Maybe I could build two lives.
Maybe I could leave her.
Maybe I could start over.
Each possibility bloomed bright and intoxicating for a fraction of a second before reality burned it to nothing but bitter ashes.
Going back and forth meant constant lies. It meant watching Maverick accept scraps of my time while pretending it was enough. It meant turning him into the secret he didn’t want to be.
Building two lives meant splitting myself down the middle when I already had so little holding me together as it was.
Leaving her… well, that one terrified me. It was throwing a bomb in everything we’d built for years and hoping I could survive the fallout. My entire life was entangled with hers.
Starting over sounded romantic until I remembered that starting over required burning the world down as I knew it first. I was a lot of things, but I wasn’t brave enough for that. The unknowns terrified me.
The maybes compounded on one another, stacking higher and higher until they felt less like options and more like delusions. Each one offered potential without any real answers. They were hopes without blueprints.
And all the while, the texts from Vivienne complaining about Holly were slowly shattering the delusions my mind clung to. Among all of the hope-ruining texts were texts mentioning the likelihood that Holly was pregnant—that she was showing symptoms. Most of Vivienne’s texts were frantic ramblings, things I gave up trying to piece together.
Stepping outside, I decided to give Holly a call to sort out the exact details of what was going on.
“She won’t stop bugging you, am I right?” Holly said as a greeting when she answered the call. “I told her I was fine and to leave you alone.”
Vivienne didn’t know how to leave me alone. The more riled up she was, the more insistent she was.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“I said I’m fine—I told her I was fine,” she repeated. “I ate some bad food. That’s all.”
“Are you sure?” I hated even asking. I hated hoping that it was just food poisoning and that she wasn’t pregnant.
“I’d know if I was pregnant, Harley,” she replied. I couldn’t comment on that, so I stayed quiet. “Everything I’ve read says to prepare yourself for several rounds of IVF mentally, and so that’s what I’m doing. Several rounds, and I’ll stop eating gas station food at one in the morning.”
“Why were you eating gas station food at one in the morning?” I was afraid to even ask. Holly lived life in a way I couldn’t begin to fathom.
“Because I forgot to go grocery shopping,” Holly said simply, as if it were a completely normal thing to do.
“Holly?”
“Yeah, boss?”
“Please, go grocery shopping. No one should be eating gas station food,” I said.
“Oh, come on!” she exclaimed with a laugh. “You don’t know what you’re missing until you’ve eaten a half-cold taquito and cheesy hotdog from your local gas station.”
That didn’t sound appealing at all.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I told her. I wouldn’t. “Just take care of yourself, Holly, okay?”
The dramatic sigh she let out made me smile.
“Okay, fine. You win. No more one-am gas station food, promise,” she retorted. “I’ll buy some groceries and eat real food.”
“Thank you.”
“I can’t promise I won’t include junk food.”
“That’s fine.”
