My Beautiful Mistake.

The next day, when for a change I was alone at home, in the peaceful quietness of the walls I felt my tears flow down uninhibited. The reaction of thought of the growing kid and my unsolvable confusion was catalysed by my frequent mood swings, and I nearly broke down. My future stared back at me in the form of an indestructible question mark.

"Hello?" I whispered "Is this Sasha? Sasha Evans?"

"Yes... who's speaking?"

I tried to sound calmer, taking deep breaths to do so. "I'm Julia, Julia Clearwater, I... ran into you in the medical store few weeks ago."

There was a pause. "Ah, yes. Julia. Are you crying? Is something gone wrong?"

"I dunno... can we talk? Maybe face to face?" I checked.

"Yeah sure, can you come by, maybe now?" she asked. When I told her I could, she gave me her address.

I drove till her apartment. Sasha was standing outside, with a coffee mug in her hands, waiting in the porch, sipping her cup every now and then. She had a beautiful, tanned skin and dark eyes and dark hair, a slight Spanish accent. She smiled warmly when she saw me.

"Julia... how are you?" she asked, holding my hand as I got out of the car, "are you.. I mean the test.. did it turn positive?"

"Yeah," I told her, "it did."

"And?"

"I decided to keep the baby."

She nodded, still smiling. "And then give it up for adoption?"

"No," I gasped, "I'm keeping it.. I mean I'm going to raise the child."

She raised her eyebrows.. appreciatively, then beckoned me to her garden. The stony, muddy path led downwards, to the back side of the house, across the white fence, where we settled down finally on the weathered old bench.

"I'm not going to ask you if your sure," she said, "because I can see you are. I'm going to ask you however, what role does the father have so far?"

"He doesn't know," I told her, "I decided it was better if I didn't say anything to him. I don't want to burden him with the knowledge. I thought maybe I could fly down to Florida where my mum lives with my brother in some months, complete my university there. But lately.. I'm confused."

I thought she would, like some agony aunt, immediately give me the solution to the muddle, answer my thousand questions. Am I doing the right thing for the kid? Should I move? Do I need my mother? Does Jake really need to know?

But instead, she asked me about every other thing. My favourite movies, the songs I liked, the books I read, what was my equation with the people near and dear to me, with Jake especially. She didn't talk to me like an adult would to a teen, instructing and annoyed. She talked to me like Mary would, or perhaps just a more experienced Mary.

She told me - leading me into her house in an hour where every square inch of the walls was decorated with photos of her two sons - of her own life. She told me about how she herself had gotten pregnant when she was seventeen. How her boyfriend dumped her when he found out, how her own father turned against her and kicked her out of the house, how her mother was too helpless to comfort her own daughter in the time of need, how her friends turned cold, and then finally when she was blessed with a son how difficult it was for her to raise him on her own. It was then that she moved from a small England suburb to London, to try out her luck. When she got older, she fell in love again, and married and had another child. And of how even today her father hasn't forgiven her, how she hasn't even seen her mother's face in fifteen long years.

"She wont even talk to me on phone from fear that my father would catch her," she said, "And though I resent it, I cant say I blame her so much. But you know what I decided? If I ever have a daughter, and she goes through what I did, I'd give her my full support, that I'd be anything but my mother. When I was around twenty I realised how much I had fallen in love with children, and I decided to dedicate my life to them."

"Woah," I said, "that's... inspiring."

"Well I didn't tell you all that so that it sounded like a bedtime story," she said, as I nibbled on the nachos she had given me to eat, "I wanted to show how bad the situation could have been Julia. You have all the warmth and love and support I never had, and if I managed to get through without feeling that I was a burden to anyone - and believe me, I think to that horrid old woman who rent out her flat to me I think I really was - and come through the whole thing without any insecurities I see no reason why you of all people cant. You have everything, Julia, then why are you scared? Scared to show what you are and what your made of? This child is going to be proud of a mother like you, such a brave mother, you have to realise that other people are too. You are not a burden to anyone, including that ex boyfriend of yours. From what you say, he sounds like one of the most decent, caring boyfriends I've heard of."

"Your saying its better I just come clean and tell him?"

"Well, not exactly. You just be who you are you know. You have no reason to feel scared of anything, least of all his reaction or that of others when they see you pregnant. Its part of who you are, why hide from it?"

It was with those words ringing in my mind like a sonorous bell that I left her at around seven in The evening. I called Jake once, twice and thrice. He didn't pick up. That stung me badly. But my mind was clearer than it had been in ages, I needed to get this out while it still remained like that. So I then sent a text to his cell telling him where I was, and that I was reaching in five minutes to the garden we usually used to sit in, and that I needed to talk to him. And that was it for my cell battery.

I needed to stay as away from people as possible at the moment, so though it was dark, I took the route which was generally more empty and secluded at the time.However as luck would have it, the gas in my rusted old Ford reached the 0 level while I was still halfway, and the car came to a bumpy stop.

I wanted to reach the park so badly, I decided to walk there though I felt exhausted for some reason. Not long after, I heard footsteps behind me, not longer after that. Men, at least five of them, sounding drunk by their raucous shouts and harsh laughter.

"Hey, honey," one of them called, "would you like to join us beautiful?"

I didn't look behind, just hastened my steps.

"C'mon honey," another shouted, "we have all night long."

I gulped. The road I wanted to take was under repair, and so a temporary wall was constructed to prevent people falling into it. I had hit a dead end.

I turned back. There was no other exit, and the men were closing in. And I had no way of contacting anybody at the moment.

Uh-oh. This was definitely not a situation I wanted to get into.