Page 53 of Sucker Love (Sugar Pill Duet #1)
Demi rubs her forehead like she’s got a headache.
“It’s just such a mess,” she says softly.
“I never pictured myself doing this alone. Being a single mom in my thirties. Being divorced—how is it all going to work? Where are you going to live? What sort of schedule are we going to have? With a newborn?”
How is it going to work?
And I try to picture it, sitting there on the couch with her hand in mine, the wedding ring long gone like my own is—though there’s a light demarcation, a paler band of skin of where it used to be on her ring finger.
I couldn’t stay where I am now. Or I could , but I’d have to turn my room into a nursery.
Doable. Except I can’t imagine Noel will even stay there beyond graduation; the area is for college students, is riddled with undergrads and it’s not like I’d particularly want to raise a kid there, anyway.
Noel will want to look further afield, especially once he gets the job he’s looking for.
So a two bedroom at least, somewhere, god knows where, and we’d have to have a nursery, but the baby surely can’t be away from Demi for long.
It would be months, maybe years, especially if she breast feeds.
Which is time that I will be missing out with my own child. So much time.
I don’t want to miss out on anything.
And Noel—oh, Noel . Him with a baby, as a what—a stepdad ?
He’s still so much a kid himself. Sometimes he shows growth and wisdom beyond his years, that beautiful resilience that I adore and admire, but I cannot picture him parenting a kid, or babysitting one.
Or even tolerating one. He’s never mentioned to me, one way or the other, how he feels about children.
Never remarked about his own hopes for a family, and why would he?
He’s so goddamn young. It shouldn’t even remotely be a consideration for him. I doubt that it is.
I can hardly comprehend a world where the two co-exist. A baby and Noel in the same room. It doesn’t seem possible. The original problem—the problem that has been plaguing me ever since we embarked on our relationship—is that he is so very young.
Yet I love him anyway. Fiercely, intensely, white-hot, more than I’ve ever loved anyone in my whole life.
To where it feels like my heart will break, to even consider what I am considering now.
I feel sick, shaky, my hand growing clammy where it still holds Demi’s, my vision swimming and my stomach cramping.
How is it that I can even be considering this, when just last night I was telling him how much I loved him, how beautiful he was, our arms around each other as we rocked together in the driver’s seat of my truck?
Yearning to give him that reassurance that it didn’t matter what other people said about him, or whether he was “brave” enough for a sex club.
He was more than enough for me. He was all I wanted.
He is all I want, still. If I could only have him for the rest of my life and nothing else, I could be so happy.
If it was just me and him forever. The problem is that it’s not just us anymore .
Now there is a baby, and it’s mine. Funny how protective I feel over someone who doesn’t even exist yet.
A love that has manifested in just seconds.
I don’t know if I can have both, Noel and the baby.
Have the whole and happy family that I’ve dreamed of, and Demi, too.
Because I cannot have Noel and be there for my kid, every single day.
I can’t have Noel and hold my baby every day.
I can’t have Noel and be there for absolutely everything, all of their firsts. Skinned knees and tears.
Demi is looking at me. I wonder if she knows, precisely, the war raging inside of my head; the frantic calculations, the justifications.
How I am trying desperately to figure out a way that I can have that whole and happy family while keeping the boy I love so much.
To have it all, somehow. Impossibly. Because that is what I want—everything.
For this to all somehow fall into perfect place.
I hear myself say, “What if I moved back in?”
“Move back in ?” Demi’s eyes widen a little. “Aren’t you forgetting something? We’re getting a divorce. You don’t even like me like that.”
“Not what I mean.” I turn to her. “I know you don’t want to do this alone. I don’t want you to do this alone. I want to be there for the baby, too. We can put the divorce aside for now and just focus on a safe, healthy birth. Figure out how to co-parent and all that.” I try to smile at her.
She studies me, lips pursed. “You’re saying it would be platonic? We’d just be...what, friend-married, or something? Raising a kid together?”
“For now, yeah. I can move into the spare room. That way I’ll be here for all the doctor’s appointments and if there’s any complications. You won’t be alone for that.”
“What happens if I meet someone?”
“Cross that bridge when we get to it. Yeah? If you get serious with anyone, we’ll figure that out, too.”
“And your boyfriend?” she challenges. “What’s going to happen with him?”
My throat clamps shut suddenly, and it’s a struggle to swallow. “Let me deal with that.”
She touches her temples. “And what in the world am I supposed to tell my family? That you’re moving back in as a friend? Isn’t that weird?”
“Just say we’ve decided to give it another shot for now. When we do divorce, we can say it didn’t work out.”
Her gaze drifts around the room thoughtfully.
She’s weighing it all too, if this is worth the trouble or not.
“I guess so,” she says at last, sort of reluctantly.
“Maybe we could...” She rubs her face, then gives me a faint smile.
“ Maybe that’s not such a bad idea. As a temporary thing.
” Her voice goes quiet. “It’ll be nice, not doing this by myself. ”
And I stifle the ache in my heart and smile back, because suppressing parts of myself to keep things copacetic is nothing new to me. I’m experienced in the art of turning my own suffering into a sort of mundane contentment. And that’s what being away from Noel is: suffering.
But he’ll get it. It’s not like we have to breakup; we just won’t be living under the same roof anymore. Our relationship will definitely take a backseat when the baby comes, but not forever. Just until the dust settles. When the baby is older.
He’ll understand how important this is to me.
He has to.