Page 87 of One Kiss Isn't Enough
“My father’s last name, but he didn’t stick around after I was born.”
“My father’s last name as well,” I tell her and feel a chill sweep over my skin.
“You’re a couple years younger than me, right?” she questions me and I nod. Daniel told me what he knew of Bethany.
“A little over a year younger.”
“What’s your father’s first name?” I ask her as my gaze sweeps over her facial features. She doesn’t look like me, nothing but her lips. My father’s lips.
“Jeremy,” she answers, and I tell her the middle name, “Nathanial. Jeremy Nathanial Fawn.”
“This is weird.” Bethany pushes out the same thought I have.
“I think your dad left your mom because my mom was pregnant with me.” The years make sense. “That’s why you didn’t grow up with him.” Not that I grew up with him either. He left my mother and my mother left me.
“So he knocked up my mom and had my sister. Married her and they had me. Then he left us when I was a baby, because your mother was pregnant with you?” Bethany fills in the blanks.
“He got around, as if I needed another reason to hate the thought of him.”
“My mother had substance abuse issues; I always thought that was why he left us,” Bethany muses. “He was good at leaving,” she comments with a crease in her forehead, as though a bad memory is creating a groove right there. “That’s what my mother used to say.” She doesn’t try to hide the bitterness as she turns her back to me, leaving her seat so she can go to a cabinet to get herself a mug. I note that she already knows where they’re kept and where everything else in the room is too.
“If it makes you feel any better, he didn’t stay long and what I knew of my mother and the men she was with, it’s probably best you grew up without him.” With another sip of coffee, the room’s quiet except for the muffled hiss of the coffee machine. I don’t comment that I was a child when I knew them. Either of them.
“Yet we both received his last name,” Bethany says as she leans against the cabinet and then offers me a half smile curved with sarcasm before lifting her mug and telling me cheers. “Lucky us.”
“If we hadn’t, we never would have known.”
“We’re sisters. Same father, different mother.”
“Right.” I nod in understanding. Curiosity nags at the back of my mind, but I can’t bring myself to ask her any questions. That part of my life is long behind me. I wish it would stay in the past. I don’t want to think about my father or how many other children he had.
“Do you have any other siblings?” she asks me and I shake my head no as I reply, “All I had growing up was a rotating address until I met…” I pause and wave my hand in the air. My throat’s dry but I shake it off. I’m stronger because of what I went through. But that doesn’t mean I want to relive it with this woman. Biological sister or not. My curiosity can wait until I’m better prepared and in a more stable state. Everything is chaos now and it doesn’t look like she’s going anywhere anyway.
“The Cross brothers,” she answers for me. “So you knew them before all this? Back when things weren’t so…”
“Yeah, but I left. I left before a lot of things happened. I left when things got bad. What a wonderful mother I’ll be.” All of our past history hits me at once and the same thoughts I had before, the ones that tell me I don’t deserve Daniel, I don’t deserve a happily ever after, and I don’t deserve to be a mother come back. Weaker than before, they’re only whispers and not screams. Nonetheless, they’re back.
“Don’t say that. You were young and you didn’t know. You’ll be a great mother. I hardly know you, but I know that. We’ll be better than our parents.”
“How can you know?”
“One, because you’re already thinking about it. Already wanting more for your children. And two, because we’re loved. Love does… Love changes a person.
“The best thing you can do for a child is to love them. You can ask anyone that. It’s the thing they need most. If you love Daniel and he loves you, you’re already off to a better start than our parents.”
“God knows one thing these men do is love hard,” I comment, agreeing with her and hoping she’s right. “Even with all the shit they’re in.”
“They do,” she agrees with me, casually reaching in the fridge for creamer. As if this is only a mundane conversation and not the turning point in my life that I feel it is in my bones.
“So you’re going to try again?” she asks me.
I want to tell her I’m scared. Scared to try, scared to lose. Scared I won’t be good enough. But I save those sentiments for Daniel. If I tell anyone, it should be him.
So I answer simply, “Yes.” I want a baby with him. A life. I want to grow old with him and be surrounded by a loving family. To love and be loved. “We’re going to try again.”
DANIEL
“I just need to know.” A raw hint of emotion makes Carter’s voice tight. He clears his throat as he leans back in the chair. “I would understand; I just need to be prepared and we can work something out.” His voice is clearer, firmer, but he still can’t look me in the eyes.