Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 106346 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 532(@200wpm)___ 425(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106346 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 532(@200wpm)___ 425(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
“But …” I start to say, but when she shakes her head, I want to pull her to me.
“I refused to give him away. I wasn’t even two months pregnant, and I loved him with everything I had,” she says softly. “So I packed my stuff and moved in with Andrew and his family. His parents were not much more understanding, but he was eighteen. They weren’t going to have their grandson living on the street, so they took me in. He was the star quarterback, and his name was on everyone’s lips as the next big thing. He got a scholarship, and I followed him here. The only way for us to have housing was for us to be married, so one day, we went to city hall and made it official. It was my happy ending,” she says, and her eyes then look down.
“But then I gave birth to Dylan, and he started to spend more and more time away from home. He would complain that he couldn’t focus with Dylan crying all the time. I was with a newborn who had colic and only slept two hours a night. A day would turn two and then close to the end, he would be gone for a whole week. I just didn’t get it. Dylan was such a beautiful baby, and every single time he smiled, it just made me love him more.” She smiles now, and I notice every time she talks abut him, there is this look she gets in her eyes. The look that I see every single time I look in my mother’s eyes or my father’s.
“I just tried to be understanding. He had all this stress on him, so the least I could do was take care of Dylan. When he was home, he was angry and stressed. He used to get pissed off that there were too many toys around, and he was constantly stepping on them.” She wipes away a tear. “Of course I would go to some games, but even then, I felt like I was intruding in his life. He had this whole other life without us in it. I suspected that he wasn’t faithful to me, and when I found out the first time, he promised me it was a mistake. Promised me it wouldn’t happen again. I knew it was stupid to believe him. Maybe that was my clue to get out, but I wanted Dylan to have a family. I wanted him to have a mother and father together. But then it came knocking on my door again at two in the morning looking for him. It was the day before Dylan turned two years old. I had these little gifts wrapped for him when he got up, and Andrew got so pissed when I asked who she was that he threw one of them at the wall, smashing the gift.” She takes a deep breath, and I want to go to her and hold her while she tells this story. I want to give her the strength from inside me.
“Junior year, he got sacked so hard he tore his ACL.” I look down at my own hands that are now folded into fists, the rage coming out of me, and right then, I think about when I was drafted first overall. It was a dream come true. “Well, he was put on painkillers after his surgery, and he somehow got addicted,” she says softly and now wipes another tear off her cheek. “You have to know that I had no idea. Not even one that he was so addicted.” She looks at me, and I want her to stop telling me all this.
“It was not your fault,” I say. My hand goes to her cheek, and my thumb catches the tear that escapes her eyes.
“When I found out he was addicted, I went to his parents,” she says. Her voice makes my stomach start to burn, and my heart speeds up faster and faster, and my neck suddenly becomes hotter. “They actually blamed me.” She laughs bitterly, but it comes out more like a sob. “Said I pushed him in that direction, and that if it wasn’t for me and Dylan, he would be okay. That having a child put extra strain on him.” The sobs rip out of her, and I pull her to me. She cries in my chest, her tears soaking straight through my shirt. “I never once put pressure on him.”
“It was not your fault,” I say, hugging her, and I kiss her head.
“When I found out that he had wasted all his scholarship money, I …” She gets up now and starts to pace in front of me. “I was so pissed and angry, and to top it all off, we got kicked out of the house.” I sit here now and rage tears through my body, making my legs start to move up and down. “He promised me everything would be okay. We moved into a one-bedroom studio that was horrible. There were roaches everywhere, and I was afraid that I’d wake up, and they’d be all over Dylan. He didn’t pay rent, and one day I caught him fucking the landlady on our couch. I got tested right after that, and I never touched him again.”