Choices (27 page)

“Oh, hell no! You ladies have been looking forward to this day. I am certainly not going to ruin it for you! Go, see the show! I’ll join you in a little bit. I just need a little time to myself and Kristy you need to get off your own feet as well.” I pushed them to the door.

“I don’t know, Laurel, I don’t feel right, going to see Frankie Valley and his crew singing about hot Jersey nights when you’re in here crying your heart out. Just doesn’t seem right. I don’t know call me crazy, or maybe heartless.” Bonnie shrugged and looked to Joni and Kristy for solidarity.

“Yeah, Laurel, I couldn’t do that knowing you were in here feeling sick.” Joni moved to hug me one more time. I extricated myself and pushed them again toward the door.

“NO! I won’t have it any other way. Go. NOW!” I glared at them. No one moved.

“HMPH! I feel like I’m talking to my kids. Do I need to give the crazy Mommy warning and threaten that if you don’t do what I say I’m going to lose my mind all over your bodies?” I widened my eyes to give the impression of insanity, which wasn’t too hard to muster.

“Sorry, sweetheart, only works with the little people.” Kristy smiled and folded her arms across her chest as did the other two.

“Shit. Yeah, it doesn’t work with them either.” I scowled.

“Really, listen to me. You women are the best friends a girl could ever have. I owe all of you so much you have no idea. I don’t want to be responsible for the three of you missing out on something you’ve been looking forward to. Please, the day’s been hard enough. I don’t want to add to it with more guilt by having my best friends mis
s out on a theater show in New York because I couldn’t hold my cookies.  C’mon what kind of friend does that make me?” I smiled though my heart was heavy. “Besides, I’ll catch up. I just need to wrap my brain around everything. I promise! I’ll be okay. I just need a minute.”
Or sixty!

“Laurel, I think it’s more than a matter of being able to hold your cookies.” Kristy took a step toward me and rubbed my arm.

“No, I know. But really, I want all of you to go and that’s final.” I narrowed my eyes and used my sternest nurse voice when dealing with obstinate toddlers at the hospital.

“Yup! I know the tone of that voice too!” Joni laughed.

“Laurel, you’ll join us, really, promise?” Kristy asked hedgingly.

“Yes, Kristy, I will.” I smiled and crossed my heart.

They left shortly after a quick round of hugs and I fell into the first chair I could find, held my head in my hands and wept bitter, angry, choking tears.

I managed to pull myself together after about twenty minutes of mind blowing, snotty, slobbering sobbing. I splashed some cold water on my face, attempted to fix my makeup and gave up after about thirty seconds and decided to enter the theater but just couldn’t do it. The thought of being in that dark, tightly ensconced row of people pressed together tightly and breathing no less, just wasn’t appealing to me. I texted Kristy and told her I was going to go outside and window shop, walk around or just people watch, maybe I’ll see the naked cowboy I joked and I would be outside waiting for them when the show ended. Really, I just needed to be outside in the fresh air as fresh as I could get in New York smog, surrounded by a gloomy November sky which held all the promise of a spectacular winter just brewing on the horizon. I needed to move and not be idle. When my mind is buzzing and my insides feel as though they are going to be part of an atom bomb explosion my body needs to be moving. I can focus better that way, although exactly what I was focusing on I don’t know. What I did know was that no matter how wonderfully distracting the show would have been, the thought of sitting still was horrifying when interior nuclear bombardment was imminent.

