His Change of Heart: Unexpected Pregnancy Romance Page 8

  And, she didn’t think spending time alone, moping in her apartment or in a hotel room all day long was the best thing for her right now. She needed to be around people—she also needed to keep herself busy. She wished that someone had told her, warned her even, that getting over someone you loved was going to be this painful and exhausting.

  She probably would have stayed away from relationships all together. But, from her experience, you didn’t choose the people you fall in love with, even if you tried to. You just loved that person. So, yes, mending her broken heart was excruciating.

  There were times when she heard a song they used to listen to, make love to, and she would choke up with emotions. And there were the occasional times when she would walk or drive by places they had been together, and she would burst into tears. And there were the times when she would reach for Will during the night, only to find that he wasn’t there.

  When that happened, she would sit up suddenly in bed, switch on the lamp and stare longingly at the empty space on the other side of the bed, remembering the times she had watched Will sleep there, his head planted firmly on the pillow, an unconscious smile on his face, his hand flung across the bed touching her body.

  Then she would reach for the pillow and hugged it tightly to her chest, burying her face into its softness, breathing in the lingering scent of Will. For reasons she couldn’t quite explain, she still hadn’t gotten around to tossing the pillowcases into the wash because she liked the light whiff that still remained of him. It was comforting in an odd sort of way.

  And she wasn’t eating. In a way, she was grateful that she wasn’t burying her sorrows in bowls and bowls of her favorite ice-cream and boxes of chocolate and pizza. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about struggling to lose the weight after. And she wasn’t sleeping. She was literally sleep deprived. She slept a couple hours at nights at most, getting up intermittently, sometimes on the hour, being unable to fall back to sleep. When that happened, she would either pace the floor with her bare feet, wandering restlessly and wide eyed through the apartment, going from room to room. Other times she would go online and browse for deals.

  And on the nights when she was up and couldn’t sleep, she would climb out of bed and go stand in the doorway of the extra room she used as an office and looked longingly across the room, hoping to find Will sitting there, at the large mahogany desk, his head bent over the stacks of papers and documents for cases he was working on.

  In the last weeks, she had bought clothing, including a twelve hundred dollars Moncler designer jacket, underwear, shoes and bags she knew she didn’t want or need. The unopened boxes that had arrived for her were still sitting in a far corner of her office, stack on each other. By her calculation, she had completed her Christmas shopping—she had bought gifts for everyone on her list.

  Other times she would just stay in bed and watched old romantic movies on Netflix until the early hours of the morning, and cried her eyes out. And on the rare occasions when she felt like talking to someone, she would call Kat, Julia or Sara, the friends she was closest to, and who knew about the break up, and talked until the wee hours of the morning.

  Last week she had lashed out at Will to Kat about a photo she had seen of him online with a young woman who looked like a model. Will had his hand wrapped cosily around the woman’s waist and there was a huge grin on his face. And according to the accompanying caption, they were attending an auction at the Chicago Arts Museum.

  She had cried in frustration and said that she couldn’t believe Will had moved on with someone else, not even quite three months after they had broken up. Kat had listened, adding the occasional sympathetic words to make her feel better, and criticizing Will for being insensitive.

  She didn’t know why she had reacted so strongly to seeing Will with another woman. She knew eventually he would start dating again, but she just didn’t expect it to be this soon. She was hoping that he would have at least waited, gave her time to get over what she was feeling for him. But he clearly wasn’t thinking about her in that way.

  He looked like he didn’t have a care in the world, while she was here struggling to get over him. He probably didn’t think she would see the photo. God, how could he be that heartless!

  She wondered how long he had known the woman. Did she follow him to Chicago, or did he meet her there? Did they work together? She didn’t look like a lawyer. She looked more like arm-candy, someone men took to parties to show off and have a good time with.

  She was making herself crazy thinking about Will and this woman. They weren’t together anymore. He could date whoever he wanted. And from what she had seen, he was already doing that. She wasn’t that naïve to think that he was going to remain single for long.

  Eventually, Avery realized that she was spending way too much time venting about Will and crying her eyes out over him. Her friends were super supportive, but she also felt that they deserved better. And she hadn’t exactly been much of a friend to any of them lately. In fact, she felt all she did was cried and complained about Will to them. And they had listened to her without complaining or avoiding her. She hardly knew what was going on with them anymore, because the last couple months had been all about her and the break up.

  She was extremely grateful that the girls had been there for her. They had been exceptionally supportive—holding her hand every single step of the way. But now she thought that they needed a much deserved break. And looking back at the way her girlfriends had rallied around her, Avery felt that cutting them some slack was the most she could do. She decided to find other ways to cope with what she was going through without having to call her friends all the time. And staying true to her words, she went out the next day and signed up for swimming and Zumba classes at a wellness centre in Manhattan she had found during one of her online searches. And one evening on her way home from work, she stopped in at a hobby shop and bought six yards of wool in three different colors, and a variety of knitting needles.

