20
Aidan
Rob wantsto play a pickup game of basketball.
I want to continue to lie in bed and mope. My chest feels like a monster with gnarled fingers reached into me and tore out my heart. He took my loveandmy best friend.
Technically, Natalie is still here. Those were almost her exact words.I’m still here.But she’s not. My Natalie is gone. In her place is someone who is keeping a careful distance from me. I don’t blame her. Who wouldn’t? We’d barely begun to discover a new side to us when Allison came in and blew us away with her news. From the moment Allison told me, I knew exactly what Natalie would do. With every step I took away from that cafe, I was slowly saying goodbye to what Natalie and I had started.
This feeling in my chest is precisely why I've avoided love. Even in my short time with Natalie, I’ve learned how high the highs can be. And now I know just how deep the lows can go. It's fucking awful.
“Are you coming?” Rob opens my door for a second time this morning and walks in. He's dressed in basketball shorts with compression pants underneath and a sweatshirt.
“No.” I palm my cheek, running my hand down over my chin. My five o'clock shadow is long gone. At this point, I’m almost ready for a camping trip. My face would be well protected by the near-beard on my face.
“What the fuck is eating you?”
“Nothing,” I grumble.
“You can lie to your students when you tell them there won’t be a pop quiz on Monday,” Rob points back at himself, “but you can't lie to me. What gives?”
Obviously Rob doesn't know about Natalie, but he also doesn't know about Allison yet. A small part of me was hoping that if I didn't talk about what was going on, maybe it would just go away. Lying here in my bed with my aching chest, I still don't want to talk about it. I throw back the covers and sit up.
“Get out of here so I can change.”
“Are you coming?”
Nodding, I stand up and grab some clothes. Rob backs out and shuts the door.
* * *
Allison calledwhile I was playing basketball and wants to go crib shopping. I think it seems a little early for that, but what the hell do I know?
Crib shopping it is. I meet Allison outside of a boutique on the Upper East Side. The storefront is fancier than my parents’ apartment, which tells me what to expect on the price tags of their items.
“Hi,” she says, smiling and kissing my cheek.
Before the ultrasound, Allison was short with me. I walked into the waiting room at the doctor’s office and looked around for her. I looked at belly after belly in various stages of growth, and then I spotted Allison’s still slim figure. When my eyes met hers, she gave me an icy glare and looked away. The seats on either side of her were taken, so I found a spot a few feet away. When her name was called, she marched ahead of me and didn’t acknowledge me until the medical assistant left the exam room.
“Where's Natalie? Did she let you off your leash?” she’d asked me, her arms crossed in front of herself.
I ignored her comment and instead told her that Natalie had chosen to end things with me given the current circumstances. The second the words left my mouth, Allison’s mood changed. She has been smiling and warm ever since.
“Are you excited to look at cribs?” She steps back and waits for my answer.
“Yeah, of course.” It's what I'm supposed to say.
Allison leads the way into the boutique. For the next hour, I follow her around, looking at everything from cribs to changing tables to onesies that are so small they look like they could fit my foot.
By the time we make it to the register, I'm sweating bullets. Allison has picked up more furniture than what’s inside my small room.You’re going to have to open up your trust fund to take care of this baby. Might as well start while it's still in utero.
One salesgirl rings up what Allison has chosen. A second walks up and stands beside her. She smiles at both of us and asks Allison when she is due.
“August eighth,” Allison responds, giddy.
“You must be a planner,” salesgirl number one says, glancing up from her computer.
Allison nods. “Yep. Plus, my job keeps me so busy that when I have a free day, I have to take advantage of it.”
