Because I do. My brain buzzes with so many thoughts, all around the running theme that this child is the best thing thatcould ever have happened. I know it’s not here yet, and only the size of my thumbnail if that, but it already owns me, my heart and my life.
It takes me a few seconds to realise that she’s gone stiff in my arms and isn’t responding to me. I frown and draw back, and she can hardly meet my eyes. “Sades?” A hollow feeling opens up inside me, and my bones feel cold inside me. “Talk to me.” My throat feels dry.
Finally, she glares at me. “As easy as that? Hooray, we’re having a baby, everything’s peachy?”
I meet her gaze. “I mean…isn’t it?” I swallow. “I know it’s…scary, and…sudden…” Words are deserting me.
“Scary and sudden? We’ve been involved forweeks, Leo! I have mail I haven’t opened for longer than we’ve been…doing whatever this is - ”
“What do you mean, ‘whatever this is’?” I burst out, suddenly fully pissed off. “Have I been in any way unclear about how I feel? And you haven’t exactly been -”
“It’s too soon!” A few passers by stare at us, but let them. I’ve never heard her yell like this before, and I’ve had some humdinging rows with this woman. “I didn’t…I can’t be…I’m not ready.” Her shout trails off into a thick, croaky wisp.
My legs start to shake and my throat closes up. I brace myself. “What do you mean?” My own voice is choking and knotted up, tight as a guitar string.
Her fists clench and unclench next to me, and she’s staring at the ground, her lower lip trembling. “I’m…saying I…” She closes her eyes. “I haven’t thought about what I’m going to do about this,” she whispers.
I want to throw up.
It’s absolutely her right to…make this choice, one way or the other. I can’t make myself eventhinkthe word right now. I’ve always believed that it’s the person who does the whole givingbirth thing that has the ultimate right to make the final decision. It’s a big ask of anyone to go through that, and if they aren’t sure they want to, that’s completely fair and understandable. It’s Sadie’s body, and if she decides…against this…I’m not going to be a hypocrite and say that my ethics on the subject apply to everyone but her because she’s carryingmybaby. I’m many things, but I’m not a forced birther.
But my god, my heart just splintered and shattered in my chest, and I don’t know if it’ll ever recover in my lifetime if she...
She takes a step back from me. “I need some time to think,” she says dully, like a robot. “I’ll call you. Just…let me have some space. I’m scared, and I’m shocked to hell, and I need to be alone.” Her eyes flick up to mine for a split second, and then away again, like she can’t stand to look at me. “I’m sorry.” And with that, she walks away in the direction of her flat, her legs visibly shaking.
Leaving me standing here, unable to reach her, icy cold, my face buckling with the worst pain I’ve ever felt…and using every scrap of self control I have not to run after her and beg.
Eli
When Leo failedto show up for his afternoon appointments, and Sadie did the same thing, Em spent the afternoon apologising to the people that had already arrived, who were understandably annoyed at having to be rebooked; franticallycalling the others with later bookings; and trying to get hold of them both.
Sadie finally answered, saying that she wasn’t feeling good. We assumed Leo was looking after her, but he wasn’t. When my wife finally got hold of him, Leo asked her not to call or text because he was keeping the line clear for Sadie. “He sounded… God,” Em says, biting her thumbnail, looking fretful, “he soundedill.”
I kiss her forehead, loving that this can still make my wife smile, however worried or distressed she is. “It’s OK. Dean and I will go check on him after work.”
When we get to his townhouse in the early evening, he won’t answer his door. We can hear him crashing around inside, though. Dean and I exchange a look, and agree wordlessly to let ourselves in. He still has the spare key under a plant pot, and this time I’m glad of it.
“‘S’going on?” Before we’re even in the same room, I know from the slur of his voice that he’s south of the border. I check the time. Six p.m. And when we find him, he’s on the damn floor, sprawled like a drunken spider on his living room rug.
“Jesus,” I mutter.
What the fuck, dude?Dean signs. Leo laughs hysterically, busting a gut, and it’s a horrible, joyless sound.
“Your hands’re swirly,” he mumbles.
Shit. You’ll have to talk to him,Dean says to me.
“I’m not too sure I’ll do much better,” I reply quietly, looking at the empty bottle of Laphroaig lying on the carpet a few feet away from Leo.
“Oh, don’t look’t me like that,” he grouses, struggling to get more vertical and failing. “Got to wet the baby’s head, yeah?” And, to both of our stunned dismay, he bursts into tears, his head collapsing on the backs of his hands, which are clutching the edge of the rug.
Dean moves first, taking one of Leo’s shoulders and nodding me towards the other. We manage to get him onto the sofa, and he barely even seems to notice, sobbing into his hands.
“What in the sam hill happened?” I ask, shaken. I’ve never seen Leo this devastated, even when his father died when he was a teenager. Dean gets him a glass of water, but he gently bats it away, and some of it sloshes over the sides.
“Can’t make her,” he moans. “S’true. Can’t make her, wouldn’t be right…” His face crumples again. “But I want her to, so bad… But I can’t ask it. M’a fuckin’feminemnist, y’know?”
“Leo, what the hell are you talking about?”
