Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 90951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
A part of me insists I should wait, give her space—or at least a couple of hours to wake up and have a cup of coffee—but that nightmare is still knocking around inside my head. I need to see Bea’s face while it’s not underwater. I need to know that she’s okay and apologize profusely for my shitty handling of this situation.
I grab thin track pants, a sweat wicking tee, and tie on my running shoes. My keys and cell go into the crossbody pouch I wear for longer runs, and then I’m out the door, taking the stairs fast, hitting the street at a jog.
The French Quarter is quiet in the way it only gets between four and six a.m., after the last of the drunks have stumbled home, but before the delivery trucks start their rounds. The air is thick with humidity, the mucky smell of the river, and the scent of honeysuckle that swarms over the buildings in this part of town.
It’s a smell I’ve grown accustomed to.
Even developed an affection for.
New Orleans has its flaws, but it welcomed me with open arms and a massive signing bonus. I enjoyed my time in Oregon after college, but New Orleans is special. It’s a place where I’ve come fully into my own, where I feel settled. I have good friends, a community outside the team, all the live music a man could hope for, and I’m playing the best hockey of my life. I should have been strong enough to handle the news that Beatrice was pregnant, way better than I did.
Hell, I should have been able to send her home that night without touching her; that’s what I should have been able to do.
But I didn’t. I couldn’t. The control I’ve prided myself on for so long just…evaporated.
And I don’t know why.
I turn the question over in my mind as my sneakers slap a steady rhythm against the cobblestones.
I don’t have to think about the route. I know the way, even though I’ve never jogged to Beatrice’s place before. I’ve only driven there a handful of times. We usually meet up at a jazz club or a karaoke bar in the Quarter and only occasionally go back to my place for a drink after. Occasionally. Because that’s what friends do—they meet up, have fun, and go their separate ways.
Beatrice and I are just friends. Were just friends.
Until that night in April that I regret with everything in me.
Do you? Do you really?
I stay with the question as I run faster. By the time I hit the Lafitte Greenway and head toward the high rises of Mid-City, my lungs are burning, and my shirt is plastered to my back.
The Greenway stretches ahead, a paved vein through Treme’s history, but I’m too locked in my own head to appreciate the murals or the community gardens sleeping in the dark. I run past the industrial skeletons and the flickering streetlights, my breath coming in jagged hitches that have nothing to do with my cardio and everything to do with the sneaking suspicion that I don’t regret what we did.
And maybe…
Maybe I don’t regret the baby, either.
Maybe I’m just scared to fucking death. Scared in a way none of the meditation classes or Buddhist retreats in Tibet can touch.
I don’t know how to be a father, a partner. I never saw either modelled well, and the first time I was forced into “I do,” I failed my wife spectacularly.
It was an arranged marriage, brokered by Daveed in an attempt to quell unrest within the community. I’d beaten the shit out of Lisbeth’s brother for assaulting a younger boy. Then, his friends had beaten the shit out of me, damaging my face so badly that I had to miss a performance, which really pissed Daveed off.
Forcing Lisbeth and me to say “I do” was his way of “bringing our families together.”
We were strangers at first, then friends. Then, I started to think I was in love—right around the same time, I also started thinking it was time to leave the community. But Lisbeth was too afraid to even talk about that. Every time I brought it up, she’d cry for hours, insisting I was ruining our lives. I had no idea how to find a compromise and hated how ripped in two I felt in the months leading up to the night I finally decided to leave.
At eighteen, I barely knew how to be myself, let alone how to be a good husband. I’ve forgiven myself for my failure. Or…I thought I had. I didn’t realize how much the way things ended with Lisbeth still haunted me until recently.
Now that I’ve finally met another woman, I think I could love.
“Fuck,” I mutter as I cross into Mid-City, the scenery shifting from soul to steel.