  She had read somewhere that taking up a hobby, especially knitting helped relieve stress. And at this point she was willing to try anything, including self help books to help her get through this.

  And she began knitting, using tutorials she found on YouTube, and from the craft books she had checked out at the library.

  Her first experiment was a multicolored scarf. And much to her surprise, she found she enjoyed knitting. It was way easier than she thought. And contrary to popular belief, knitting wasn’t only for old and retired ladies, as some people seemed to think. She got the hang of it within days, and spent hours on end in the evenings after work, and on weekends when she didn’t go out, mastering the craft. She completed the scarf in a matter of days, and was already trying her hand at a wool hat for herself.

  She also offered extra conferences and after school tutoring for students who were struggling in her classes, which kept her busy for a couple hours after work. And she accepted invitations to plays and functions from friends and acquaintances which she normally would have declined.

  She also volunteered at a food bank and community kitchen on 51st Street. And in the process, she found that she was thinking less and less about Will, and more and more about getting back to her old self before the break up. And she was slowly, but surely getting to the point where Will was beginning to feel like someone in her past—a wonderful and sad part of her past. And although she wasn’t entirely over him, she knew she was getting there.

  And there were actual days where she didn’t cry as much, or got overly emotional just thinking about him. And it didn’t take her long to realize that keeping herself extremely busy and surrounded by positive and caring people were helping her in more ways than she could imagine. More importantly, she was beginning to feel like herself again. She was beginning to heal. She was on her way to forgetting about Will once and for all. She was finally on the mend.

  Ten

  Weeks after the break up, Avery discovered that she had completely lost her appetite.
Her favorite foods didn’t appeal to her anymore. And understandably, she blamed her lack of appetite and her very sensitive stomach on going through the motions of the break up.

  And whatever little food she did manage to eat, she had a hard time keeping it down. She had thought of going to the doctor, but other than the bouts of nausea she was experiencing now and then, she had no other health issues, and she was feeling fine otherwise. She had always been healthy, so she dismissed the entire thing to her body reacting negatively to stress. She still wasn’t sleeping well.

  By her calculation, she had lost close to ten pounds off her already slim frame, which resulted in awkward, suspicious stares from some of the teachers at work, and concerned questions about her health from her friends. She told the women at Ellington that she had started a new work out routine to prepare for the college’s upcoming charity run, when they had made unflattering remarks about her being anorexic. It seemed like the best possible excuse she could come up with to satisfy their ongoing curiosity.

  She had said nothing to them about her not seeing Will anymore, because she could see them getting together and gossiping about her if they knew the truth. She didn’t think she could stand the, I-told-you-so, disparaging comments and nasty stares. When the women had found out, through no fault of hers, that she was going out with Will, they had been unreasonably mean to her. And they had wasted no time ridiculing her.

  Will had insisted on driving her to work one morning right after they had started seeing each other, and she had ran into two of the teachers in the parking lot. She hadn’t wanted them to find out. And quite frankly, if she had anything to do with it, they wouldn’t have known about her relationship with Will. But, call it bad luck, or wrong timing on her part, the women had seen her coming out of Will’s red Ferrari, and Will pulling her in for a full on goodbye kiss on the lips.

  That ride and the way Will had kissed her had inevitably sealed her fate with the women. They had stared at her in wild astonishment—actually, with gaping mouths, as she exited the car. She remembered Will had given them a wide, friendly grin and waved at them.

  They had just stared at him, without smiling or waving back. He obviously had a sense of humor, Avery had thought as she took in the entire situation, including the look of utter disbelief and then anger on the women’s faces. He had no idea what they were capable of—what they would do with that piece of juicy information the minute they stepped inside, but she did.

  She had held her head down to hide her embarrassment as she made her way inside the building behind them. She was hoping that the women wouldn’t find out about her relationship with Will, especially after she had given them the specific impression that she hardly knew him, and didn’t have an interest in him.

  The word about her dating Will had spread in no time—as soon as she entered the teachers’ lounge for her morning coffee. The teachers who had seen her in the parking lot with Will, plus the ones they had told, had given her the silent treatment for the rest of that day—whispering amongst themselves when they saw her coming, glancing suspiciously at her, giving her nasty looks when she was around them, ignoring her when she tried to talk to them.

  Avery had decided that they were acting like a bunch of mean high school girls, and she had tried to avoid them. And if looks could kill, Avery sworn she would have died many times that day from the angry piercing stares they had given her. She had tried to ignore their nastiness, telling herself it would pass. But it didn’t.

