Page 37 of Touch the Sky

“Honestly, he was pretty pretentious too,” I admit.

Jacinthe makes a show out of rolling her eyes, like she expected no less.

I crack up all over again. I’ve spent a whole decade dealing with condescending sympathy and verbal tip-toeing around the subject, but I’ve never gotten tolaughabout Baron.

I don’t think I even realized I wanted to.

“I don’t know what it was about him,” I admit. “It was one of those things where you just seem tostickto someone and you don’t know why. We’d get drunk at parties and have dumb philosophical arguments. He pissed me off as much as he made me laugh, and I think I confused that with passion. I was eighteen, you know? Part of me thought he was also my last shot atmaybeliking men. It sort of felt like I wasn’t supposed to give up on the possibility until I’d given it a try, which is bullshit, but again, I was eighteen.”

Jacinthe just nods, her expression attentive with no trace of judgment.

There’s always a part of me that wonders if other lesbians will give me shit for having a kid with a man, like Shel’s mere existence somehow tethers me to an unbreakable bond with heterosexuality, but Jacinthe doesn’t show any signs of that.

“So how long were you together?” she asks.

“Oh, we weren’t together.” I grimace at just the thought of it. “It was, as the kids say, a situationship. We had other relationships while finishing our degrees, but we’d always find each other at a party or something when we were both single. It was very on and off.”

Until we really were tethered together in an unbreakable bond.

“Then one night early on in our final year of school, the condom broke. I was seven months pregnant when I graduated.”

Jacinthe blinks.

“Oh. Wow.”

I nod.

“Oh wow indeed.”

I go to pick up my glass, but I’ve already finished my beer. I stare down at the foamy remnants for a moment before I continue.

“I thought about ending the pregnancy, of course, and I fully support anyone who makes that decision,” I explain. “Everyone should have access to abortion. For me, though, I just…I just knew, somehow, that as shitty as the situation was, someday Shel would turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to me.”

I can’t keep myself from smiling as I say it.That’show I knew I wanted to go through with everything. Even when I was at my most terrified, the thought of her always got me smiling.

“She’s pretty great.”

I look up from my glass and find Jacinthe is smiling too.

“She is,” I say, my grin stretching even wider. “She’s fantastic. She’s my favourite person in the world.”

My throat gets tight, and I wish I had a few more sips of beer left to swallow. Jacinthe finishes her own drink and then starts fidgeting with the edges of her coaster.

“So is this Baron…around?” she says. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

“He gets her on alternating holidays and for a few weeks in the summer. He wanted more at the start, but he’s…”

I pause for a moment to try and find the best words to describe Baron’s overall presence in his daughter’s life.

“Well, to be frank, he’s turned out to be an irresponsible dirtbag, and he’s let Shel down so many times that he and I have both settled on that being all he can handle.”

Jacinthe huffs.

“Irresponsible dirtbag,” she says with more vehemence than I expected. “I get that.”

“You do?”

She runs her thumb along the edge of the coaster a couple more times and then sighs.