On the Plus Side

Page 86

Not only did I hurt Lilly, I dragged her into my world and let my dad and Jenny fall in love with her, too. They were going to hurt, too. They were losing her, too. How could I not have seen this coming? Lilly had become a part of our family and I had single-handedly ripped away Jenny’s sister and my dad’s daughter. That’s how they looked at her. That’s what she had become to them.
I couldn’t even bring myself to tell Jenny what I had done. I didn’t want her to see what her brother really was; I didn’t want to see what I really was anymore. I was beneath any descriptive word I could think of, worse than a piece of shit, worse than selfish.
I didn’t even respond. I just got up, grabbed my car keys, and left.  I don’t know where I planned on going, but I ended up parked outside of Lilly’s apartment. I didn’t get out of the car and bang on her door. I didn’t go beg her like I wanted to, I Just sat there. Somehow, knowing she was within reach soothed me.
At some point, I fell asleep sitting up in the driver’s seat of my car. When I woke up there was a bird on the hood staring at me, judging me. I worked the kink out of my neck and cranked the engine. There was no need to prolong the inevitable. I had to go home and tell my family it was time to start packing. We had living arrangements to make and I had to start job hunting as soon as possible. There was no way in Hell I’d take that bitch’s money even if she did offer it to me.
When I got home Dad was sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast. I fell into the chair across from him and it slid across the linoleum floor.
“Well, you look like Hell,” he said as he scooped up a fork full of eggs.
“Maybe that’s because I spent the night there.” I sounded as hollow as I felt.
“You need to eat somethin’ and get a shower. You can’t win a woman back smelling like a dog. Then I want you to take the rest of the day off and go on over there and get our girl.” He got up and rinsed his plate in the sink.
“Dad, she’ll never forgive me for what I’ve done. You don’t know the half. I wouldn’t blame her if she never talked to me again. I love Lilly, so I’m going to let her go.” I rested my elbow on the table.
“I wasn’t talking about Lilly, although I sure wish y’all would patch things up. I meant our other girl.”
“You been drinking already this morning?”
“Nah, I’m sober. I found this on the floor.” He pulled a black and white picture from his pocket and slid it across the table to me. “I’m talkin’ ‘bout this girl.”
I looked down at the ultrasound picture. Printed in white digital font was the word Girl with a dotted line pointing to a gray blob in the in middle of the fuzzy picture. The name Lilly Sheffield was printed vertically down the side of the picture.
At first I was confused. Lilly has specifically said she couldn’t get pregnant. Yet, there was her name printed very obviously on the picture.
It looked like a blurry mess, but I could make out a little leg and a tiny foot, and in that moment, my world fell around me like tiny fragments of bright, white light. It made my skin tingle as it rained down on me. The oxygen I was about to exhale was held hostage in my lungs by my heart that had suddenly quit beating.
Lilly came yesterday to tell me something. She wanted to tell me we were going to have a baby. She was probably ecstatic, she was probably the happiest she had ever been in her entire life when she showed up at my door, and I had gut punched her with the truth. I had squashed that happiness in an instant.
I had made her cry. I put her in a state of shock. I’d seen the shock on her face. I’d hurt her more than she’d probably ever been hurt in her life. My now ex-girlfriend, the love of my life, the woman who walking around with my heart nestled snuggly inside of her, and I had made her cry.
I felt myself snap. I stood quickly, and my chair left a skid mark on the linoleum. Dad was saying something to me, but I had tunnel hearing and nothing made it through to my brain. My joints felt stiff as I moved across the house to the front door.
I ended up at Lilly’s apartment, but she wasn’t home. I’d go to every place I could think of until I found her. I needed her to breathe my existence back into me and to gather all the tiny fragments of life that were floating around me and put them back together.
I found myself at her mother’s front door. An older man in a suit answered.
“I need to speak to Lilly Sheffield.”
“Follow me.”
He turned to walk away, and like a pup, I followed behind him. He was taking me to see Lilly and when I got to her I’d refuse any other option but for us to be together.