I’ve Got You

Chapter 8

When Cameron wasn’t there, and the satisfaction had the chance to die off, the doubts wormed their way back. They renewed themselves over the sporadic text messages of Peter, who still insisted on his game of cat and mouse, where she was always the mouse, always being lured back into the trap of Minnesota and a life devoid of real happiness. Cameron caught the mood sometimes, and hastened to reassure her.

Reassurance wouldn’t be enough for those doubts alone. They ate away at the goodness, they festered like a gaping wound, the more Aleshia allowed them voice. Careful, Vaneese had warned. Your psyche is still damaged from the time spent with Peter. You still don’t want to believe happiness is real, because part of you thinks it doesn’t exist, or that if you have it, the happiness will then be whisked away from you.

Vaneese expressed surprise and acceptance all in one dose, making sure Aleshia received her warnings and functioned, fully aware of the possible consequences of her actions. She spoke to Cameron privately, and he had come back to Aleshia, looking thoroughly roasted, but determined to see their blossoming relationship survive.

However, their relationship couldn’t survive Aleshia’s doubts.

The ultrasound scan went without a hitch. Aleshia debated whether she wanted the gender of the baby to be a surprise or not, though Cameron insisted on knowing. The cold gel on her stomach, the cold scanner as it ran across the gel, seeking out the life form enclosed by her womb, revealed a curled up fetus.

“A boy,” the nurse had crooned. “You’ll be expecting a boy. Are you excited to be parents?” She addressed them, oblivious, of course, to their unusual situation.

“Very,” Cameron said.

“Nervous, but yeah,” Aleshia echoed.

Walking out of the ward, Cameron had squeezed her hand. “Don’t worry. I can see you’re stressing. Don’t worry. It will be fine. The baby will be fine. We will be fine.” He kissed her on her temple. “We’ll just take this as it comes. I’ll be here.”

This is madness, Aleshia’s thoughts had responded, betraying the turmoil within. Instead, she smiled, and nodded, and said she knew.

When he went to work later in the day, Aleshia sat at home, her untouched editing project glaring in front of her. She was drinking her way through a pot of coffee, and didn’t plan on sharing the news with her sister. All the while, the negative thoughts swirled in a taunting cacophony. Where had they come from? Why did they soar so strongly, when this should be a time of new love and happiness? More poem fragments formed in her mind, but none of them showed even the tiniest hint of positivity.

Her words reflected her doubts.

Starting on her third cup of coffee, her phone vibrated with another waspish text from Peter. Her doubts boiled up into fury as she read it.

Why won’t you answer me? Don’t you love me as much as I love you?

“Bas*ard,” she spat, copying her sister’s attitude. “Bas*ard. Fu*king… bas*ard.” She jabbed at her phone, fingers clumsy. The menu opened by his name. She scrolled down, finding the delete option. Without the slightest hesitation, though her heart pounded in terrified fury as she did so, she deleted the number. Then she deleted the entire thread, erasing a year of history under shaking hands.

On the warpath, she went for her laptop, and erased Peter out of her life from every platform she connected with him on, with the ferocity of a scorned woman. Skype, Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, emails. She deleted every email for good measure, blocked him from ever being able to see her Facebook again, and changed her password, just in case he might have an idea of what it was.

No stone was left unturned in her crusade. After the last wisp of Peter had vanished from her Gmail forever, she stared at her screen, feeling utterly devoid of emotion. Every asset of her was frozen.

There, a voice whispered. He’s gone. You should be happy, now. She gritted her teeth. Liar, she thought back. Liar.

There was no happiness to be found in her actions. Just an overwhelming sense of despair, that perhaps what she did was wrong, completely, utterly wrong. She had caved into the voice of her sister, to the doubts inside.

Blinking her way back into action, swallowing more of the coffee inside, she looked at Cameron’s Facebook, examining his pictures. What a wonderful smile. She caught hints of that sadness in some of the pictures.

She stared at her phone, again. Somehow, deleting all memory of her son’s biological father made her feel defiled. Dirty. Thinking about roping Cameron into the new ride also created slivers of guilt, along with the very real, tangible notion – what if Cameron changed, just like Peter? He might be all sweetness, promises and smiles right now. But so was Peter.

Peter came to her as the perfect gentleman, charming his way into her life. Darkness only began popping up later into their relationship, finally making itself known when she proved positive from the pregnancy test.

Cameron, too, provided the ideal image of a gentleman, and charmed her with a smoldering gaze, a curve of his lips. He made her believe that the impossible could happen. Surely, she wondered, Cameron was hiding something different under the surface. No one could be that kind, that determined.

No one loved you like I did, Peter’s voice ghosted in her mind.

Somehow, she managed to wade her way to the end of the editing project, and sent it off to her client so the funds could be released into her account. She hated the wretched, miserable feeling of considering the events of her life, reflecting back through all her failed relationships, and the inevitable break-down between her and Peter. Nothing in her life suggested the pattern would change. Not even with Cameron Lovell.

The moments they shared – it had been a beautiful, crazy dream. But she couldn’t keep dragging him along like this. She didn’t want to reach the point where Cameron’s love diminished as his true self became prominent, perhaps at the birth of her son. It was one thing to say you would stick with someone and see things through. It was another to see the responsibility staring at you in the face, giving flesh and solidity to insubstantial words. The more Aleshia contemplated it, the more she convinced herself that whatever happened, she needed to cut Cameron out of her life. She couldn’t string him along, couldn’t delude herself, and didn’t want to risk the little stability she had finally obtained.

Fueled with this conviction, she phoned up her sister to convey her new plans in life. “Hey, Vaneese.”

Vaneese sounded harassed as she responded. A squeal of indignation piped up in the background – likely from Amy. “Hey, Aleshia. Can you phone me back in a sec? I just have a mess to clean up from my brat.”

“I erased Peter’s number,” Aleshia said without preamble. She wanted to say it before Vaneese hung up, in case her bravado faded the moment the call ended.

There was a pause. “I’m keeping the line on. One second.” Footsteps receded. “Amy! No. What have I told you about doing that?”

A hysteric wailing filled Vaneese’s end of the phone, even as Vaneese said briskly, “I told you. You do this, you pay the consequence. Don’t think for a second you’re wriggling out of it! Cry and scream as much as you want, but you must learn – it’s not okay to do things like this!”