Page 100 of Babies for the Big Shot

I sit there. Frozen. Staring at the place where he used to be, still clutching the throw blanket like it’s the only thing keeping me from falling apart.

The hoodie I’m wearing smells like cedar, expensive cologne, and the lingering memory of last night, a ghost of something that’s already slipping through my fingers.

He left.

He left, and he didn’t look back. Didn’t wait for an explanation. Didn’t give me a chance to beg for him to stay.

It’s not until I blink and realize I’ve been staring at the same spot on the wall for what feels like hours that it hits me. I’mshaking, trembling with the raw aftershock of surviving this. But I don’t feel lucky to be alive.

I feel empty. Shredded from the inside out, like a part of me was ripped away and left to bleed.

I stand up, my body moving on autopilot. My legs barely hold me up as I stagger across the room.Keys. Phone. Slides. Hoodie.I don’t think, I just move. I need to get out.

Meatball follows me to the door, his paws tapping softly against the floor as if asking where I’m going, but I can’t look at him. If I do, I know I’ll fall apart all over again.

I take the elevator up one floor, pressing Laura’s doorbell with a hand that trembles more than I want it to. The door swings open almost immediately.

She’s barefoot, holding the crinkled croissant bag she’d forgotten earlier. “Sara?” she starts, her voice soft, like she’s surprised to see me. “I was just coming back down to…”

But she stops mid-sentence when she sees me.

And that’s all it takes. One second I’m standing there, holding it together with whatever little I have left, and the next, I’m in her arms sobbing so hard I can barely breathe. It’s the kind of sob that feels dangerous, like it could break me wide open.

The kind of sob that’s been waiting for years to come out, built up by every hurt, every loss. Not just today. Not just Nick. But everything.

Everything.

Laura stays silent. She pulls me inside, closes the door behind us, and holds me with the steady strength of someone who’s been here before, countless times.

“I ruined it,” I gasp out, my chest heaving. “I ruined everything.”

“Shhh,” she whispers, brushing my hair back. “You’re okay. We’ll talk. Sit.”

She guides me to the couch and covers me with a blanket, as if that’ll stop me from coming apart.

It doesn’t.

“He left,” I say, staring down at my knees. “He didn’t even yell. Just… walked out.”

“Nick?”

I nod, and the tears come again. Softer this time.

“He asked if it was true. About the baby. And I said yes. I told him I was going to tell him today. That I was trying. But then you said it first and… damn, Laura, he looked at me like I lied. Like I’d stabbed him in the back.”

“You didn’t,” she says fiercely.

“I did. I did by not telling him. I waited too long. And now I don’t know how to undo it.”

She sits beside me, waiting. Letting me sort through the chaos of everything I’ve been holding inside.

“He said I didn’t trust him. And he’s right.” My voice cracks. “I didn’t. Because I thought… I thought maybe if I told him, he’d run. And the moment those words left my mouth, I saw it… I lost him.”

Laura exhales slowly, a quiet storm held just beneath her skin, her restraint barely contained.

“Then he said he needed time. And he left. Like I was too much.”

And then the real spiral starts. The ugly one.