Unspeakable Truths (34 page)
“It was one time,” she yells, like a hostile witness on the stand and all I can do is tilt my head up to the sky and pray for patience. Denial and Everly are close friends, but this is a bit much.
“Didn't you sit through sex education in high school? That's all it takes baby. Plus it was actually two times.”
“That’s because
you
didn’t use a condom.”
“That’s because I thought
you
were still on the pill.” We can do this all day; it wouldn’t be the first time.
“I can't be pregnant Luca; I'm supposed to start school in a few weeks.”
This is where it gets tricky. “You told me you weren't even sure if you wanted to go to school now.”
“Yeah but still, I’m undecided,” she says, taking a final bite of her banana.
She’s not going to school, I know it and she knows it. She’s not really too torn up about it either. She wouldn’t be lounging in a deck chair polishing off fruit if she was that upset about this whole situation. I think law school was something that she felt like she had to do for Tyler but as she comes more and more into her own I think she’s realizing that it’s not as important to her as she once thought it was. If I thought it was what she really wanted I’d push her into it, I’d figure out a way to make it possible, even with a baby but it’s not.
I give her a minute to let it sink in before I state the obvious again. “You're pregnant.”
She smiles and nods her head. “Yeah, I am.”
“We’ll go get you a test so we can be sure.”
“We're not even married yet!” She points out with a giggle.
“So we'll get married.” It’s not the end of the world, whether the baby comes first or the wedding does, it’ll all be fine.
“I don’t want a wedding though, been there done that. Maybe just us and our parents at the courthouse.”
“Okay,” I agree quickly. I could care less about having a huge wedding; in fact I prefer that we not have one. I’m all for a simple laidback event.
“Oh and Morgan too,” she says, breaking into my thoughts.
“Of course.” I push my chair back, reach out for her hand and pull her into my lap. She comes willingly; snuggling up to me, she places her head in the crook of my neck.
“What am I going to do for work?” she wonders out loud.
“You can always come back to the law firm. They want you back. I told Harvey we were together, and he didn't care, it's not like we work that closely together anyway.” They would love to get her back at work, the place isn’t the same without her there—too much shit falls through the cracks.
“This is true.”
I place a kiss on top of her head and give her a little squeeze. “Or you can not work,” I suggest. Yes I said it, I know…I’m a Neanderthal but she knows that shit and she loves me anyway.
She pulls her head back and glares up at me. “You would just love that wouldn’t you?”
See, she knows me. “Yes, I would love that; I would love for you to stay home with our baby for a while. That doesn’t make me a bad person,” I say in my defense. She rolls her eyes but settles back into me.
“I could be down with that, maybe come back to the firm for now and then stay home for a while once the baby is born. It gives me plenty of time to think about what I want to do, and I know myself. I wouldn’t want to leave our baby if I didn’t have to.”
“I like that. You know I’d never stand in the way of you and anything that you wanted.”
She tilts her head back. Her eyes meet mine, and I swear I can see through her in that moment, I can see the hope in them, the love, the happiness. I love knowing that I played a part in that, that she looks at me and sees that I’m the right man for her. It’s more than I could have hoped for where Everly is concerned because in another lifetime I was nothing more than the wrong man, a secondary character in another man’s story. I see now that it had to be that way, that we had to see how fucking horrific life can be at times so that we would be able to appreciate what we finally found in each other. I’ll spend my life giving her everything that she should have had in that other life and praying to God every day that she thinks I’ve given her a better one. In the beginning I thought that she needed someone to save her, that she needed me to save her, but the truth is she didn’t need that. What she really needed was love, to know that there was someone in the world who wanted her above all else.
~Everly~
As promised, Luca took me to the drug store earlier to get a home pregnancy test… I bought three. Luca stopped, looked at me in disbelief, then looked up to the sky and walked away. I just rolled my eyes and followed him to the cash register. Now it’s been confirmed, he only let me take two of the three tests, but I can now say for certain that I’m pregnant. When I saw the positive tests, I couldn’t control it, I instantly burst into tears. Luca just pulled me into our bed and held me tight, letting me have my breakdown. I was afraid that he would think I wasn’t happy about our baby but he knew, just like he always knows exactly what I’m thinking.
“You never thought you’d get the chance to be a mom did you?” he asked.
“No. I thought that dream died a long time ago. I thought it died with Tyler. I just can’t believe it’s actually happening.”
“It’s happening. We’ll have two or three babies in a couple of years, how’s that sound?”
“And a dog.”
“And a dog.”
