In the end, Henry never turned up that night.
Or the next day.
In fact, he never showed up ever again.
A few days later I came home from to find my mom sitting at the small table again, smoking her cigarettes and crying. She held a glass of liquor in her hand and ice tinkled every time she raised it to her painted red lips. She was dressed in her tight red dress and her gleaming red high heels with her hair swept up off her face. But as I got closer I could see her mascara had run down her face and her fake eyelashes were coming off one eye.
She was slurring.
I joined her and dumped my school bag on the table, awkwardly climbing onto the chair because I was only seven years old and sometimes I still had difficulty moving heavy things like the chair. Mom sniffed and took another sip of her drink, then sucked back more of her cigarette. Beside the ashtray was a pamphlet for a clinic somewhere in town. Family Planning, it said. I didn’t know what it was for or why my mom would need it, but I didn’t ask.
“Never trust a man, Honey,” she said bitterly. “They always say one thing but then do another. They’ll tell you what they think you want to hear. They don’t want to be assholes so they’ll say one thing knowing full well they’re not going to follow through. It’s about saving face, you see. When confronted with a situation, they want to be the good guy. The hero. But then reality sinks in and they forget all of that the first chance they get.”
She stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray and drained her glass. Then rising unsteadily to her feet, she wobbled across the small apartment and disappeared into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.
My eyes snapped open, startled awake by the slamming of the door in my dream.
Never trust a man, Honey.
They always say one thing but then do another.
I sat up
My mom resented having me.
On her thirty-fourth birthday, she let me go. Sent me out into the world and told me it was time to fend for myself.
And I had been doing that ever since.
I never saw my mom.
She was somewhere in Vegas. Smoking her hand-rolled cigarettes and visiting another bottle of bourbon, no doubt, while dressing up in her shortest outfit and visiting the local casinos and bars always on the hunt for another date and another drink. From the moment I was born she resented me and never missed a chance to remind me how I’d ruined her life.
When I met Autumn, life took an upward turn. Her family became my family and I was given a sense of what family meant. Holidays. Vacations. Christmases spent making snowmen in freshly fallen snow and drinking eggnog by a roaring fire. Support. Love. Laughter. Her mom became the mom I never had, and ten years later we were still close. She was the reason I was well-adjusted and remained relatively unscathed by my childhood.
I sighed, my heart heavy. As much as I tried not to think about growing up with my mom, the pain lingered.
I glanced at Caleb lying next to me. He was sound asleep, the sheet wrapped around his hips and his glorious torso exposed.
He will resent you.
I heard my mom’s voice as plain as if she was in the room with me.
You’re forcing him to be with you.
I pulled back the sheets and climbed out of bed.
Having a baby was a mistake. It ruined everything.
And I walked out of his room and into mine.
If this was going to work, I had to keep Caleb at arm’s length and not confuse the situation with emotions. We weren’t together. We were two people who happened to be having a baby together.
Nothing more.
And I was best to remember that.
HONEY
I placed the piece of paper down on the table in front of him.
“What is this?” Caleb asked, his coffee cup paused halfway to his mouth.
“It’s a contract,” I said. “A fully non-negotiable, fully binding contract.”
“A contract for what?”
“Read it.”
He picked it up and began to read. “I, Honey Bee Scott, hereby agree that I will not have anymore sex or heavy make-out sessions with one Caleb Randy Calley.” He looked at me over the paper. “You really wrote and signed this?”
I nodded. “Keep reading.”
“I, Caleb Randy Calley, hereby agree to not have anymore sex or heavy make-out sessions with the above, Honey Bee Scott.” He shook his head. “I’m not signing this.”
“You have to!”
“Why?”
“So we stop having sex!”
He cocked an eyebrow at me. “That’s the worst argument ever. I love sex. And I love having sex with you.”
“We have to stop or we are going to seriously fuck things up.” I folded my arms across my chest and leaned against the counter. “And clearly I can’t be trusted to control myself. These hormones are making me crazy. Crazy for sex. I need help.”