Start To Begin Again

Piece Twenty-One

Leana took me in while Jimmy marched across the street. He guided me into Leana and rushed across the street before saying anything. My disheveled hair and tear pricked eyes probably gave him the wrong idea. Right now though I was trying to process what just happened with Zacky and all I wanted to do was sit with Leana till it felt better. I just wanted to sit with the only person I considered a best friend.

She roughly thumbed a fresh tear from my eye and gave me a look that told me that crying right now wasn’t the right thing. So I pulled back my tears and let her sit me in her living room. She flattened my hair and shook her head.

“I think we broke up,” I said finally speaking and wiping my face harshly.

“Why?”

“Because I’m cold and barren and hate kids,” I said running my fingers through my hair and flattening it some more.

“What back up and tell me exactly what happened.” So I took a breath and found my old self and told the story as if I just read it. I tried to distance myself as much as I could but my heart hurt with every word I said and eventually it felt like my heart just sank down into my stomach. My heart ache turned into stomach ache plus plus plus.

Leana listened and occasionally said something but for the most part it was only my voice in the quiet house. I forgot if Jimmy and she had any pets. I almost stopped to ask but instead I finished my story and looked at blank TV screen. I gave her time to think over what I had just told her.

“You know, you’re not the first woman to not want kids,” I nodded, “So your mom? She wasn’t really…on top of things,” she softened it. I had told her about my mother and why she sometimes seemed off during the visit.

I nodded my head and looked at her.

“And you’re scared if it’s because of the whole brain thing or because of the fact that she lacked a maternal gene?”

“More or less. I love her but we both know it was my father who was both my mother and Da. That’s just how it was and Zacky shouldn’t have to do that. I mean he’s already a rock start for god sakes. I mean what if as soon as he goes on tour or something and I’m left alone with the kid and….” I didn’t finish my thought because I didn’t want to think of the outcomes. I ran my fingers through my hair again.

“That’s why you don’t want to have kids?” I nodded, “Hon, that doesn’t make you cold and barren. That makes you smart enough to know that, that can happen plus its human nature to be scared. I think you and I are lot closer then you think,” She said grabbing my hand.

I immediately thought of Zacky reaching over and rubbing my hand with his thumb. I thought of all those times we used to make up over arguments and now I was starting to think there was no way to make up this argument. He wanted kids and I didn’t.

I rubbed my stomach and touched my head to get rid of the head ache. It had been almost a week now that I had been staying at Leana’s. I was too nervous to go back and Zacky never made a move.

Leana instead ran over there the next night and grabbed a couple of my things to make sure I was comfortable. She seemed to have experience with this situation and I wondered who else she had known that had fallen in the same way and needed help to get back up.

Jimmy came back to the house with a torn shirt and I almost asked what had happened but he didn’t seem bugged by the shirt. Instead he looked relived when he came back hours later.

I pulled my hair back and wiped my yellowing face. Heart ache was followed by indigestion. Which was just followed by more heartache soon enough.

My father had called my cell phone a day and half ago. The rest of the heartache wasn’t due to Zacky but due to my mother.

She had passed away in her sleep the night before. She died of an aneurysm. She went quietly and peacefully. I wanted to run to Zacky but I stopped short of the door and just cried in Val’s arms. She had come over to help me figure it out with Zacky. Now though it seemed Zacky was going to be on hold.

I was going to fly back to Montana in the morning. My father had also told me that he was going to leave me the house but that Montana wasn’t home without his wife. He was going back to Wales to live with his father till he set up a client list there in the U.K.

My life seemed shattered. My mother was gone, my father was leaving to live across the ocean and the man I loved…was…currently…just an unknown something.

“Linette,” I looked from the mirror where I had been staring aimlessly and looked at Jimmy who looked more awkward then usual, “Are you leaving ummm tonight or tomorrow?” Something in the way he said told me he wasn’t asking for himself.

“Tomorrow,” I said meeting his gaze, “But I’ll tell Zacky myself,” I said frowning.

My sadness subsided for a moment. All this time he had Jimmy watching me. All this time I was here with a broken heart and he was just sitting over there probably texting Jimmy questions he wasn’t man enough to ask.

Then it made sense. All those questions. The conversations the guys would strike up when they came over. They were all spying on me. My frown turned into a thin line.

Jimmy saw the look of realization and looked like a kid who got caught cutting his sister’s pigtails…which considering Jimmy I’m sure both of his sisters were both bald at a point.

“I swear it wasn’t like we were trying to make it like…look Zacky…he misses you but he thinks that…I don’t know what he thinks but he’s just as confused as you are and I think if you leave for Montana and don’t talk to him before you do. You and I know, you probably won’t come back,” He paused, “So brush your teeth and wash your face and talk it over like adults. You’re both young but I know you can manage it,” He said nodding. He seemed pretty proud of himself for sounding like the voice of reason.

I left the bathroom without doing what he told me. Zacky wouldn’t care if I looked like I was just heaving over the sink. I had kissed him plenty of times after he came home drunk. He could put up with it like I had.

I ran out of the house and left Leana smirking in the living room. I walked to Zacky’s door probably the most quickly I ever had.

I opened the door and slid into the house without making a sound. I walked into the living room and saw Zacky watching the Red Sox on TV. He didn’t seem too interested in the game though.

I walked over to the couch and looked down at him till he noticed another person was in the room. He looked at me for a second before I kissed him hard and straddled his lap.

“I’ve missed you so much,” He said pulling my tank over my head.

“I was just across the street,” I said kissing him softly.

“I know, forgive me?” I nodded, “Good then let me show you how much I missed you,”

And he did.

I woke up before the sun did and curled against Zacky on the couch. I traced his tattoos. Something I hadn’t done in a while not since I woke up in the motel and saw the body art.

“Do you want me to go with you?” He asked in my ear

“I think it would be smarter if you didn’t. It’ll probably just be family and most of them are lot more conservative then my father. No doubt they’ll probably jump down my throat for wearing a ring while living with a man who’s not gay.”

“I’d pretend for you,” His breath tickled the back of my neck, “I understand just come back?”

“I will,” I nodded. That was the last thing I said about that till he saw me off on the plane. I kissed his cheek and waved at him from the gate. He had bought a ticket just to see me off from that point.

I texted him before finally shutting off my phone before the plane took off and remembered to order a ginger ale. It didn’t help to settle my stomach. All the stress of breaking up and getting back together, my mother and my father and family coming in from all over to give me their condolences. It was building up via stomach acid.

As soon as we were flying steadily I walked to the bathroom and locked the door and made sure it was locked. I threw up in the blue liquid that filled that toilet till it stopped. I grabbed the handicap railing and sat on the floor while turbulence hit the plane.

“I hate turbulence. Worse even vomiting while it’s turbulent,” I said to myself smiling. My smile dropped when I counted back a couple of weeks and few thoughts. I froze.

“The only thing worse then turbulence is morning sickness…” I said to myself softly as a stewardess knocked on the door.