Work of Art (9 page)

I watched all the color drain from Ryan’s face
as I shared with him the news that I’d ruined his life, but then he’d hugged me and told me he loved me and that we’d figure it all out.

But no matter what he said, I hated myself. I hated that I was the self-fulfillin
g prophecy my mother had told me I’d become when she found out Ryan and I were sleeping together. She’d had me at seventeen and told me again and again that I was going to be just like her. And I’d proven her right. And the worst part was, I had a goddamn scholarship to fucking Yale. I’d worked my ass off, gotten the grades I’d needed, scored high enough on the SATs, and I’d been accepted. I was getting out – out of a place where I’d never felt like I fit in and where everyone hated me, including my mother. Ryan and I were going together, so we could be together.

And then
I’d ruined everything.

But Ryan wouldn’t let me see it that way. He held my hand and kissed me and talked about our future and the plans we’d make and the baby we’d raise, and sure it would be hard, but we’d do it together, and he’d get his trust fun
d when he turned twenty-one. Everything would be perfect, because we’d be together.

We wouldn’t tell our parents, because they’d tell us we were nuts. They’d chastise us for being irresponsible and lecture us as if we were kids. But we weren’t kids, and we could handle this. We’d just go to New Haven, live our lives and return home when we could prove to everyone that we’d done it.

And it was the perfect plan until I’d ended up in the hospital when I was eight weeks along. Ryan panicked and called his dad, because he didn’t know what else to do, and his parents had called my mom. And that’s when everything changed.

My mom kicked me out. She told me she didn’t want me in her house,
and I had a week to figure out where I would live. So I called Ryan. He said we’d leave together like we’d planned. And he told me he loved me. He was leaving for a week to go to The Vineyard with his dad and his brother. They were going on the same sailing trip they went on every summer, but we’d leave when he got back.

Everything was fine until his mother came to see me. I should have turned her away at the door, but I was trying to be polite, thinking we’d be in each other’s lives forever, so I’d better star
t building a relationship with her. So I’d asked her to come in, have a seat and have a glass of iced tea. And I was so stupid to do that.

Not that it would have made a difference, but at least if I hadn’t
invited her inside, I wouldn’t have had to listen to the cruel words she’d spouted for the next hour.

Almost as soon as she sat down, s
he told me I was making a mistake and I was ruining Ryan’s life. She called me a whore and a gold digger. She told me Ryan had confided in her that he was scared of being a father at such a young age and that he felt trapped, but he’d never tell me that, and she felt it was her obligation to be her son’s voice when he couldn’t do it. I didn’t believe her. I refused to believe her, but after a while, she wore me down.

She let me know in no uncertain terms that I had another option and she would even pay for it. My stomach churned at her suggestion, but she made point after point that started to resonate with me, but the one that stuck was that she said it was what Ryan wanted. She said he was too good of a person to ever tell me that, but he didn’t want me to have the baby, and did I really want to do something that big with a boy who didn’t want the responsibility?

Then she offered me ten thousand dollars if I would abort the baby, leave for the summer and break things off with Ryan.

And that was my breaking point. I told her to get out of my house. I immediately called Ryan, knowing I wouldn’t get him, but he’d get my message when he got back on land. I told him it was important. I needed to talk to him.

I waited until Saturday when I knew he’d be back, but he never called me. All I got was an email from him letting me know that they’d decided to stay on the boat for another week and he’d call me when he got back.

I panicked, because I had nowhere to go, and my mother wanted me out of the house. So I packed as much of my stuff as I could into my car and went to a motel.

Three days later I got another email from him.

Harper,

This is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but I can’t see you anymore. I don’t want to be a father, and this time apart has given me some much needed clarity. I think we need to go our separate ways. I loved you for a long time, but this is just something I need to do. I hope you’ll understand. I also hope you’ll take my mother’s advice and terminate the pregnancy. It’ll be the best thing in the long run, you’ll see. Take care.

-Ryan

I called his cell, but it went to voicemail. And when I called every day for the next three days, I left pleading, crying messages for him to call me, but he never did.

And after sitting in that motel for
five days staring into nothing and waiting for Ryan to call, the reality of my situation finally hit home. So I called my dad, flew out to San Francisco and never looked back.

And I forced myself to forget about
Ryan Carson, but now, with him living in the same city as me and having come face-to-face with him, the guy who’d told me he loved me with every fiber of being and then broke up with me without a second glance, I couldn’t just forget about him. I couldn’t erase that I’d seen him again and that he’d brought back all sorts of feelings that I’d buried deep. I was angry and wished that instead of throwing up and crying that I would have punched him. It would have been more fitting.

All I could hope was that I’d never run into him again.
Because if I did, I might not be as civil as I’d been a few minutes earlier.

Knowing I needed to talk to someone, I picked up the phone and called Kelly. She knew the full story about Ryan and me, and in that moment, when everything felt as raw as the day he’d sent me that email, I needed her.

Chapter Nine

Ryan

“Dude, you’ve barely touched your beer, and you’re staring into space like a zombie. What the fuck is up with you?”

I looked
over to see Brandon staring at me like I was crazy, and maybe I was.

I sighed. “It was her – Harper.”

He grinned. “Yeah, she’s smokin’ hot, right. I know she’s not you’re type, but she’s totally mine.”

Yeah, he wasn’t going to like what I told him next.

“She’s my ex-girlfriend.”

Brandon’s eyes went wide as saucers. “Say what?”

