Second Chance Baby

But there was still the lingering hesitation, the fear about talking to Mason. Finding Stephanie sitting in the parking lot told me I was very rapidly running out of time.

I got out of the car, and she walked toward me with her arms crossed over her chest.

“Hey, look at that, you still exist,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“You’re sorry?” She sounded incredulous. “You’ve been ignoring me. I called you twelve times yesterday alone. Do you know how worried I’ve been about you?”

“You didn’t have to worry about me. You know where to find me—you could have come to check on me if you really needed to.”

She threw her arms out to the side, encompassing the entire building of the bar. “Here I am.”

I didn’t walk away from my car. This wasn’t the conversation I wanted to carry with me inside. I had parked behind the building in the small gravel parking lot I could only snag a spot in if I got there early enough. But it was the same parking lot Mason had started using as his auxiliary thinking and parking spot. I wanted to keep the conversation as contained as possible so he wouldn’t hear it if he happened to wander out.

“So, have you told him yet?” she asked.

“No,” I said sheepishly. “Not yet.”

Stephanie let out a sigh. “Why not? Do you still not know what you’re going to do?”

“No,” I said. “I know. Honestly, I never didn’t know. I was always going to have this baby. There was no way I wouldn’t. If I even thought that there might be another option, it was totally from the shock and fear of first finding out. I was never serious. This is my baby.”

“Then what? This is Mason’s baby, too. Why haven’t you told him about it?” she asked.

I drew in a breath, continuing the fight I had been keeping up for the last week to control all the emotions coursing through me. My throat ached, and I tried to swallow them down. So far, I’d been able to pretty well, but now they were getting the best of me.

“I’ve been so scared,” I finally admitted.

Tears started streaming down my cheeks, and for a few seconds I attempted to stop them, making a valiant effort to protect my makeup. I quickly realized my efforts were futile. I had long since discovered the magnificence of waterproof mascara, so my carefully constructed bartender eyes were safe. But my foundation was done for.

“Scared of what?” Stephanie asked suddenly softly. “What do you think he’s going to do?”

“I don’t know what,” I said. “That’s why I’m so scared. And I’m scared that something’s going to go wrong. That I’m finally going to build up the courage to tell him I’m pregnant, and deal with everything that’s going to come out of that. Then I’ll miscarry again. It’s all I can think about.”

“You need to stop thinking about it,” Stephanie said.

“I can’t,” I insisted. “It’s on my mind all the time. The last time I was pregnant, the thought didn’t even occur to me. Not a single moment did I even consider that I wouldn’t have a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby. It was just a given. I was in shape, took care of myself. I didn’t drink or smoke or do drugs. Nothing. There wasn’t anything that should have caused that.”

“Ava, you didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t cause that miscarriage. Sometimes it just happens. We don’t know why. But it wasn’t your fault.”

“I know that. But the point is, I never would have thought that could have happened. So now, it’s all I can think is going to happen. I’m literally counting down the days until the second trimester when the risk is so much lower. I want to wait until then to tell him,” I said.

“Why?” Stephanie asked. “Why would you wait that long? That’s another, what, six weeks?”

“Like I said, it’s safer. I know things can still happen during the second trimester, but the risk is lower. It’s not as common. If I wait until that long, I’ll feel like things are going to be okay this time.”

“You can’t do that,” Stephanie said.

“What do you mean I can’t do that? Why not?”

“You can’t just carry Mason’s baby around for months without telling him. It’s a really bad idea. I know you’re scared. I know you don’t want to go through that pain again, and you don’t want to put him through it. But you have to tell him. He deserves to know.”

Before I even had a chance to say anything, I noticed someone was walking up to me from one side. I turned and saw Miranda, the new bartender. I hadn’t even realized she was there, and I wondered how much of the conversation she heard. Maybe none of it. She probably just showed up and was heading into work.