The Running Kind
1112 Words
"Positive."
Sable put her coffee down.
"Cherish."
"I know."
"You're pregnant."
"I am aware of what positive means."
"Cherish Auton." Her voice came out thick and quiet. "You are pregnant."
"Fifteen percent," Cherish said. "I was in the fifteen percent."
"Does he know?"
"I texted him."
"What did he say?"
She looked at her phone on the desk between them.
"He's coming over," she said.
Sable pressed both hands flat on the desk and looked at her.
"How do you feel," she said.
"I don't know."
"Pick one word."
"I can't."
"Cherish."
"I genuinely cannot, Sable. I have been sitting with it since six this morning and I keep waiting for the feeling that is supposed to come and what arrives instead is just quiet. Everything just went quiet."
"Good quiet or bad quiet."
"I don't know that either." She looked at the window. "He is going to want to talk about what this means."
"Of course he is."
"And I don't have answers."
"You don't need answers today."
"I need something. I cannot sit across from him and have nothing."
"You have everything you need. You just have to let him be there."
Cherish said nothing.
"That is the part that is scaring you," Sable said. "Not the baby. Him being there."
"He is going to want more than I know how to give."
"Or he is going to want exactly what you are able to give and you are so convinced that is not enough that you will not let him tell you otherwise."
Her phone buzzed.
She looked at it.
Adonis: downstairs.
She looked at Sable.
"Go," Sable said.
She opened the door and he looked at her and she looked at him and he said, "Hi."
Just that.
"Come in," she said.
He came in.
She walked to the kitchen. Put the kettle on. Stood with her hands flat on the counter and her back to him.
"Talk to me," he said.
"I don't know where to start."
"Anywhere."
"I bought the test myself," she said. "Six forty this morning. Sunglasses on. Paid cash. Very dignified."
"Very you."
"I sat on the edge of the bathtub for twenty minutes after."
"I know. I was awake."
She turned around. "You were awake?"
"I have been awake most nights this week. I kept thinking about you sitting in that bathroom alone and not being able to do anything about it."
She looked at him.
"How do you feel," he said.
"Scared."
It came out before she could stop it. Small and honest and completely without armour.
"I know," he said.
"I don't say that to people."
"I know."
"Adonis. I need you to be honest with me. Not the right thing. The true thing."
"Ask me."
"Is this real for you. Not the baby. Us. Whatever this is. Is it real or is it the situation and being around each other and something that made sense in a site office that looks different now."
"It has been real since Tuesday morning in your boardroom," he said. "That has not changed."
"You don't know that yet."
"I know it right now. That is enough for me." He held her gaze. "Is it enough for you?"
She looked at him for a long time.
Then she crossed the kitchen and he opened his arms and she walked into them and he held her and she stood there with her face against his chest and breathed and stopped trying to manage everything for one minute.
"Okay," she said into his chest.
"Okay," he said into her hair.
They stayed like that.
Outside the city was doing what it always did. In here it was quiet and new and she was terrified and pregnant and she was letting him hold her and she did not hate it.
That was the part that scared her most.
Her phone buzzed on the counter.
She did not move.
It buzzed again.
"Sable," she said without looking.
"How do you know?"
"Only one person calls me before eight."
His chest moved. Almost a laugh. "Are you going to answer?"
"Not yet."
They stayed a little longer.
And then her brain started moving.
Quietly at first. Then louder.
He is twenty-eight.
You have a contract.
This is not what you planned.
The last time you let someone this close he looked at you on his way out and told you that you were too much and not enough at the same time and you swore you would never.
You swore.
She pulled back.
Straightened up.
Smoothed her blazer.
"I have a nine o'clock," she said.
He looked at her.
She turned to the counter. Filled the kettle. Turned it on. Kept her back to him.
"Cherish."
"The Harrington revision needs to be signed off by end of week."
"Cherish."
"Do you want coffee before you go."
Silence.
"What just happened," he said.
"Nothing happened. I have a nine o'clock."
"Two minutes ago you were—"
"I know what I was doing two minutes ago." She turned around. Face composed. Voice level. "I appreciate you coming. I mean that. But I have a full day and I need to get organised."
He looked at her.
Not angry. Not wounded. Just looking at her the way he had been looking at her since Tuesday morning, steady and clear and completely unbothered by what she was doing.
"Okay," he said.
"Okay?"
"Okay." He picked up his jacket. "Call me later."
"I will."
"Cherish."
"I said I will."
"I know what you said." He stopped at the kitchen door and looked back at her. "I also know what just happened. I watched it happen. So when you go to call me later and then put the phone back down I need you to know that I already know. And I will still be there when you actually call."
She said nothing.
"Run if you need to," he said. "I will be here when you stop."
He walked out.
The front door closed.
She stood in her kitchen with the kettle boiling and her hands flat on the counter and her face composed and her chest doing something that had no name and no plan.
He had watched it happen in real time.
Had not fought it. Had not made it ugly. Had walked out clean and left her dignity exactly where it was and told her he would be there when she stopped.
She picked up her phone.
Opened his name.
Stared at it.
Put it back down.
Picked it up.
Put it back down.
Went and got dressed.
Went to work.
Told herself she was not running.
Believed none of it.
- Writer
