Mistakes I’ve Made by Jordan Marie
40Callie
“Men suck,” I mutter around my spoon of caramel sea salt ice cream.
“Amen,” Katie joins in around her own spoon of double chocolate fudge. “At least yours loves you enough to ask you to wait for him. Mine left me for a damn horse.”
“Horse, whore, it’s all the same,” I mumble. “They’re both ridden hard and by more than one rider.” It’s a lame joke, but apparently Katie finds it really funny, because she laughs and laughs—until she starts crying.
“You could have gone with him to Cheyenne,” I reason, handing her a napkin that she quickly uses to dry the worst of her tears.
“We both know why I couldn’t do that, Callie,” she sighs.
“Then, you could have told him that you are pregnant. I don’t know how you’ve kept it from him anyway. You’re getting pudgy.”
“Fuck you,” she gasps, but she ends up laughing. I give her a weak smile. She lets out a sigh that my heart completely echoes. “We should just become gay,” she mutters. “Men aren’t worth this shit.”
“There’s just one problem with that,” I mutter.
“What’s that?” she asks, her brow crinkling and a trail of chocolate ice cream dripping down her chin.
“We both like dick too much.”
She lets out an annoyed breath. “You haven’t even had good dick. The least Reed could have done was fork over the goods before fucking up so royally.
“I don’t want to talk about him. In fact, we can no longer say his name within these walls,” I declare.
“Fine. Same thing with baby daddy,” she mumbles.
“Deal,” I agree.
“What are we going to do, Callie?” she asks, looking hopeless, wiping the ice cream from her face.
“I really don’t know. I wish I did. I can’t believe Reed thinks I can just sit by and let Chasity Newberg share an apartment with him,” I mutter.
“Maybe you should,” she murmurs, and I look at her like she’s crazy.
She balances her ice cream on her lap and shrugs at me. “Can you trust her?”
“I don’t even know if I can trust him,” I mutter. “It’s weird, right? The fact that we’ve lived together and not gone all the way yet?”
“I could lie to you, but yeah, it’s kind of weird,” she says, moving her spoon around in her ice cream.
“Yeah,” I mumble feeling dejected. I put my ice cream over on the end table and lay my head back against the couch.
“Unless he really was drugged when he had sex. Something like that would have to mess with your head, especially if he’s thinking that’s what happened, Callie.”
“I know,” I admit with a heavy breath filled with sadness.
“In which case, maybe you shouldn’t leave Reed alone with her?”
“I can’t live under the same roof as that woman, Katie. Be honest could you if you were in my situation?”
She studies me for a minute and then sighs.
“I can’t even make myself move to Cheyenne with Jake and I’m pregnant, Callie. I can’t tell you what you should do.”
“I just keep going over something in my head…”
“What’s that?”
“Why am I not enough? I mean, I’m the only daughter my father has ever known—his only kid for that matter. I might not share his blood, but I’ve spent my whole life trying to win his approval. In some ways, it’s the same with my mother. I love her and I’m always helping her, but I can’t really remember her looking at me and telling me she loves me, that she’s glad I’m her daughter. Hell, lately I get the feeling she may blame me, too. Maybe if I wasn’t born, her and my fath—Niles, would have been happier. Maybe if she hadn’t become pregnant her disease wouldn’t have progressed so rapidly—”
“And maybe you’re the reason there are droughts out west, Callie. Or the hurricanes and tornadoes down south.”
“You know what I’m saying, Katie,” I grumble.
“You’re wanting to know why Reed couldn’t pick you over a baby that he doesn’t even know is his,” Katie whispers and I look at her, my face stricken with shame.
“God,” I breathe. “I guess I am and that makes me sound like a horrible person. Shit. I am a horrible person.”
“You’re not, Callie. You’re human. We’re both sacrificing what we want for what we think might make the men we love happier. You secretly think because of the shit your parents made you live with that you’re not worthy of love. You think Reed deserves a chance to find happiness with the family he created—so that his child will have his real dad and not a substitute.”
“Gee, maybe you should go into psychology and be a shrink instead of a nurse, Katy,” I mock, her diagnosis hitting way too close to home. She shrugs as her reply. “Okay, Dr. Phil, why are you letting Jake go without telling him about the baby. Why aren’t you demanding he stay here with you and be a father?”
“That’s easy,” she mumbles, sitting her empty ice cream container down.
“It is?”
“Yeah, I don’t want a man in my life who doesn’t love me enough to stay.”
“Katie—”
“And, I refuse to make my child suffer because his or her father will always see them as the reason that he didn’t get to live his dream. Jake’s made his decision and because of his, I’ve made the only one available to me.”
I think about it, and then I think about Reed and Chasity. I can’t live with her there under our roof. If Reed loved me, we would work together and find an alternative. Going into a shelter isn’t fun, but if that’s the only way I could keep a roof over my unborn baby’s head, I’d do it. Life is hard and sometimes we make choices we hate, but we do them to survive.
Maybe that’s what Reed is doing. Making decisions he hates. He’s still doing it though, and just like Katie said, because of his choices, I’m forced to make my own.
Even if they make me miserable.