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Charlotte sat on Carmen’s couch and studied her across the rim of her coffee cup. “You’re all twitchy. What’s going on?” she asked.
Carmen bounced her leg, a goofy smile creeping across her face. “Well, remember when I almost puked on you the night I forced you to date, Sam?”
“How would a girl forget a night like that one?”
Carmen pressed both fists up to her chin in excitement. “It turns out it wasn’t something I ate,” she hissed in a stage whisper.
“Ah shit.” Charlotte cocked her head and wiggled her eyebrows. “Did one of the little swimmers stick?”
Carmen tried to scowl but failed and laughed. “Why are you such a creep? But, yes! Yes, one did!” Blinding happiness shone on her face.
Charlotte grinned, hopping to her feet to throw her arms around her friend. “Congratulations babe, jerkiness aside, I am so happy for you.”
Carmen released her and started pacing the room. “We haven’t told Dan and Alice yet, but I couldn’t keep it a secret from you.”
“I would have figured it out anyway as soon as you gained so much as a pound.”
“That might never happen if I can’t stop vomiting.” Carmen wrinkled her nose and settled back on the couch. “We are pretty happy, but I know it scares Sawyer. Some terrible memories are cropping up for him. He tries to hide it from me, but I know.” She sighed. “He keeps waking up in a cold sweat and refusing to tell me why.”
Charlotte nodded. “Of course, those memories are going to come up, but everything will be all right.”
Carmen nodded, but worry chased some joy from her green eyes. She pressed on hand to the flat plane of her stomach, “I’ll feel better once I know this little bean is healthy.”
“He will be. I know it.” Charlotte squeezed her hand. “You guys are meant to be parents. It’s definitely written in the stars or some shit.” She waved an encompassing arm in the ceiling’s direction.
Carmen blinked and shook her head as if she could clear the worry from it like cobwebs. “Speaking of meant to be, how are you and Sam doing?”
“We are doing very good.” Charlotte smiled enigmatically, knowing the lack of details would drive Carmen up the wall.
Carmen sat and inched closer on the couch. “Have you two... you know, done it yet?” she whispered.
Charlotte blinked at her with faux innocence. “Done what?”
“Oh, come on! Did you go all the way?”
Charlotte shook her head, settling back into the couch. “Wow, are we in grade school?”
“Chuck, come on!”
Charlotte laughed, “No, snoopy Stevenson, we have not gone all the way. Nor have we screwed or boinked. He was on doctor’s orders to do no strenuous activities for six weeks after the... incident. And after how long it’s been for me, you can bet your ass I’m putting that boy through his paces. Strenuous will be putting it lightly.”
Carmen let out a wild laugh, then pressed her hands to her mouth. “My gosh, you are crude,” she said. It came out muffled through her fingers.
Charlotte shrugged. “I am what I am.”
“Oh, my God!” Carmen held up a hand in exclamation to her thought. “If you guys have babies, our kids will be cousins!”
Charlotte sat bolt upright, her heart jumping into her throat. “That’s a bit of a jump, isn’t it?”
“Oh, shut it.” Carmen reached over and poked Charlotte in the ribs. “You know you love him.”
“That isn’t always enough, you know. Life isn’t a fairy tale.”
“It can be, Chuck. Don’t be jaded. You guys could get married, and we could start our own little Stevenson clan. Can you imagine if they got Sam’s eyes and your dark cur—”
“Carmen!” Charlotte barked. “I don’t want kids.” Then she winced and rubbed a hand over her face before saying in a calmer voice, “I don’t want to have children. Ever.”
Carmen frowned, a flush crawling up her neck and into her cheeks. “I guess I thought you’re so good with them you would want your own.”
Charlotte swallowed against a wave of guilt. Why was she such a bag? Carmen was only happy and wanted to spread the joy around, just like every knocked-up woman had since the beginning of time. “Don’t get me wrong,” she said, forcing a smile. “I’m going to love your little brats. I expect them to call me Auntie Chuck, not only to screw with people, but because I’m pretty sure it is going to sound like Auntie Fuck.” She looked away from Carmen, uncomfortable under her silent scrutiny. “I’m just never having any of my own.”
“Charlotte,” Carmen said, resorting to her teacher’s voice to shut Charlotte up, and pinned her with a stern look. “Why don’t you want kids?”
“It’s 2020. If I don’t want kids, that’s my prerogative. Don’t make me sing Brittany to you.”
“Can you just be serious for once?” Carmen snapped. She actually sounded annoyed, and Charlotte’s temper flared in response.
“Why does it matter so much to you?”
Carmen narrowed her eyes. “Because you’re my friend, and I know there’s something you’re not telling me.”
“Well, maybe I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Well, you should, because if you want to start something with Sam, he needs to know about this.”
Carmen’s words were like ice water sluicing over Charlotte’s head. “He wants kids,” she said. It wasn’t a question. Charlotte knew he did. He always had. He’d talked about it even when they were kids themselves. How in the hell had she allowed herself to forget about that? How had she been so stupid?
Carmen’s cheeks flushed even darker under their mantle of freckles. “Don’t mess this up. I can’t stand how you two act about each other. It’s so... so infuriating.” She added a tiny stomp of her foot for emphasis. Charlotte had to restrain the urge to laugh despite the churning pit of anxiety that boiled to life in her stomach.
