An hour later A.J. had the guys at his place, music blaring, food laid out, and decorations galore. Nick and I had pushed aside memories of the early morning argument to celebrate my day. We laughed, we danced, we ate, and we even sang. The six of us spread out through the house singing old songs from the seventies and eighties as we drank and laughed at how ridiculous we looked and sounded.
“We’ve got a surprise for you,” Howie whispered as we danced around the room.
“What?” I asked, smiling up at him.
He smiled and turned me toward the doorway where Nick was walking in carrying the most beautiful puppy I had ever seen.
“She’s a chocolate lab and she’s ten weeks old,” Kevin explained.
“She’s gorgeous,” I said, taking the dog from Nick.
“So what’s her name?” A.J. asked me.
“Lucky. Cheesy and much too common, I know, but it fits her. Lucky Carter,” I answered, petting the puppy’s ears. “She would make a wonderful friend to my son.”
I hadn’t meant for the words to come, to be heard by the men around me. They just slipped forward and I didn’t even realize it till I looked up and saw their faces.
“You aren’t seriously thinking of having a kid, are you, Riley?” Brian asked.
“I am but Nick’s not so it’s a mute point, don’t you think?” I answered, turning my back on all of them and focusing my attention on the animal in my arms.
A.J. stepped forward and put a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t give up now, Riley,” he pleaded quietly.
“You can’t really be considering this. I mean can you even carry a baby?” Kevin asked.
“I don’t think so and I wouldn’t even consider it because of my health, but there are other ways,” I answered, still not looking at any of them.
“Like what?” Howie asked.
“Like a surrogate mother. My egg, Nick’s sperm, her body to carry the baby. It’s been done,” I explained.
“But who?” he pushed.
I thought back to the conversation I had with Pollyanna the night before. It had been just hours before my argument with Nick about having a child of our own.
“Pollyanna offered to carry the baby for us,” I said, moving even farther away from the men that I had thought I had trusted with my very life.
“What?” Howie yelled. “My Pollyanna?”
I nodded, but couldn’t bring myself to speak around the lump that had formed in my throat. They were turning against me because of my single dream. It hurt, but then life wasn’t always filled with joy and love. You had to suffer to know what joy really was.
“Riley, you can’t do that to Polly. You can’t ask her to have a kid, not even for you. She’s never had kids. That’s not fair to her,” Howie continued.
“Fair? Fair! Don’t talk to me about fair. I’m so tired of hearing about what’s fair, who’s hurt, who’s suffering. I’m tired of hearing about how hard you have it. You’ve got all the time in the world, the chance to grow old, to fall in love, to have kids and watch them grow up. You’ve got the chance to make mistakes, right and wrong, good and bad, left and right. I’m running out of time and I’ve run out of fair, Howie. Now it’s just live. My mistakes, I’m never going to get the chance to correct them so I’m going to make them and deal with them. So don’t talk to me about fair. Don’t ever talk to me about fair again, because not a single one of the five of you have any idea what fair is,” I screamed.
I let Lucky go and watched her run across the room. Then it hit me, the sudden dizziness that was immediately followed by one of the headaches. The room spun and I felt myself falling. I hit the floor with a loud thud before anyone could reach me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Nick moving towards me.
“Stop,” I whispered, holding my hand up to keep him away. “Don’t touch me,” I warned, holding me head and begging whatever force there was behind the pain to make it stop.
It was horrible, the worst one yet and I couldn’t move or speak as the pain tore through me. I felt the tears slip down my cheeks but couldn’t make even the slightest attempt to wipe them away.
“Riley,” A.J. whispered as if afraid I couldn’t even bear the sound of his normal voice. He wrapped his arms around me and picked me up off the floor.
With my eyes closed fighting the pain that raged inside my head, I never saw the look of devastation and fear on Nick’s face as A.J. carried me to his sofa.
“My pills,” I whispered, reaching blindly for my bag that held my medication.
A.J., in his panic filled fear, dumped my bag out on the floor sending the contents scattering as he grabbed my pills. He poured two of the capsules into his palm and handed them to me with the glass of soda next the sofa. I forced the pills down around the pain in my body and waited as I had come to do regularly.
I never opened my eyes again that night. I just couldn’t bring myself to look at any of them. Eventually Brian, Howie, and Kevin went home. Nick stayed late into the night but I just couldn’t bear to look at him. I felt him in the room, never speaking, never moving, just simply staying close to me.
Finally, A.J. convinced him I needed time alone and Nick went home. It was after midnight when A.J. walked back into the room alone.
“Riley is all alone now. She’s pushed the world away in her anger and her grief. Maybe now she can open her eyes and feel safe in her solitude,” he said, sitting next to me as if he were talking about someone other than me.
“I don’t want to be alone, A.J. I don’t want to die like this,” I cried, the tears coming once more as I curled myself up on that sofa.
A.J. nudged me over a little and climbed on to the sofa with me. Wrapping his arms around me, he held me as I cried and made me a single promise, a promise I believed to my very heart and soul.
“You will never be alone, starlight. I will be with you in every moment, good and bad, till the very end,” he swore.
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