My stomach churns as I try to formulate my response. “When I was sixteen, I wanted to marry you. I remember telling my mother that I was going to be Mrs. Zachary Hennington.” I smile. “I was so in love with you that I didn’t even care what that meant. I knew with you being a few years older it meant that it would be hard when you graduated before me, but my faith in us was impenetrable.” I was so young. “I thought if we loved each other hard enough, the rest would work out.”
“Do you have a clue what it was like for me to leave you, Presley?” Zach asks, leaning forward. “I was eighteen and going off to college where the rest of my team was screwing the cleat chasers while I was counting down the days till I could see you again.”
I rest my hand on his. “I know that. At least I thought I did. When you were gone and I had to be here alone, I was so depressed. Grace would come over and drag me out. I missed my prom because you had a game that week. I had nothing, Zach. I was nothing.”
I stand and pace his living room. It was so long ago, but it feels like yesterday. “When I was finally coming to Maine, all I could think about was how we’d have two years together again. I would have my other half. You proposed to me on my graduation day, and I thought this was really it. I knew your dream was to play ball. I think I kept telling myself that it would happen when we were done with school. I wouldn’t have to go through all of it by myself. Then you took that deal without even a hesitation. You didn’t even talk to me about it first.”
“If you think that it was easy to leave you.” He walks toward me. “You’re wrong.”
“I don’t think that.” I shake my head.
He runs his hand down his face. “Do you know how many times I replayed that moment? I did hesitate, Pres. I wanted to talk to you, but the manager told me if I walked away, I wouldn’t get that deal again. I wasn’t sure what to do.”
“I recognize that now. It took me a long time, but I do get it. I want to explain about the baby.” I draw a deep breath and expel it.
He closes his eyes and sits back on the couch. Once I’m seated, I dig deep and feel it all, just like seventeen years ago.
“You had left, and I was beyond depressed. I thought you’d stay. I really believed that you would’ve gotten off that bus, taken me in your arms, and we’d be together. I was crazy, but I loved you so much.” In my eyes we’re back to being kids. I can see the movie play out in my head. “I started getting really sick, but I chalked it up to you being gone. I could barely eat, and I was a mess.” I huff and roll my eyes. “I was so dumb. I mean, really—dumb. Angie finally forced me to the doctor, and I found out I was twelve weeks pregnant. I was already so far along. I hadn’t been eating, taking vitamins, anything. I think I cried worse that day than when you left.”
“Why didn’t you call me?” he asks.
The million-dollar question. “I wish I could give you a better answer than this,” I admit. I really regret this the most. “I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want you to have any part of my life. In my mind, you left me by choice, therefore you didn’t get a choice in my life.”
“Wow.” He sits back.
“I know,” I say quickly and move closer. “I know how bad that sounds, but I don’t want to lie to you anymore. I know how wrong I was. It was the worst thing I could’ve done. After two weeks though, it changed.”
He looks up. “I don’t understand.”
I was fourteen weeks pregnant, I remember that I felt this bubbly feeling. Todd was visiting, and I started screaming. He and I had spent the day watching television and eating whatever I could stuff in my face. Todd was next to me when I felt the first flutter, but I wanted it to be Zach. I can remember looking at him with tears in my eyes because they weren’t the blue eyes I wanted staring back.
“I knew I needed to tell you. I was building up my courage to call you. Todd had been pressing me to let you know. Things between him and me were platonic, but I could see he had feelings for me. He was adamant that you should know.”
For all of Todd’s mistakes and the pain he’s caused me and the boys, he was never cruel toward Zach. I never understood it, but it was what I think drew me to him in the beginning. The fact that he was fair. It also could’ve been that he thought I was irrational.
“Presley.” he lets out a shaky breath. “I can almost understand the shit we did when we were young. But we’ve been growing closer, making plans lately, and yet you didn’t mention it.”
“I was afraid. I had to go through it, not you. It was agony living through it once, bringing it up again is the last thing I wanted to do.”
Zach looks at me with a mixture of understanding and anger. It’s unfair to him, but losing that baby was horrible for me.
“What would you have named him?” Zach inquires.
I don’t know why that matters. “Why?”
“Do you even remember the conversations we had?”
I lean back a little, trying to recall what conversation he’s talking about. We had so many about what our life would be like. I smile, despite myself, thinking about the way we’d have name wars. The way he’d get so frustrated at some of my outlandish names. It was always entertaining. “Sadie and Colton,” I say as it hits me.
He looks at me without a word.