“Why aren’t you in a room?” I ask. I thought they would at least take her somewhere to have her checked out. She sits up, placing the ice pack on her lap.
“Because I refused to leave the maternity floor, and they won’t give you a room here if you’re not…you know…having a baby.”
“That makes sense,” I say. It almost feels like we’re back to normal.Almost.
“What are you doing here?” she asks nervously as if shesuddenly realized something. “You need to go back and be with Em.”
“Luke just got here,” I explain. “Emory is doing great. It shouldn’t be long now.”
She relaxes her shoulders, sinking further into the chair.
“Allie.” There are so many emotions hiding behind that one mere word. Heartache, regret, longing, desire.
“We’re not doing this here, Ashton.”
I respect her wishes, and we sit in silence for the next few minutes. She leans against her hand, propping her elbow up on her knee. Then, suddenly, her head pops up.
“Wait, I thought Luke was terrified of hospitals.”
“He is?” I ask. This is the first I’ve heard of it.
“Yeah, he…” she trails off, clearly not wanting to spill anything else to me.
“I guess he got over his fear,” I mumble.
“Yeah,” she sighs. “Maybe I’ll get over mine one day.” I don’t know if she’s talking about her emetophobia or her fear of love, but I choose to go with the easier one.
“I’m sorry you were alone that night,” I say. “If I could go back in time, I would have run over to your house so I could have held you.”
Allie scoffs. “You were nine.”
“I would have made it work.”
Sadness takes over her features. “She’s not a bad person,” she whispers, and I realize she’s talking about her mom. “She did the best she could as a single mom who got knocked up when she was eighteen and left for broke with an infant.”
“I know,” I say softly. Her mom is a good person who ended up in a shitty situation.
“I used to write him letters.” Her voice is quiet but clear.
“What?”
“My dad. I wrote him one every year on what I decided was his birthday. I didn’t know when his real birthday was, so I gavehim one. In the summer because it’s my favorite time of year.” She plays with the ice pack on her lap, tipping it back so the blue slush falls onto one side.
“I wrote them from the time I learned how to write until I was eight and realized he was never coming back. Of course, I didn’t have an address, so I just wrote ‘Dad’ on the envelope and left them in the mailbox for the mailman to pick up. They were always gone the next day, so I figured the mailman was able to get them to him somehow.”
“When did you realize it?” I ask. I know I don’t deserve to know, but something inside me begs for it just the same.
Her eyes become hollow as she tips the ice pack in the other direction. “The father-daughter Valentine’s Day Dance. I begged my mom to let me go, and the school let her come with me since I didn’t have a dad. I had known it was coming up, so I mentioned it to him in the last letter I wrote. Of course, he never got it, and as I stood in the corner watching all the girls dressed up and dancing on their fathers’ feet, I knew. I just knew he wasn’t ever coming back.”
My heart physically aches as I imagine that little girl standing in the corner of a gymnasium, paper hearts and pink streamers littering the walls, watching fathers dance with their daughters as her own heart cracks in two.
“I’m so—” Allie pins me with a glare, and I stop. She doesn’t want my sympathy. “Your mom took them?” I guess, referring to the letters.
“I assume. We’ve never talked about it.”
“Allie…” I start.
“It may not seem like a long time, Ashton. But when you’ve waited your whole life to meet the first man who ever broke your heart, the man who should have protected it at all costs, every second matters. You stole a year from me. A whole year that I could have known where he was. And you know what the worst part is? You made me fall in love with you while you did it. Youwere the second man to break my heart, and I’ll be damned if I ever let it happen again.”
