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“Meg, you’re freaking me the fuck out. What’s going on? What happened?”
She takes another long drink, and I can see the liquid trail down her throat as she swallows hard. Setting the bottle down, she pushes it forward, raising a hand to the bartender for another. “Marissa’s single.”
The air is sucked from my lungs.Fuck. Marissa. Single. And Pregnant. Pregnant and Single. For the last few weeks, Meg has been very vocal about her distaste for Marissa’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, and has been pleading with her to ditch him for good. Finding out she was pregnant was shock enough, but this?
“I wanted her single, but not like this.”
“How isshefeeling?” I can’t imagine what she is going through.
Meg is a smidge younger than me, and Marissa is a few years behind her. I can’t remember her age, but I know she isn’t even twenty-one. Still in college, single, and now pregnant.
Meg starts sobbing, huge wet tears dripping down her face. I scoot my chair closer, wrapping my arms around her and squeezing tight.
“I can’t believe I’m crying in a bar,” she spits through the tears.
“Girl, it’s Lasso’s, there is someone either fighting with their partner or crying over their partner every Saturday night. You fit right in.”
Her shoulders shake a little, not sure if she’s laughing or crying, but she pulls back, using a sleeve of her oversized hoodie to wipe the streaks off her face. The bartender comes over and I ask for two more beers, and two shots of tequila.
“I’mso madat her.”
“Why are you mad?”
“She’s soyoung, she’s sotalented, she could have made a name for herself if she could have focused on school and not boys.”
Marissa is an acrylic artist, and a damn good one too. She’s been selling her artwork to various galleries in the city ever since high school. She’s a student at The School of the Art Institute, and no doubt will have plenty of opportunities once she graduates. But now she has a baby to consider.
“She can still paint. She can still be an artist and live her dream, just because she’s pregnant it doesn’t mean it’s all over; it means it’s delayed.”
“She dropped out of school.”
Oh fuck.
“She’s been doing okay so far, selling a painting here and there and able to live off that income while staying at student housing, but she hasn’t made enough to provide for someone else. To get a quiet, off-campus apartment where she can raise a child. She was working part time at the campus gallery, but her piece of shit boyfriend told her to quit. He promised he’d support them both. He disappeared again, this time taking half of her money with him.”
The bartender comes back, sliding two clear tequila shots in front of us. We grab them in unison, clink our glasses together and down the shots. Meg grabs her beer to chase the shot, but I let the alcohol burn slowly, my mind rattling with all the information.
“I’ve worked so fucking hard to see that girl succeed, and she just threw it all away for a boy.”
Meg doesn’t talk much about her childhood. All I know is that her and Marissa were a product of the foster care system, shuffled around from home to home until a wonderful couple in their late fifties fell in love and adopted them both. The first ten years of Meg’s life were spent playing mom to Marissa. Her hardened exterior comes from years of fielding danger, and the look on her face matches that of any other worried parent.
The future she had expected for her sister has changed, just like Emmett thought the future with me was over. Tears prick the back of my eyes, tears for Marissa, for Megan, and for how fucking thankful I am that Emmett is back in my life.
“What do I do?”
Her soft voice startles me.
I think for a moment, recalling the conversation with Emmett on his early days with Allie as a single parent, the lack of sleep, questioning everything and not having someone to bounce ideas off when their poop doesn’t look right or to hand the baby over to when you’re at your wit’s end. “Ask her to move in.”
Meg chokes on her beer, swiping the liquid from her chin before setting her bottle down. “What?”
“I know your space is precious, but your condo has two bedrooms. Your treadmill in the spare room doesn’t exactly constitute a gym. Hell, leave it there and you can still fit a bed and a crib in there. Babies are like, two feet long, they can fit anywhere.”
She doesn’t say anything but seems to be listening.
“She also shouldn’t have to give up on her dreams because of this. You don’t want her to, either. Your schedule is sporadic, so you will probably have enough space from each other while still being there to help. If you want to help her, having her move in and taking care of those expenses is probably one of the best ways to help, if you can afford it.”
Meg scoffs at my last sentence. Even though she’s younger, and she likes to flirt and have her fun, she’s damn responsible when it comes to her finances. She owns her condo and has a hefty savings and retirement plan already in place, which is probably why she likes to burn off some steam.
