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"Brandon," I said even as I clutched at his thick mane of gold, wavy and curling at the base of his neck. "Brandon, I'm what?"
With a groan, he pulled away from his ministrations and pushed up onto his forearms to hover over me, blue eyes kind, clouded with desire, and glazed with sudden vulnerability.
"You're...everything to me, Skylar."
His voice was thick, and the Boston accent, which he normally kept well-hidden except for moments of extreme emotion, was obvious in the way the "r" all but disappeared as he spoke. I could hardly breathe, but my heart thumped loudly between us.
Brandon leaned down to touch his nose to mine.
"Everything," he whispered. "I love you."
And there it was: everything I wanted to hear, everything I wanted to know. My entire body relaxed at the sound of those three perfect words. Our lips met around them, echoing with our bodies what we'd just proclaimed. God, he tasted so incredibly good. Like butter pastry and sugar and something else that made me just want to...
Vomit?
My stomach lurched. A split-second later, I was shoving him off me with sudden violence. Away. I just needed him away.
"Skylar?"
His voice was frantic as I sprinted off the bed, too concerned with making it to his pristine en suite bathroom to bother with grabbing a sheet to cover myself. Fuck, the last thing I needed to do was lose my breakfast all over Brandon's spotless white sheets. My feet seemed to thunder across the plush carpet, and my body lurched again.
"Skylar?" Brandon called behind me, but his voice seemed far away.
"Skylar?"
~
I sat up suddenly in my childhood bed, a thin sheen of sweat across my forehead as an increasingly familiar wave of nausea rode through me. The motion sent a series of creaks through the old spring mattress that echoed through the darkened room. Shit. I'd woken up too fast again.
A small bag of Saltine crackers sat on the worn table next to my bed, along with a dish of ginger cookies. I grabbed for them, but it was no use. The nausea was already here, and once it was here, there was really nothing to do but ride it out and try my hardest not to lose whatever was left in my stomach. If there was anything to lose after a night of waking up like this every few hours.
Just the thought of it caused another wave to roll through my aching belly as I laid back down on my pillow and silently willed the feeling away. I was maybe six or seven weeks pregnant, but I was already thoroughly sick of it––pun absolutely intended. Pregnancy glow, my ass. My breasts ached, I was exhausted all the time, and in the last week I had actually lost weight from vomiting so much.
In hushed tones from Chicago, Jane, my best friend and former roommate, had told me I probably had something called hyperemesisgravidarum, which was a fancy Latin term for sick as a motherfucking dog. This was according to her cousin, the anonymous OBGYN, whom I was about ready to fly to Chicago to punch in the face. Seriously, that chick never had anything but bad news for me.
It was funny how your entire life could change in the space of a few hours. Only a week ago, I had watched those two lines turned pink, and two hours later, the first waves of nausea began. I had ridden the four hours from Boston to New York in the backseat of my grandmother's station wagon, my things jammed into the trunk and onto the roof, Dad and Bubbe up front bickering while I tried my hardest to focus on something, anything, that would keep me from throwing up all over Bubbe's macramé seat covers.
Too bad the only thing that worked was a pair of blue eyes I'd had to say goodbye to. Turns out grief beats hormones if I'm willing to substitute one pain for another.
We had arrived at my childhood home in Brooklyn late that night, and I had immediately dropped my duffel bags on the floor and sprinted for the downstairs toilet. I'd somehow managed to unload my things from the car, but since then, I'd been camped out in my small attic room, making periodic runs for the bathroom.
When my symptoms persisted, I had told my dad and Bubbe that I had come down with mono after working so hard to finish law school. Dad, ever in a perpetual daze these days after losing most of the use of his left hand (including his ability to play the piano) in a brawl with a debt collector and his thugs, had nodded and told me to rest up and feel better.
Bubbe was a bit harder to fool. A Ziploc bag of Saltines appeared on my nightstand the next morning, and ginger cookies the day after. To her credit, however, she was waiting for me to say something. That was Bubbe for you: someone who preferred to suspect more than actually know. She hadn't even asked what had happened with Brandon since seeing him at my graduation.
Brandon. God.
My stomach heaved again, this time with sadness. Why did I have to be one of those people who carried every emotion I had in my gut? Just like every other time I remembered the way I had willfully and forcefully shoved the love of my life out of said life, my eyes welled up and a giant sob choked my throat. I swallowed it back and shut my eyes again, willing the pain away.
It didn't work.
But Brandon was still in the middle of a very contentious divorce. And then he had made arrangements, behind my back and against my express wishes, to give money to my father's loan shark––the small-time gangster who was also responsible for Dad's smashed hand and a bevy of other injuries that had landed him in the hospital last March. I had known there was no way I could make it work with someone who would keep such secrets from me. I had had enough of those kinds of secrets because of my father, and I couldn't be with someone I couldn't trust.
But that didn't mean every cell in my body wasn't absolutely pining for Brandon Sterling.
The sob in my throat rose and fell as I gasped heavily. Go away, go away, go away. With silent mantras, I willed away the memory of his strong, knife-edged jaw line, his unruly, gold-streaked waves, his tender blue expression and bright smile. I willed away the look on his face when he'd said goodbye, the memory of our last fight, the feel of the last time he'd kissed me. I pushed it all down into the back of my heart where I couldn't feel it anymore.
Except, of course, in the pit of my stomach.