“Hate to break it to you, Carm, but women don’t have to have babies just because they’re in love.”
Carmen’s hand rose to her abdomen, protecting it. Her green eyes sparkled as they filled with tears.
Charlotte flushed with guilt. “I didn’t mean it to sound that way.”
“You can do whatever you want, Charlotte, as long as it’s for a real, tangible reason. Not some preconceived problem you’re too stubborn to let your friends and family help you with.” Carmen’s voice broke. She crossed her arms, glaring at the top of the coffee table until Charlotte cleared her throat, fighting the sudden urge to cry.
“My mom had postpartum,” she whispered. The words stuck to her tongue, but she forced them free. “The doctors called it baby blues back then. They told her to rest, spend time with her friends, but the problem was she didn’t have friends.”
Charlotte paused, swallowing hard. “She only had my dad, and he loved her, but I always got the impression it was in the way a moth loves a flame. Fleeting and fearful of being burned.” Charlotte drew a breath, studying the knots of her twined fingers. “He worked all day, every day, to support us. She struggled with her English. One day dad came home from work, and I was with the neighbor. She watched me sometimes so my mom could sleep. The lady had thought nothing of it when my mom asked her to take me and keep me safe until my dad came home.”
Charlotte forced herself to look at Carmen. She needed her to see how serious this was. The fear Charlotte carried inside her like a secret, open wound. The truth was, she would love to have children, and having them with Sam would be more wonderful than she could express. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t take the risk.
“The door was locked when my dad took me back,” she said. “In the end, he busted it down. When he got inside, my mom was on the couch. She used pills. He was too late. If he’d just come home an hour earlier for once—” Charlotte stopped the spillage of words and hauled in a lungful of air.
Carmen was staring at her, eyes bright with tears while more tracked down her cheeks unhindered. “Holy shit. Chuck,” she whispered. “I had no idea.”
“Besides my dad, you are literally, and I mean literally, in the truest sense of the word, are the only person I’ve ever told.”
“Not even—”
“Not even Sam. He knows that she’s gone, of course. Maybe not the complete story, but that she killed herself. He would have to. Dan and Alice know, of course. They basically took us in when we moved to town. I didn’t know all of it myself until I was twenty.”
“Chuck.” Carmen leaned forward and caught Charlotte’s hands from where they rested in her lap. She had the look of someone about to deliver the sort of speech Charlotte loved to avoid. “I can see where you are coming from with the kid issue now. I do,” she said. “Every time I raise a drink to my lips, part of me fears I’ve got my mother’s alcoholic gene.”
Charlotte waved her free hand dismissively. “Your brother got that, and I’m pretty sure only one spawn is allowed to get the shit genes.”
“Shhh,” Carmen said. “Yes, Jake got it, but that’s not at all how it works. The point is, I didn’t, and your mother’s illness does not automatically mean you will suffer the same. If you genuinely don’t want children, that is every bit your choice, but you need to make sure that decision is coming from a place of reason and not because fear is dictating you. Things are different now. There is support for new mothers, medications if need be, but—” Her grip on Charlotte’s hand tightened. “Most of all, you’re not a lonely immigrant, new to Canada. You have an entire family who loves you like crazy.”
“You’re right.” Charlotte glanced down at the floor, dashing her fingertips under her eyes. “I’ve been scared ever since my dad told me the whole story. He says I’m a lot like she was.” She laughed. It came out wet and humourless.
“You need to analyze what you really want, my dear.” Carmen gave her a quiet smile. “It’s only fair to yourself and our Sam.”
Charlotte stuck out her lip. “I have to deal with that too?” She shook her head. “That’s too much adulting.”
One of Carmen’s red-gold brows arched. “All of it,” she said sternly.
“You don’t understand. I have a cargo hold full of emotional baggage.”
“All of it.” Carmen tapped her finger on the table in punctuation of each word. “Bottle of wine, a box of tissues, unpack it, woman. Dig deep.”
Charlotte released a shaky sigh. “Fine. I’ll do it.”
“Start right now. Practice is good for you.”
Charlotte gasped. “I thought you meant alone!”
“I’m your best friend. That’s practically alone with the bonus of not being alone.”
“Ugh. Fine. My father had a three-month-old infant and little else. He came here and begged for a job from Dan, who also gave us a place to live.”
“The apartment?”
Charlotte nodded. “I spent the first four years of my life up there, listening to the growl and purr of machines, smelling the grease on my dad’s hands. Alice practically raised me. Clumped me in with the rest of her brood, and off we’d go. I suppose it never occurred to me to see Sam in that light. He was always a brother to me first. A confidant.”
“And now?”
Charlotte sighed. “Ever since that first kiss, everything has changed.”
“Changed how?” Carmen pressed.
“I think he’s the one, and I know that sounds like the worst cliche, but—” Charlotte fluttered a hand, and Carmen snatched it like a bug from the air.
“You need to tell him,” she said.
“But he wants kids.”
“That’s something you need to discuss with Sam. Stop trying to decide for both of you. You guys are past that now.” Carmen sighed. “I may not have known you for as long as everyone else, but you never struck me as someone who let fear control them.”
Charlotte exhaled slow and long, whistling slightly like a deflating balloon. “No. No, you’re right, Carm. Screw fear.”