  The women had confronted her the next day at lunch—they had been extremely vocal with her. They had held nothing back. They had been downright vicious, to say the least. First they wanted to know how it happened—how she had ended up going out with Will—what was her appeal—why he had chosen her and not one of the other teachers who had showed interest in him.

  Avery had buried her face in her garden salad and shoved fork-fulls of it into her mouth, without replying to their rude and intrusive questions. She didn’t think their actions justified one.

  Then, they had crushed her with one final blow. They told her men like Will didn’t get serious with women like her, that Will was with her for one reason and one reason only—because she was an easy target who wouldn’t challenge him or think twice about getting into bed with him.

  And he was probably into bi-racial girls. They told her Will would never commit to someone as naïve as her, not by a long shot—she was just a casual fling he would soon be tire of and wouldn’t think twice about dumping when he has had enough of her.

  She had been completely embarrassed by their offensive and officious comments, especially when she realized they were trying to tell her in no uncertain terms that Will had chosen her only because he thought he had a good chance of sleeping with her. She was just another one of his conquests—another notch on his bedpost.

  Then, to add insult to injury, they had the audacity to mention some of the women Will had been rumored to date in the past—actresses, models, a senator, a lawyer, women with as much family connection and money as him. Then they had finally ended their malicious assault by telling her she would be history in a month or two, five to six months at most, because Will would have found the next woman to move on with by then.

  Avery had been appalled at the way the women had attacked her. She had avoided looking at them or replying to them the whole time. She had worked with these women for two years and she had no idea how very little they thought of her.

  She may not be from an influential family or had a sizable bank account, but there were other qualities about her that she was proud of—she was honest, kind, hardworking, intelligent, and most importantly she didn’t have a mean streak in her, like those women did. She knew Will had chosen her because of the person she was, not because of anything else. She also knew she wasn’t just an easy hook up to him—she refused to believe that.

  She really didn’t think the women were capable of such animosity, especially when she had been nothing but friendly and helpful to them. She has always gotten along fine with all of them—she liked and respected them. They were all older then her, either by years or a couple decades. She was talking about women in their thirties, forties and mid-fifties. She had even filled in for some of them on the days she didn’t have any classes of her own. She had no idea where all this hatred was coming from.

  She had put on a brave face, told the women to have a nice lunch, and left the room. She had headed straight to the ladies’ room, locked herself in a stall and cried her eyes out, not because she believed any of the awful things they had said to her, but because she didn’t deserve the awful way they had treated her, especially since she had done absolutely nothing to them.

  She also wanted to believe that there wasn’t any truth to what they had said to her. She knew she meant more to Will than a casual fling. She wasn’t just another woman he took to bed. They shared more than that. He cared for her, in more ways than one. For the times they had been together, Will had never treated her badly.

  He had doted on her at times. He had even nursed her back to health a couple times she had been home sick with the flu. He had cancelled his appointments for the day, drove to her place with chicken soup and orange juice and took care of her. He had even given her a hot bath and washed her hair when she was too weak to do it herself.

  After, Avery told herself that the women were acting out of pure spite and jealousy. They were fuming because Will had chosen to go out with her instead of one of them, especially after they had thrown themselves at him. They were lashing out at her for that very reason. In the end, she decided she would keep details of her relationship with Will to herself. She wasn’t going to discuss any parts of it with them.

  And she didn’t have to worry about any of them finding out that Will had broken up with her. Because, except for the occasional drink she had with them after work, and the once a month lunches at a nearby restaurant, she hardly ever socialized with any of them outside of work. And luckily, she didn’t hav
e mutual friends with any of them. They didn’t move in the same circle. So, she was comfortable that her secret was safe, at least for now.

  And after the nasty run in she had with the women, Avery realized how fortunate she was to have friends like the ones she had. Thankfully, none of them possessed the kind of malice and nastiness she had experienced with the teachers she worked with. They were supportive, respectful and kind. They were doing everything to make certain she was okay.

  On Saturday evening Avery met up with Kat for dinner at Le Flaive. She had jumped at the chance to get out of the house when Kat had called and asked if she was up for an evening out with her. They were grabbing a show at the theatre after. Kat had been wonderful through everything, and although Avery knew she had her unwavering support, Kat had also found a way to remained neutral through everything.

  There were times when Kat sided with her and hit out at Will when she thought he deserved it, and there were other times when Kat would chide her gently when she felt she was being overly unreasonable. Like the time when she had gathered up all the gifts Will had given to her, including several pieces of expensive jewelry and a diamond crusted Cartier watch.

  She was thinking of giving them away to charity, not even selling them on eBay for the money. But Kat had talked her out of it. Kat told her those things were a reminder of the happy times she had with Will, and getting rid of them wouldn’t make the break up any easier on her or make her feel any better—if anything, she might end up feeling worst when she realized what she had done.