Never Say Forever

“When I found out I was pregnant, I’d hoped so badly that she’d be yours.” Her fervent whisper cuts me to the core. It’s a longing I’ve come to understand, a complex tangle of emotions of what might’ve been. But there can be no regrets. There can only be going forward. “Before I went to the doctors, before they worked out the dates, because if she was yours, it meant she wouldn’t be his. The man who disappeared from my life before I’d even swiped my underwear up from the floor.”

“It was just a one-night thing?” Does that make it better or worse? Does it make me a hypocrite for asking?

“No. I told you he was my boyfriend, and at the time, I really thought he was. But then he turned out to be a manipulative, using arsehole who fed me nothing but a pack of lies. I couldn’t tell you that when you asked about him. I couldn’t tell anyone. We only had sex once, and that was the last time I ever saw him. Until today.”

“I’m sorry.” I’m so sorry she ever met him. “He’s a fucking asshole.”

“I have lots of much worse titles for him.” Over the years, I’ve had them, too. “He told me he was an IT consultant, you know? That he was working for an Italian company. That he’d be flying in and out of the country for the next few months. I liked him. He was fun. We hung out and talked and he told me all about his family—” She halts to stifle a sob. “He said he was sharing a room in Remy’s hotel, so I never met him there. But he just fed me a pack of lies and then disappeared. Gone! His phone cut off. I couldn’t believe that he’d hung around just to have sex with me. Not for the longest time. I still can’t. It wasn’t even that good!” Her words end on a watery bubble of laughter and I want so much to protect her from the truth, but she’s probably right. Simon would’ve seen her as a challenge and pursued her to the end. To the bedroom. And why? Because he’s fucked in the head.

“I wished so hard that she was yours because, when the time came, I’d be able to tell her that her father was a good man. Tell her how you’d been my good Samaritan, that you’d stopped to help me. I’d have been able to tell her how you made me feel, how you changed things for me. I wanted her to belong to someone decent, and though we only had a few hours, I knew that was you.”

“I wish it had been me.” So fucking much.

“I’m not sure you would’ve felt the same if I’d turned up on your doorstep looking like a beached whale.” Again with the brave, waterlogged laugh.

“I wouldn’t have turned you away.”

“I know that now. But I’d probably never have found you. I didn’t even have your name.” She pulls away and begins to use her sleeve wipe away her tears, when I take over the task with my thumbs. “I wasn’t looking for him for money or support. I wasn’t stupid enough to expect any kind of fairy tale ending. I knew he was no good, but I just wanted to be able to say, at some point, child, this is your father.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t that man.” She laughs a little then and I join her until my smile falls, my words coming rough and hard. “I’d give anything for her to belong to me.”

“Of course you would. Who could resist my light-fingered little Lulu?”

“I won’t say I wouldn’t have been scared shitless, but it might’ve changed the course of my life, the course of both of our lives, for the better.”

“I know,” she whispers.

“But at least we found each other now.”

“I couldn’t tell the truth to anyone, though I was so desperate to find him that I told Charles. He helped me sneak a look at the hotel booking system but there was no one there staying there by the name he gave me.”

“He gave you a false name?” I find myself growling. The fucker knows no limits. Has no decency. Deserves no part of my girls.

“Brett Anders. Of which there was no trace and the only Americans who were registered were sharing rooms with women. I thought maybe he was cheating on someone with me, so I stopped looking. But maybe he wasn’t even staying there. Who knows? But I vowed then and there that I’d be the best role model I could be. I didn’t want my child to look at her mother and say I allowed myself to be manipulated and used by men.”

And that’s why she never dated. Or at least why she told herself she couldn’t.