wanted to meet somewhere private, but I told her that we’re going to keep it public, and she agreed. So now here we are.”
“What happens if she doesn’t show up?” Terry asks.
“Then we leave,” I say. “I’m not sitting around here and waiting for her to show up when I have other shit to do with my day. I’m thrilled we got Jeanette back, and if Clarissa thinks I’m going to sit around here and wait for her to show up, she’s got another thing coming.”
“There she is.” Caleb points to the door.
Sure enough, Clarissa is walking in. She has a large envelope with her, and she’s dressed the most conservatively I have ever seen her. Her hoodie is baggy and loose, her hair is thrown into a messy bun, she’s not wearing a lot of makeup, and her pants don’t show off her ass.
She looks just like the kind of woman who isn’t out to get attention, and that is the complete opposite of how she normally is. I’m immediately on high alert. I can only imagine what it is she wants, and I don’t want this to turn into something that’s loud enough to draw a crowd.
“Thanks for meeting with me,” she says. “I’ll keep this as short and sweet as I can.”
“What’s that?” I ask, getting right to the point, gesturing to the envelope.
“I’ll get to that in a second,” she says. “But there’s a few things I want to get through first. So, if you will give me the grace of letting me explain myself for a few minutes, I would like to tell you how I came to this point.”
“Okay,” Caleb says. “We’ll listen.”
Clarissa takes a deep breath. “Okay. Well, for starters, I never wanted to have kids. I have big plans of things I want to do with my life, and kids just don’t fit into the picture. But I also don’t want to terminate a pregnancy if it’s healthy. I don’t think that’s fair to the baby.”
“Okay,” I say with a nod.
“So when I found out I was pregnant, I knew I would carry the baby to term, but I also knew I wasn’t going to keep the baby after it was born. So, I went through with everything. Now, I don’t know if you know this, but they do give you some time to figure out if you’re going to raise the child or give it up for adoption. I thought I would just go with adoption and never say anything about this to anyone, but I didn’t think that was fair to the baby, either,” she says.
We exchange a glance. I know my brothers are thinking the same thing I am. How can this woman we have pinned in our minds as some terrible person now sound like she cares so much about someone she never wanted in the first place? Maybe she’s not as bad as we made her out to be. I don’t know, but I feel conflicted.
“So, I decided to give you a chance with him. I left him in the dressing room that night and I waited. I waited and I watched to see how you guys did things. I wanted to make sure things were okay before I made my choice, and with how you all rallied around him, I knew that it was the right choice on that front. But, I also knew that love itself isn’t enough to raise a child. So, I continued to wait and watch. There were plenty of times when I saw you three and Jeanette and the baby together, and it looked like you were all so happy and having so much fun together, I knew that it had been the right thing to do. When that happened, I knew I didn’t want to give him up for adoption anymore.”
“Wait,” Caleb says, cutting her off. “If you knew that we were happy together, then why did you try to come in and split us up?”
At this, Clarissa looks down at her hands.
“That isn’t my proudest moment, and I wish I could apologize to Jeanette for what I did. The truth is that when I saw you together, I wanted that. I wanted to be in that kind of happy family with you and with my baby. I wanted you to love me the way you loved her, and I wanted him to smile at me the way he did at her. There were so many things about the picture that made me think that it would be what I wanted, it would be perfect,” she admits. “But after the way things went, I knew that there wasn’t a chance for you to love me that way, and that cleared things up for me.”
“But how do we know that you know that?” I ask. “I mean, sure, you can say that you heard us tell you that we aren’t in love with you, but how are we supposed to believe that telling you that is going to magically make you disappear?”
She patted the envelope in front of her. “I’m getting to that. I’m almost done, I swear.”
“Go on,” Terry says. “I want to hear the rest of what you have to say.”
“I just told you that when I saw you all together, I wanted it, but you should know that I’m not in love with you, either. I mean, I love the idea of you. I idolize you the way I do any rockstars, but when it comes down to the life you live and the life I want to live, we aren’t on the same page. I love the way you are with my son. I love the way you found someone who loves you and him that way, but I don’t want to be with you. I want to do more with my life than what being with you would offer, and I mean that,” she says.
