Bad Boy Rich

3 text messages.

All from Bad Boy Rich.

Why do you keep doing this?

Milana, please answer your phone.

Do you want me to call Em and tell her to put you on the phone?

I didn’t appreciate the threat and knew he was capable of doing exactly that. I dreaded this conversation, but knew I had to ease his worried mind.

“You’re alive.” I can hear the drag in his voice, the sound of a puff echoes through the receiver.

“I told you I would be busy. This is my work. You can’t expect me to drop everything for you.”

“Funny you should use the term work. Is that what you’re doing now?”

“I was at a museum.”

“Interesting. I thought you would have no time to chat since ‘work’ was so busy.” His maddening laughter annoys me deeper than I care to admit. “Common decency…heard of it?”

The heat in my cheeks begin to rise, the air around me stifling hot as the anger consumes me.

“I could say the same for you,” I grit, feeling suffocated by this conversation. “I told you I needed space, you refuse to give it to me. Let me process the fact that I saw you doing some drug deal outside your place in the middle of the night.”

Silence falls on his end.

“Exactly, I didn’t think you would have a response to that.” I shake my head, disappointed in him. “I have to go.”

I’m about to hang up since he chose to keep quiet, and just before I do, he calls my name one more time before admitting he was using right now.

Standing, alone, on this busy street in New York—I just wanted to break down. My short-lived happiness of visiting the museum and wanting to share it with Mom is once again overshadowed by Wesley.

“I don’t know what to say. Or how to feel. Look,” I switch my tone to more sympathetic, “I’m here until tomorrow afternoon then off to Vancouver. I need to clear my head, I think this will be good for us.”

“If you say so.”

“I believe so. Bye, Wesley.”

I wait for him to say goodbye, but it doesn’t happen, forcing me to end the call.

With a heavy heart, I battle the fierce wind that makes it difficult to walk and hail a cab back to the hotel.

Emerson and I were sharing the penthouse suite. Back at the suite, I find Emerson laying on the sofa FaceTiming Logan. She ends the call with her ‘I love you’ and turns to face me.

“You okay? You’ve been quiet today,” she says, stabbing her fork into a salad bowl she’s balancing on her lap.

“Full schedule. Just tired.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask you, how’s Liam?”

“We broke up,” I admit, quick to add a smile and derail the topic. “You looked so natural today with that mommy-blogger group this morning.”

“I’m passionate about being a mommy,” she beams

, showing me some photos that Logan had sent her of Lola. “It’s hard being away. Really hard. I never expected to form such an attachment, you know? I always thought I’d be one of those moms that happily would hand off baby. Now I know why my mom cried when me and my brother left home.”

I understood, partially. Being away from your mother is tough. Though Emerson’s maternal instincts were something I just didn’t have. Motherhood, babies, a woman’s yearn to procreate—it wasn’t for me.