She smiled. “Yeah. We’re good.”
“Okay. So can I shut the fucking lights off and get some shuteye? Because your ass snoring in the chair a few feet away kept me up last night.”
“You’re so full of shit.”
I was. But I loved that she called me out on it. That was my girl. Not the one who thought I cheated and was too busy tiptoeing around my arrogant ass to say something. I got up and flicked off the lights.
It took a whopping five minutes for Gia to fall asleep once I pulled her to me, wrapped her tight in my arms, and stroked her hair. Me, I stayed awake longer, enjoying the feeling of being content for the first time in weeks, even in the middle of a shit storm.
14
It sucked to have no money when you needed a new wardrobe. I knew Rush would have given me money in a heartbeat, but there was no way I was going to ask him.
But getting new clothes was becoming an urgent matter. That was what credit cards were for, I supposed.
Laughing to myself, I thought back to before I was pregnant and how I used to feel like I had nothing to wear, despite all of the clothes in my closet. It was certainly different when you literally had nothing to wear because you couldn’t fit into a damn thing.
I found myself at the only maternity store in town. To my surprise, the woman behind the counter seemed to recognize me immediately.
“You’re Gia from The Heights, right? Rush’s girl.”
Not really wanting to get into the whole “it’s complicated” spiel with her, I simply said,
“Uh…yeah. Yeah, I am.”
It was interesting because I had no recollection of who she was. Yet, she knew me. That fact didn’t surprise me. I’d been pretty oblivious to a lot of things at work lately, so preoccupied with my impending departure and the state of Rush and my relationship.
She held out her hand. “I’m Naomi, Rich Kirkland’s wife.”
Rich was one of the chefs at The Heights. Really nice guy and made the best teriyaki steak tips with mushrooms and peppers. Now my stomach was growling.
“Oh my gosh. We all love Rich. He’s so sweet and such a damn good chef.”
“Thank you. Yeah…he loves working there. When he got laid off from his other job, Rush heard about it and took him in, even though at the time they didn’t even need another person.
So we’ll always be grateful for the chance he gave Rich.”
“Wow. I never knew that.”
That wasn’t the only story like that about Rush. He often helped people in need. It was one of the things I loved about him.
She came around from behind the register. “So what brings you in today?”
I patted my belly. “Well, as you can see…I’m pregnant. I can’t fit into any of my clothes anymore.
And with this being the only maternity shop in town…I figured this was the place to be for expanding people like me. I need to find at least three staples that I can rotate. I’m a bit tight on funds, so stuff I can wear with a lot of different things.”
She rubbed her chin as she walked toward the back of the store. “Okay, so then we’ll mainly want to stick with bottoms. With tops you don’t really need to buy maternity…you can go to Target and just get some looser fitting shirts.”
“That’s true. So maybe a couple of pairs of pants to start, not sure what selection of jeans you have?”
Naomi walked me around and helped choose a pair of dark blue jeans, a pair of basic black pants, and some maternity shorts. Even though I said I wasn’t going to buy a shirt, I couldn’t help picking one off the rack to try on. It was periwinkle blue with a drawstring at the back.
“Let me set you up in a dressing room,” she said, leading me into one of the back stalls.
I slid the curtain open and hung my items on a hook.
“Holler if you need anything,” she said.
“Thanks.” I closed the curtain.
I blew out a breath as I just stared at myself in the mirror for a bit. Slipping my dress over my head, I was truly shocked to see how much I had popped. I rarely took the time to look at myself this closely—or at least not in this kind of stark, fluorescent lighting. It was really clear how fast this baby was growing inside of me. Depending on my mood, I could either look at myself and feel beautiful or fat. Whenever I thought about Rush, I felt beautiful. He made me look at all of the changes my body was going through as a good thing. Not sure I would be able to see the positive in all of this if he didn’t constantly remind me how hot he was for me. Even the thought of that made my entire body tingle. Rush had control of my body even in his absence.
Good thoughts of Rush would always somehow evolve into worrisome ones. It was hard for me to feel fully confident about where things were going with us. Even though his behavior toward me lately made me optimistic, there was one major factor that caused me to doubt everything: he wasn’t trying to have sex with me. It was the one thing he was holding back. It was clearly a conscious effort not to, given how horny he was. And it spoke volumes. Now that I knew he hadn’t slept with anyone else, despite how much of a relief that was, it made me even more amazed and curious as to why he hadn’t tried anything. Of course, that was enough to make me doubt all of the optimistic signs that he’d been showing lately.
Shaking that thought away, I slipped on the maternity jeans and somehow squeezed my ass into them. Once around my waist, they were pretty comfortable. I squatted to feel whether the material was stretchy enough. After I took them off, I tried on the other items before concluding that I’d be better off getting an extra pair of pants in a different color rather than the cute shirt.
Exiting the dressing room, I reluctantly returned the shirt to its rightful place on the rack, and Naomi helped me pick out a lighter pair of jeans in my size.
We took everything to the register. It seemed to be taking a long time for her to ring me up. She swiped the card several times and muttered something under her breath.
Naomi frowned. “You don’t have another credit card, do you?”
“No. Why?”
“This one was declined. I tried it three times.”
I was starting to sweat. Lately, I’d been charging a lot of baby stuff I was going to need in the future. It wasn’t that hard to believe that my card could be near its limit. The payment I’d just made two days ago probably hadn’t been applied yet.
Feeling embarrassed, I said, “You know what? I might have to call them and straighten it out.
Don’t worry about it. Now that I know what I like…I’ll just come back and pick them up another time.”
“Are you sure? I could probably do like a layaway plan if you want to put some money down.”
The word layaway brought me back to flashbacks of going to T.J. Maxx as a child and depositing money toward my school clothes with my dad. That felt like just yesterday. Somehow pink and purple corduroys came to mind. Dad always found a way to get me what I needed even if it took some time.
I sighed. “No. That’s not necessary. I’ll straighten this out and come back.”
Naomi flashed a sympathetic smile. “Okay. Sorry, it didn’t work out, Gia.”
“Me, too.”
I walked out of there so fast. Feeling defeated, I decided to just go straight home and open a pint of Ben & Jerry’s.
My plan was thwarted when my car struggled to start. I kept turning the ignition, and it just wouldn’t budge.
Banging my hands repeatedly against the steering wheel, I yelled, “Are you fucking kidding me right now? You’re gonna pick this moment to crap out on me? Thanks a lot you, you piece of shit!”
Whack.
Whack.
Whack.
My shoulders were rising and falling. Finally, I leaned my head against the steering wheel and just breathed, immediately feeling sad for being too hard on my car. That was an odd thing to be sad about, but nevertheless, I was. It was old and probably needed to just die, but I kept insisting it live, expecting it to perform as it used to. That was an unreal expectation. Who was the bad one in this equation? Me. I was. I cried thinking about that—about life and death. The death of things.