I walked out
side into the chilly November air. This time around, the sun had faded behind thinly separated clouds that scattered across the expansive sky reminding me of my own tattered and strewn emotions. The city was pulsing and thriving moving to its own rhythm of pre-holiday excitement. People were smiling and laughing reminding me of everything I loved about being in the city, the excitement, the stimulation, the frenzied pleasure of being alive. Oddly enough the air was refreshing. The chaos had died away and the lines were safely inside the theater. I wasn’t headed in any particular direction I just headed into the throng of people and just went with the flow which is so unfamiliar to me. I always need to be in charge and in control. Lately, I’ve been barely keeping my head above the water with the choices I’ve been making so as long as I didn’t need to decide where to go I was good. So I walked and I walked and I walked some more, letting my feet be in control, separate from my own thoughts. Thank God I wore my lugged-soled flats and not those three inch heeled roach-stomper boots I contemplated wearing. See, so maybe I did make at least one good choice about what to wear today. Brandon…now there was a decision I didn’t want to revisit but my body was starting to tire and now so was my brain. All my avoidance tactics were waning.
Oh, alright already let him seep in.
I couldn’t fight it anymore. I plopped down on a concrete slab planter at something and Broadway and let my rushing thoughts coalesce into something coherent that I could make sense of. The wavy, thick hair, the sea blue eyes, God even the scent of him, hit me like a tidal wave. He was beautiful
and married
but the look in his eyes, the yearning and desire and excitement to see me made me breathless with hope for just a fleeting second, a second I longed to stretch into an eternal piece of forever shared only with him. What I wouldn’t give to be able to feel his arms wrapped around me, his warm, strong hands cupped around the life we created, to smell his skin and taste his lips, hear him call my name out of laughter or from his own release, feel his hand tangle in my hair when we make love. I shivered straight down my spine right into my toes.
Will you ever stop having this effect on me? Will the craving and the wanting ever stop?
Will I ever feel in control of myself again? What’s his wife like? After the look he gave me, does he really love her? Does he tremble when he finishes loving her, does he brush the hair out of her eyes and rest his head in the cradle of her neck? Does he kiss her jaw and tenderly swirl his slender finger around her nipple? Does he share his French fries with her, because if he does well, then, all bets are off! Brandon hates to share his food! Does he whisper in her ear all the promises of days and nights to come of a cherished life with a family he can call his own?
My head was near to bursting, my heart was racing and my blood was pounding so loudly I swear that the vagrant on the street vent could hear it rush through my veins. He smiled a knowing smile to me as if he sensed my inner turmoil, shrugged his shoulders as if to say ‘you know it could be worse, you could be me and sleeping on a fifthly, smelly, dirty, city heating vent’ and rolled away from facing me.
You have no choice now, Laurel, he’s married. You let him go to save his life. Please, God, one more day, one more embrace, one more…STOP! Get up, keep moving, Laurel, no looking back only forward.

“See, I told you I would be here when you came out.” I smiled at the girls as they exited the building and found me standing right under the marquee.

“Jesus, Laurel, you look blue! Have you been outside all this time? Are you nuts?” Bonnie quickly rubbed her arms up and down the length of my arms trying to warm me up. Honestly, I didn’t even feel the cold outside. The only cold I could fe
el was the one wrapped around my heart.

“I’m fine. I am hungry though, should we grab an early dinner befo
re we get on the bus to go home. I want to hear all about the show.”

“MMM…food. Good idea. Where to?”
Joni asked while she licked her lips and patted her stomach.

“I say we splurge and go to Sardi’s?” Kristy offered.

“Oh, Kristy, Sardi’s? Are you still hoping to run into Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt? C’mon now, with our luck we’ll run into Regis Philbin and Kelly Ripa” I giggled and added, ‘please, lead the way.”

