Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 78011 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 390(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78011 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 390(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
I’ve been back in the States for two days, and the jet lag is still kicking my ass. I climb out of my childhood bed to go over to the window and look outside into the backyard. “Only your grandfather would go over the top like this.” I shake my head, whispering, “He has lost his mind.” I take in the workers on the lawn assembling what looks like a carnival.
“Grandpa!” Aiden yells, running out of my room and going to my parents’ bedroom. I hear his footsteps all the way down the hallway toward their “wing.” He’s so excited to be back home even though he’s never lived a day of his life in the States. Being here and being waited on and spoiled is something my kid could get used to.
I tie my hair in a bun and walk back over to the bed. Getting back in and covering myself, I let my head sink into the down pillow. I’ve been gone six years, and it somehow feels as if I’ve never left.
A booze cruise was supposed to be my weekend of fun, but little did I know I would be leaving with more than a hangover and a broken heart. Well, not broken because we both knew the score going in. We both knew that it was for four days. But with Luca, it was more; he wasn’t the drunk guy doing belly shots off women lying on the ground right in front of them. Luca was the one sitting in the chair beside me, putting sunscreen on me and then whispering dirty things in my ear.
When we bumped into each other the first day, everything just clicked in a non-cosmic way of sorts. Going on the cruise, I had a couple of rules, and one of them was first names only. I kind of lied to him just a touch by giving him my nickname Eli and not my real name Eliahn. Pronounced Eli-ann, my mother decided it would be unique. If only she knew the half it, I’ve never met anyone who could actually pronounce my name right the first time.
No numbers were traded, no Facebook friend requests were given, nothing, and we were okay with it. We both knew it was a four-day fling; it was what every other single student on the boat was doing.
It was a whirlwind until three weeks later when two lines showed up on the pregnancy test. It was a shock, to say the least. No matter how many times I said, “Oh God, oh God, oh God.” I paced my bedroom over and over again for hours, asking myself, “How can this be?”
We used protection every single time, and let me tell you, there were lots of times. Luckily for both of us, they sold condoms on the boat because the pack he brought, and the pack I brought weren’t enough.
Even though we knew it was a fling, we would open up to each other at night. I knew two things for sure about him; one, he was a law student, and the other was that he was an only child. Oh, and that his friends were nothing like him. And lucky for both of us, I had my own room, so we spent the majority of the trip in it, in bed.
The look on my parents’ faces when I told them I was pregnant and keeping the baby was something I will never forget. My father actually threw his glass across the room and walked out. It didn’t help that I didn’t have the father’s name and that the money they gave me for spending went to going on a booze cruise with my best friend. All in all, it was a clusterfuck. When he finally came back in, there was a shouting match. “You’re ruining your whole life” along with “You can’t raise a child.”
So what did I do? I did what every normal soon-to-be twenty-year-old mother did. I accepted my admittance into design school in Paris. Not in America, where I had a semi-support system. Nope, not me. I packed my things, and two weeks later, I was on my way to the fashion capital of the world with a baby bump starting to grow.
It wasn’t easy. Fuck, living in a strange city while not speaking the language was the hardest thing I think I’d done. That and the fact I was the only one in class with a baby on the way didn’t leave much opportunity for making friends. But instead of wallowing and partying every night, I kept my head down and graduated ahead of schedule. I pushed myself because I knew that the minute Aiden was born, my plan was to take a semester off. But I couldn’t sit idle for very long, and a month after I had Aiden, sleep deprived and all, I signed up for online courses and graduated on time with everyone else.