A week or so after hooking up with Noah, I’d slept with a guy I’d been chatting with on Tinder for several months. After spending way too much time thinking about Noah Wood, I’d figured the best course of action would be to sleep with someone else, and prove to myself that the night we’d shared in Hartwood Creek was a night like any other.
The only thing I’d succeeded in proving was that even if I couldn’t remember every single detail of the night I shared with Noah, I still knew I had a better experience than the night I’d shared with Tinder Guy. As soon as we hooked up—the one and only time—and red flags popped up like daisies. I’d ended up blocking him on Tinder.
Thankfully, I knew I’d definitely used a condom with Tinder Guy. But condoms weren’t infallible.
“What if you moved here?”
“To Hartwood Creek? Why?!” I exclaimed. “I just told you, I don’t even know if Noah is the father.”
“Even if he isn’t,” Sage insisted. “I’m here, I could help you. It’s cheaper to live here. You could easily find a job in town, and maybe Nix could give up the bachelor apartment and you could rent it. He’s hardly ever there these days. It’d come fully furnished!”
“I…” I paused, blinking at myself in the mirror. I mean, it wasn’t a terrible idea. It wasn’t like I had family in Guelph, or a support system for that matter. For all intents and purposes, Sage was the closest thing to family I had. “I can’t just uproot my entire life.”
I didn’t say the other thing I was thinking; that I didn’t even know if this pregnancy would stick. I’d never been at the family planning stage of my life, but from what I’d read in my spare time about my condition, studies showed that endometriosis could increase the risk of miscarriage.
“But…” Sage said, and I could practically hear the wheels turning in her head.
“Just spill,” I sighed heavily, knowing she was thinking a mile a minute.
“Are you honestly happy there? Working for Sal, living in that cramped basement apartment with Angry Angela?”
Sage’s question posed a valid point. I wasn’t happy here, and hadn’t been for some time.
I used to like my life, back when I was young and hopeful. Freshly graduated from college after taking the Recreation Therapy program, I’d gotten a full-time position at the café I’d worked at throughout school, until something came up in my field.
Only, nothing ever did seem to come up in my field. Although Sal had hired me on as a barista, my job details and responsibilities seemed to grow daily, pushing me more into the management position—without the pay, I might add.
But rents were high, and apparently recreational therapists were a dime a dozen. I didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell at affording my own apartment, so I was stuck with Angry Angela.
All of that would have been bearable if Sage was still around. We’d worked together at the café, and she’d included me in her little traditions with her daughter Daphne. For the first time, I’d felt like I had a true family. A sister, a niece. People who cared about me, and people who I cared about.
Sage had moved several hours away to the small town of Hartwood Creek after discovering her then-fiancé was cheating on her with his secretary. I didn’t blame her, but I missed her and Daphne every day. Life seemed lonelier and greyer without them, like they’d taken some of the colour with them when they left.
“No, I’m not,” I sighed again, pushing my hair out of my face. “But I really can’t just uproot my life on a whim.” Even to me, my argument sounded weak. I did most things on a whim. If I got an inclination for something, I flowed toward it eagerly. Case in point: going home with the handsome stranger I’d met at a costume ball.
“Why the heck not? I did.” Sage giggled.
I smiled, although she couldn’t see it. “Yeah, but you have family in Hartwood Creek.”
“So do you,” Sage said firmly, her tone brooking no argument. A sense of longing filled me, longing to be closer to the people I cared for most.
It’s not that I didn’t have family, it’s just that my parents weren’t the greatest. They’d had me later in life, and although they’d never neglected me in the financial sense, they had never planned on being parents, and their emotional support was severely lacking.
My parents provided for me, made sure that I attended the most prestigious school in the area, and always ensured I had money for the extracurricular activities I did. But they never emotionally connected with me. I’d often felt more like an expensive house plant than a daughter growing up.
Now, they spent most of the year down south in Florida, at their beautiful beach house on Miramar Beach, overlooking the white sand beaches of the gorgeous gulf. I couldn’t blame them for skipping out on the cold Canadian climate for half the year. I just missed them, or the version of them I never really had.
They called me on occasion, sure, but they didn’t actually want to hear about the trials and tribulations of my life. They were too involved in what was happening in theirs. Once I’d reached the tender age of eighteen, they had considered their “job” with me completed.
“Look, all I’m saying is that you have options, and I wouldn’t hate it if you moved to Hartwood Creek. I’d love it a lot—so would Daphne. We miss you.”
“I miss you both, too,” I said, my eyes misting again as I thought back to how great it’d been to visit in October, to still be included in their Halloween tradition. Even if it looked majorly different from previous years.
I had to admit, Hartwood Creek put on a fantastic Halloween festival. I wouldn’t be opposed to living there. In my heart of hearts, I knew I’d love it. The town was small, but had everything you could possibly need or want, and was only a half hour or forty-five-minute drive away from what it didn’t have.
I worried about what Noah would say if I relocated to Hartwood Creek with a baby bump. I didn’t even know if he was the father, but surely that wasn’t a good look. Noah and I hadn’t done much talking when we were hooking up after the Witches’ Ball, but from what I’d gathered since then he was a playboy through and through.
And I was no saint, either. Heck, I couldn’t even for sure say who the father of my unplanned baby was.
