“Oh, fuck off,” I said. I bit my lip before I kept speaking—I didn’t need to blab the truth in a fit of rage.
“What?”
But I said nothing more. Mason scoffed under his breath, headed for the door, and left without another word. I bit my lip and shook my head. I went over to the wine, thought about having some to deal with the stress, and instead poured it down the drain. Not that stress was helping the child, but I just had to figure that stress alone was better than stress and alcohol.
And once I poured the last of the bottle down the drain, the isolation of the past three months hit me.
It was almost like I had deliberately pushed Mason out of the apartment. It was like I’d gotten so used to, so insistent on being independent that I was now acting in a way that pushed him and everyone else away. Maybe Garrett was only texting me sporadically because I was just as bad as he was.
It wasn’t so much that IneededGarrett, not like I needed air or food. At least, that was what I told him. But I needed the assurance that I hadsomeonethat I could rely and lean on. I needed that knowledge someone like that existed.
The last thing I needed, after all, was to raise a child as an isolated woman on an island, ignoring the ships passing by that I could hop on for more social waters.
I headed for the couch, leaned on my back, and put my hand on my belly. I remembered the kicks that I’d felt earlier from my baby.Our baby.Garrett wasn’t here to experience it. I…
I picked up my phone, bit my lip, and called Garrett. I was sure someone might think of it as a moment of weakness, but I didn’t see it that way. I just saw it as me reaching out to the father of my child, the father whom I had a lukewarm but not cold or harmful relationship with. The phone rang to the second tone when the call was answered.
And immediately, I could hear women laughing in the background.
“…hell is calling you right now? Who is HJ?” one of them said.So that’s what he’s got me saved in his phone as, huh?
“Shut up,” Garrett said to them. “Hey.”
So not only did he answer the call with other girls nearby, he answered without saying my name. For someone that had supposedly settled on this only being a lukewarm relationship, that had accepted this would only be a friendship, this sure seemed to hit harder than expected.
“Hey? You there?”
Are you seriously trying not to let the other girls know that you’re talking to me? A woman?
“Well, I was calling to see how you were and if you wanted to come over,” I said, probably a stretch but I wanted to make a point. “But I never thought you’d answer the phone while getting it on with some girls and then not saying my name, afraid that you’d spoil the moment.”
“Hannah, that’s not what you think it is.”
At least you said my name.
“Then what is it?”
“It’s…”
The silence said it all. Whatever Mason had said might have been true before, but he was now probably seeing someone else. Or, given the fact that I heard multiple women in the background, he was probably seeing multiple women at once and had returned to his old ways, never once bothering to hide it from me.
It was so insulting. I was the mother of his child. And he was just going to answer me casually while in the middle of or about to have a threesome? Yeah, my mood was all over the place, and hormones were probably making me feel some sort of way, but I didn’t fucking care.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” I said. “It’s something you don’t want to admit to, because you know it’s bad.”
“Hannah—”
“No, forget it, Garrett. Go back to being a manwhore, go back to having sex with whoever you want, go back to living your free life. Don’t worry about being a father because you won’t have to be. I’ll do this on my own.”
“Hannah!”
I hung up.
God, I felt like a bitch.
But, fuck! Why was every man in my life, brother or lover, friend or family, insistent on making my life hell?
Maybe…