I could hear his breathing, feel his warm breath tickle my neck and feel his wavy soft hair brush against my jaw. His hands were large and warm and very sure in their destination. They gently and tenderly caressed my swollen, heavy, milk breasts, knowing how sore and painful they were and yet also knowing how desperately I needed for him to taste me and drink as though I were his own glass of rich wine. His long, graceful, smooth fingers circled my nipples to form large, tight, pink, peaks that made me moan and sigh in intense pleasure. My skin craved and cried out for his touch. It was stingingly, hot and aching between my legs, painfully throbbing, and waiting impatiently for his touch to become more demanding, not so gentle - ‘harder, Brandon, harder!’ He was murmuring something in my ear I couldn’t quite understand. It almost sounded as if he was simply saying my name but I wasn’t sure. His smooth, long, strongly-muscled leg was wrapped tightly and possessively around mine and his hips rocked sweetly and urgently against my bottom just like they had so many times before. I reached back to stroke his evident love for me but he took my hand and entwined our fingers and placed them delicately on my burgeoning belly, still murmuring something in my ear that I couldn’t understand. ‘I can’t hear you Brandon, what did you say?’ More murmuring and gentle laughter and then more stroking, this time he was running his fingers softly up and down my thick thatch of curly hair, gently teasing and tempting my swollen essence of womanhood while keeping my hands locked into his other hand on my belly. His tongue licked the outside of my ear and I could feel the rasp of his whiskers against my neck which proceeded to entice more excitement from my body, the wetness just oozing in a fierce gush now all the while his hips were thrusting more insistently against my bottom as if he were asking permission, begging for purchase but not really caring whether I granted it or not. His raspy whiskers now found my lips and he kissed me deeply and wholly, assuaging any doubts, any fears that I was his and he was mine.  Quickly and decisively he entered right up to the root. I gasped and firmly ground my bottom into his groin. We both shuddered and moaned. His hands and mine were protectively cupped around the baby we created as if we were both sharing and nurturing the little body, not knowing who it really belonged to, not knowing whose body belonged to whom because the three of us were so profoundly entwined. I could feel the baby moving quickly as if in protest against the jarring rocking sensations it was feeling and then it suddenly was still as if lulled to sleep while my body shattered into a million tiny little glittering fragments of myself that I didn’t think I would ever be able to retrieve and piece back together. Brandon was murmuring again in my ear something I couldn’t fully understand…

With a jolt to my heart and a large dose of adrenaline coursing through my veins, which, I’m sure wasn’t good for the baby, I came to more lucid senses and realized I was dreaming. I refused and fought back the urge to open my eyes and I just reveled in the memory of the dream and delighted in the memories I already possessed of him. I continued to pretend to stay asleep letting my head jostle gently from the rocking of the bus. I wasn’t ready to deal with reality just yet, not after that dream. I squeezed my eyes shut and for the umpteenth time today, I forced the tears back to where they came from the very bottom of my cold, lonely heart.

“She’s so pale! I’m so worried about her. This whole situation isn’t good for her or the baby.”

“Well, how do you expect her to look for God’s sake, she’s pregnant and without the baby’s daddy not to mention with th
ree other children to care for. I’d look sick and pale too!” Kristy sighed and I thought I could hear a magazine rustle and drop to the floor of the bus. I knew the worried one was Bonnie.

“Look, I’m not blaming, really I’m not but, honestly what the hell was she thinking? She’s not a teenager. How could she let herself get pregnant at her age while she was still married
- to boot.” Bonnie sighed exasperatedly and zipped open her pocket book rummaging for something.

“I don’t believe you! Now, is not the time to be critical or judgmental. We need to be supportive. Her heart is broken, she just saw the love of her life with his
new wife, which I swear is just a rebound, she’s pregnant which just amplifies things even more intensely and now she needs to go back home feeling like shit when really this day was supposed to lift her spirits. C’mon Bonnie where’s your heart? Laying around in the bottom of your pocketbook? What the hell are you looking for anyway?”  I could hear Joni tugging at her bag.

“If you must know, I’m looking for the card for the doctor I know who performs late term abortions. You know she still has time.”
Bonnie zipped up her bag and knowing Bonnie I could see the grim determination on her face even with my eyes closed.

“What the hell are you doing with a card for an ob/gyn
that performs late term abortions? How on God’s green earth did you find him?” Joni practically screeched while she was still tugging at her bag and I could hear Bonnie take a very slow, very loud deep breath.

Okay this didn’t sound like it was going to get any better. 
My insides were flip- flopping for sure and King Cobra was getting ready to make an entrance and I could hear Kristy trying desperately to hide her tears. Joni gasped audibly that the woman sitting across the aisle from her asked if she was alright. I thought that now would be a good time to wake up.