I sighed and swallowed, trying to figure out how to say what I needed to say. I hadn’t told another person this story, ever, but now it just seemed pertinent that I talk about it, about her, about us.

“Harper was my girlfriend in high school
,” I said without preamble

“No shit. You fucked her, didn’t you?”

Brandon’s eyes were gleaming, and I just glared at him. “So not important, man.”

“Oh, right, got it,” he said, finally hearing the graveness in my
voice. “So what happened?”

I took a long swig of my beer. “In a nutshell, she got
pregnant, we decided to move in together and have the baby, and then while I was away on a sailing trip, I got an email from her telling me she changed her mind, and she got an abortion.”

Brandon’s eyes went wide.
“Holy shit. She did that without telling you first.”

I shrugged. “I guess she panicked,
but yeah, I wish she would have talked to me about it. I would have done whatever she wanted. But she just did it without telling me, and at the time it was really hard for me to forgive that. When I got home from my trip, I had multiple tearful messages from her, so she must have known I was upset, but I couldn’t call her back. I needed time. I figured I’d see her when school started in the fall and we’d work everything out then. We were both going to Yale, but once school started, I didn’t see her on campus. I called her cell, but she’d changed the number. And I never saw to her again. I emailed a few times over the years, but she never responded.”

I shrugged.

“So you just saw her for the first time after, what, ten years?!”

“Eleven,” I corrected him, knowing exactly how long it had been. “
It’s been eleven years, and she looks exactly the same.”

“Damn. Do you still have feelings for her?”

I shot him a look of disbelief. “No, but it was surprising as hell to see her, that’s for sure. By the way, why are you bringing her to my wedding?”

Brandon chuckled. “Because she’s hot and cool as shit, and I’ll need someone fun to hang out with because you’ll be tied up getting married. You don’t mind if I bring her, do you?”

“No,” I said quickly, but I think I just said that because I thought it was how I should feel.

I truthfully wasn’t sure what I was feeling at that point, but I knew what I should
n’t be feeling and that I shouldn’t have been rattled by running into someone I hadn’t seen in eleven years who I used to have feelings for. But there were all these crazy emotions swirling around in my head, and I couldn’t make sense of any of them.

Brandon was watching me as if he wasn’t sure what to do with me.

“Bring her if you want, I don’t care,” I told him.

Brandon eye
d me skeptically. “Are you sure? It’s your wedding day. I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable.”

I shrugged. “It won’t make me uncomfortable, and I highly doubt that my family will even remember her.
It’s fine. I just won’t tell Trish who she is.”

He raised an eyebrow at
me. “Keeping secrets from the wife already?”

“Stop it. It’s not like I’m seeing Harper or
anything. She’s a girl I dated a hundred years ago. Trish wouldn’t care even if she knew, and because of that, I’m not telling her. It doesn’t matter.”

Brandon chuckled. “Okay, man,” he said
sarcastically, as he took a swig of his beer, so I slugged him in the shoulder.

“She didn’t really want to see me, though,” I pondered out loud.

“What do you mean?”

“She puked into the trashcan
when she turned around and saw me standing in her doorway.”

Brandon laughed.
“Holy shit! That’s hilarious. She really puked? I’m so gonna give her shit for that when I talk to her.”

“What do you mean? When are you talking to her? Are you going to see her again while you’re out here?”

I was well-aware of the excitement suddenly in my voice, and I hoped Brandon couldn’t hear it.

“Dude, you’re eyes just lit up like a fucking Christmas tree. You’ve still got feelings for this girl.”

“I do not,” I said, turning back to face front. I saw him watching me out of the corner of my eye. “I sort of want to know how she is, though, just to make sure she’s good.”

“She’s good,” he told me. “She’
s got a successful business, she’s ridiculously talented, and she’s got good friends.”

I looked at him in confusion. “How do you know all of that?”

He shrugged. “We spent five hours on a plane together and got a little drunk. We talked. By the way, I sort of told her about you.”

“What do you mean you told her about me? She had no idea we were friends.”

He grinned. “I told her about my buddy I was going to see who was marrying this chick who tries to control his life and has taken all the joy out of it.”

I cringed. He was repeating my words from the night before when I’d been drunk, out of my mind, and half stupid. “Fuck you, dude. You didn’t tell her that.”

He laughed. “Actually, I did. And then last night you just repeated what I’ve always thought. It was pretty fucking hilarious if you ask me.”

“
No, it wasn’t,” I deadpanned, wondering why he disliked Trish so much.

She really was a sweet girl, and she took care of me, and my family loved her. But I knew Brandon hated how she was always interjecting her views into how I should live my life, how she made me eat healthy and how she controlled how I spent my time
, and who I hung out with. Then again, had Brandon ever actually complained about those things? He made fun of me, but weren’t those the things that had started to bug
me
in the past few months? Wasn’t I the one going off last night about how much I felt like she stifled me?

Okay, no. We were not even talking about my relationship with Trish. We were talking about Harper and how she and Brandon were apparently friends now.

“Dude, listen, Harper’s a cool girl, and I don’t have many friends who are girls. I think I’ll call her from time to time when I need a cool girl’s opinion about my life. Besides, it’s pretty awesome to be able to tell people I’m friends with Harper Connelly.”

“Who, besides me, might care about that?”

He looked at me like I was insane again. “Everyone who’s into body art. She was named as one of the top female artists in the country last year, and she’s done ink for Garrett Lewis and Dustin Craig.”