“Thank you, for driving me crazy and bringing me back to myself. You’re the love of my life Luca,” I said, thinking that the last time I spoke those words they weren’t exactly true. They weren’t a lie either; they were just uttered on borrowed time.
“And you’re mine.”
Luca’s in the kitchen cooking dinner, so I stroll into the home office where he occasionally works and walk over to the bookshelf. I pull one of Tyler’s old books from the shelf, one of the few I decided to keep and settle into the leather couch that sits in the corner of the room. I turn to the first page and a piece of paper falls out onto my lap. I’m assuming it’s a ticket stub for some kind of event he must have bet on but when I pick it up I realize it’s a folded piece of notebook paper. I open it up slowly and I gasp when I take in the familiar handwriting. It’s a letter addressed to me from Tyler. My hands tremble a little as I look it over. My eyes well up with tears when I notice that it was written just two days before our wedding, just days before his death.
Dear Everly,
If you ever find this letter I hope that it’s years after I’m gone. I hope that you’re in a time and place where whatever wounds I’ve left behind are healed. I’m scared babe, I have a real problem and I just don’t see a way out. I don’t know if I can fix what I screwed up and if that’s the case you need to know that I never intended to hurt you. I never thought I’d let things get this bad, this far, or get so caught up that I would lose sight of what was really important. I’ve done so many things, things that I never told you, things that I’m not proud of but you… You Everly are the only thing that’s right in all of the things I’ve done.
There are times when I can barely stand to look at you, to see the love and hope on your face because all I feel is guilt. Guilt that I’ve made you promises that I’m afraid I may not be able to keep, fear that I may not even make it to our own wedding. To think I might not see your face one day is the hardest thing to take. If the unthinkable happens, if I don’t make it out of this, I want you to go on. I want you to get married, have babies, and see the world. Don’t give up; don’t hold back because he honest to God truth is I never really deserved you anyway. I was like a thief in he night taking what I wanted even though I knew it shouldn’t have been mine. I don’t regret it though; I’d do it all over again for you. The only thing I would change about our life together is me and what my ambition did to us. I hope you never read this letter, I hope everything turns out alright and I can destroy it, that we get the life we always wanted, but if I don’t I want you to know that even if you can no longer hear my voice, I’ll be right beside you, and I’ll smile from wherever I am when you get the life I always wanted for you to have. I hope one day you can forgive me, I hope you know how much having you meant to me.
I love you,
Tyler
I’m hysterical now after reading it. I feel so sad for what he must have been going through, knowing that he was about to get married but worried that he might not even make it that far, and for once, since it all happened, I’m glad that we got to make it to the wedding. I’m glad that he got that one last happy moment. My heart aches for him, for all that he gave up and how terrifying those last few days must have been for him. I hiccup through a sob and then the letter is gone, pushed to the side and Luca is there, crouched down on the ground before me his hands cupping my face.
“Hey, what’s wrong? I was calling you for dinner and when you didn’t answer, I came in here and you were hysterical.”
“I found a letter,” I tell him, trying to steady my breathing, focusing on his beautiful eyes. I slowly start to calm down. “It’s from Tyler.”
“Oh baby,” he says, sympathizing with me. God I love this man, even now he never makes me feel bad about still caring about Tyler even though situations like this can’t be easy on him. “What did it say?”
I reach over disengaging myself from him, grab the letter off of the couch, and hand it to him. “You should read it.”
He sits down next to me on the couch, pulls me into his side and begins to read. I watch him as he reads, trying to decipher the emotions playing out on his face. When he’s done he just holds me tighter and sighs. “Wow.”
I say nothing, just nod, planting my head in his chest.
“I think he’s trying to tell you he’s happy for you babe, that he approves. He said it in the letter he’d be there when you got what you wanted and he was.”
I let out another soft sob. “He was—I felt like I needed just a small piece of him today. It was strange; I came in here and grabbed one of his books. He’s happy for us isn’t he?”
“Yeah,” he replies, his voice heavy with emotion. I sometimes forget now what Tyler meant to Luca, how much his friendship meant to him, that he suffered a loss as profound as mine. But in that loss, through the grief we felt, something stronger grew, something even more beautiful than what had once existed there, a union that was meant to be created even when there was doubt. I understand now that the story hadn’t been completely written, Tyler was a beautiful and tragic chapter in my book, but Luca…Luca was the Happily Ever After.
About the Author
Alice Tribue lives with her husband and daughter in New Jersey. She has a bachelor’s degree in communications and is currently working on her master’s degree. She spends most of her free time reading, writing, and when the weather permits sitting on the beach sipping a margarita.
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