You Make Me Whole

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Blurb:

An African American, marriage, pregnancy romance. If a party’s happening close by, you can bet Ray will be there. She’s all about that chill life, avoiding serious jobs or commitments like they’re the plague. But now that she’s out of cash, all her fun has come to a stop!

Her only option for her mom to bail her out is if Ray goes out with a man her total opposite… She never would have guessed that one date with accountant Carter would have them ending up in bed together! And now Ray’s entire world has been turned upside down!

She has never been serious about anything in her life… Could a surprise pregnancy be what it takes to change all of that? Find out in this shockingly sexy and passionate pregnancy romance by Leonie Miller.

Chapter 1

Ray pulled her jacket tighter around her. She hadn’t dressed for the fast-approaching Fall in her hurry to get to work without being late for the third time this month. Luke had just rolled his eyes as he did so well as he handed Ray her flyers for the day, deliberately throwing her a disgruntled look as he looked her up and down. She was still wearing last night’s makeup and trying to ignore the steady thud of her throbbing head.

What time had she even come home last night? The club had kicked them out at 2am…the rest was blurry after that, but it was unlikely Ray had headed straight home without tempting one of her friends to throw an after party. She couldn’t bring herself to throw a party at her own place. Her shoe box of an apartment could barely fit three people without making them feel claustrophobic. She could never make the place feel tidy; clearing up just left swaying stacks of clothes and high school memoirs cramped into every corner, casting great shadows throughout each room, trapping the apartment in dingy, depressing darkness. Damp crept through the ceiling and down the walls, filtering a musty smell through each room.

Ray forced a strained smile at each passerby as he she tried to tempt them to take a flyer. As always they flinched away from her as if she was toxic. Most looking hard at the ground and shoving their hands firmly into their pockets out of her reach as she offered half price on photo prints over and over until the sounds became a drone in her own head. She was beyond tempted to ditch the stack of flyers in the nearby trashcan, but Luke always made regular visits to check up on her throughout the day, making sure there was still a healthy, accountable amount of papers still in her hand. Ray couldn’t exactly blame him. Her resume when she had desperately asked Luke for some work was filled with crappy job after crappy job, each position only lasting a few months at the most, the ‘reasons for leaving’ filled with constant lies to avoid the truth. “Bad communication” was written instead of “I slept in a lot because I don’t give a crap about my job,” when she was flipping burgers, “Difference of ethical opinions” was to cover up the amount of arguments she had with her boss when she worked as a checkout girl. By the time she got to Luke, she was broke, and out of options. She had to learn to bite her lip every time he gave her that pitiful look that made her blood boil. She knew it wasn’t exactly impressive that at 26 years of age she was barely making enough money to get by, that her years at college were completely dedicated to the party lifestyle, rendering her degree useless.

She knew from a young age that she was never going to be career-driven. She would never be passionate about anything. Teaching, nursing, creating stuff…it all meant the same to her; earning enough money to get herself to the bar at the end of the day, where she and her friends got wasted and made memories.

Her parents, Ed and Tanya, had grown tired of trying to inspire her to make something of herself. They knew she lived to party, despite the fact that she was getting to the age where a lot of her friends were settling down with either their careers or families. Annabelle was now her only friend her own age that she still saw on a regular basis. Ray quietly feared the inevitable day that Annabelle would start to fade from their crazy lifestyle, who had always promised they would be like this forever, but Ray knew better. Too many people had come and gone from her life, full of desires to party forever, but the real world always caught up to them eventually and they would start to crave normality.

She often wondered if it would happen to her sometime, but it only took a moment of picturing cooking dinner for a family, or sitting in a stifling office, or watching cartoons as a full-time mother to make her skin crawl. Perhaps it would all suddenly become appealing to her one day, but whatever chance there was of that happening, she knew it was sure to hit Annabelle first. Ray would be able to handle all her partying friends being a few years younger than her. She ignored the gnawing feeling that people were looking at her as if she was pathetic; she had had enough practice avoiding the concerned stares of her parents as she came over for dinner almost every night. The three of them would entertain light conversation, ignoring the elephant in the room that they all knew Ray was over so often to avoid paying for her own food.

The hours dragged by as Ray continued to stand in the cold, the piercing wind stiffening her muscles until they ached. Her head continued to throb, the lack of home comforts that normally cured a hangover causing its persistence. As she expected, Luke regularly came to check on her, eyeing up the amount of flyers still in her hand until he was convinced she didn’t throw any away. Every visit came with the addition of his strained advice. He would tiredly look her up and down, suggesting things like, “maybe wearing your hair up would look a little smarter?” or perhaps, “how about a smart shirt next time, Ray? Tank top and yoga pants don’t exactly sell.” Ray couldn’t help but laugh and pat him on the arm.

“Luke, calm down! I’m a flyer girl…people barely see me as it is. People don’t’ want flyers, it’s better I’m next to invisible so I can just shove it in their hand.” She knew deep down she should make more of an effort. She always thought this as Luke would wander off with hunched shoulders, shaking his head in desperation. It’s not like she didn’t care at all about her appearance. She would happily spend hours perfecting her image when she was heading out for the night. Her clothes always revealed the perfect balance of boobs and ass, enough to show them off, but enough to avoid being called a skank. She’d commit to perfecting her hair, wearing a weave that pulled on her scalp, and she’d totter around in heels that by the end of the night had her feet crying for mercy.

But she couldn’t bring herself to make the same effort for work; she couldn’t even comfortably call her job ‘work’. Work was something that served a purpose in her eyes. You go into an office or a restaurant or whatever and actually achieve something in the day. How could she call giving people flyers that within a minute found themselves in a trashcan without so much as being glanced at? Ray knew she couldn’t ever be someone who could get excited about the idea of work. Everyone she knew hated their jobs, and the people who loved them she can only say she used to know because they no longer had the time to do anything else.

It all sounded like a big scam to her. People are convinced to get passionate about work just to protect them from the devastating fact that to get by in this world you have to work your ass off just to be able to sit down for a family meal. Ray didn’t even wish she was passionate about anything. It all sounded like a lot of pressure; caring about something would make the idea of failing too terrifying to bear. It would just be a lot to lose. She didn’t want the source of her happiness to be in the hands of an employer…that sounded like a recipe for disaster. She would say she was passionate about life, about having fun, and keeping her life risk-free. She had convinced herself that it was enough, even if no one else agreed.

She rushed home after work before going to her parents for dinner. Luke she could cope with, but she had no energy to get the lecture from her Mama about her state of dress. She tried to hide from her parents how often she went out with her friends, knowing it would just earn her a scolding on how she couldn’t afford food if she spent it all on booze. The way Ray saw it, her parents always overcooked on the off chance of having visitors, so she wasn’t exactly costing them any extra by joining them for dinner, she didn’t have anything to feel guilty about. But no matter how many times she brought this up with her parents, she got the same response each time, and she had quickly learned to give up.