Page 52 of Tears of Gold

With my stomach heavy with a wild sea of unmentionable emotions, I walk down the stairs. I don’t want to go to class. I don’t want to do anything apart from go back to bed and pretend that nothing is happening.

* * *

It’s late when I get home, gone ten. I’ve spent my time in the library and then in one of the practical studios on campus. Just staring. Just thinking.

“I was starting to worry.” Eli places his glass of amber liquid down on the kitchen table. He’s changed; a grey t-shirt clings to his slender but firm muscles, a pair of faded tracksuit pants hang low on his hips. “I thought maybe you were avoiding me.” He smiles but it’s tight around the edges; too brittle, like the glass I was making earlier that wouldn’t do a damn thing I wanted.

“Sorry, I was in one of the studios. I turned my phone off.” I don’t add that I turned it off because Abi was sending me every baby-themed emoji known to mankind as well as links to Babycentre UK and all sorts of things I didn’t want to keep looking at. Oh, and she said that from now on she would like to be known as Aunty Abs.

She can kiss my arse.

He steps closer, his warmth wrapping around me and enveloping me as the scent of his soap and aftershave mingling with whisky fills my senses. Unable to control myself, I crash against his chest, my tears springing free and soaking the soft fabric of his shirt.

“Sunshine, don’t cry.”

“Don’t you want to cry?” I wipe at my snot.

He lifts my chin with gentle fingers, his thumbs wiping at the tears across my cheeks. “Do you want the truth?”

“No. I want you to lie and tell me whatever makes me feel better.”

“My thoughts have been full of you all day. They’ve consumed me. The idea you have something of mine inside of you.”

“I frequently have your penis inside me—that’s half the problem.”

He snorts and pulls me close. “It’s amazing, Faith. I know you’re scared. I’m bloody petrified, but I can’t help being excited. You astound me every day, and now there is going to be a child who has all the best parts of you inside them.”

“What if it’s the bad parts of me?”

“Well then, we will hope my genes win out.”

“Have you eaten?” I pull out of his embrace.

“Faith, you haven’t told me what you are thinking?”

I hesitate, because how can I tell him the truth about anything? “That I’m scared shitless, and for me that’s something really big.”

Those blues could break my heart as he studies me closely. “Is it the baby, or is it us? Because anything me and you sounds good to me.”

I swallow hard. Is there an answer I can give to that which isn’t hurtful or destructive? So I don’t say anything. Instead, I smile and look in a tin that’s been left on the kitchen table hoping it’s full of ginger biscuits. Praise the Lord, something is right. I grab a few and then perch on the table while Eli pours himself another very stiff drink. “Want one?” he asks.

Yes. Hell, bloody yes.

“No, thanks.”

And I know it’s stupid because the baby that’s settled itself accidentally in my tummy is the size of, well I don’t actually know, but I’m guessing it’s fricking small, and I don’t even know how I feel about it, or anything yet, but my answer is still no.

His lips curve into a small smile.

“So, tell me about court,” I say and wait for him to fill my head with anything that isn’t baby thoughts.

Thirteen

He’s gone again when I wake. He slept with his hand on my tummy while I lay awake, worrying.

I stare at my phone looking at all the bloody links Abi sent me. Not that I’ve clicked on any of them.

But then maybe if I did, I’d know what was happening in there. Maybe connect to it a little bit. So I do.