CHAPTER611
It takes minutes and I am sure she is deliberating taking an age just to piss me off as I stare blankly at our bedroom wall. I hate that he is so far away, but I need to get this over and done with. Saying it aloud, saying the words might make it more real and I might feel something more than this aching gap that is robbing me of all energy and life.
“Hello… Sophs?” Arrick comes on the line, sounding harassed and I close my eyes at the almost normal tone of his voice. He still has a voice that makes everything feel better. Like coming home to a warm hug. Whether he knows it or not, right now this is what I need more than air.
“I’m sorry I… I had to call.” I sound way too calm, unemotional and sort of strange. Like I’m not really here at all.
“It’s okay…I’m glad you called. I hate when we argue, and I haven’t stopped thinking about you. I’m sorry, baby, I know I left mid fight. I feel shitty as hell for it.” He’s trying for upbeat, apologetic, and sincere, but I can hear people behind him and Amanda’s nagging voice reminding him he has people waiting. She clearly thinks it’s a lover’s tiff being put to bed and doesn’t know the importance of this call.
I wish she would shut the fuck up and go to hell.
“It’s gone, Arrick. I got up and … it’s just gone.” It comes out, like a meaningless nothing announcement but I don’t know how else to say it. I have no words. It aches deep inside and I have to swallow down the urge to cry. So on the verge of falling apart.
“What’s gone?” He seems distracted as he responds to her and then his breathing gets a little louder as he comes back to me, it doesn’t even irritate me. This weird numbness spreading further, and I’m drained and limp. I push my head back into the cushions and stare at the ceiling instead, counting the cracks in the whitewash and pray that he will come home.
“Sophs? What’s gone?” He sounds so clueless, so innocent of the words I am about to strike him with. Concern and confusion mixed in that husky voice of his.
I’m sorry, Arry.
“Our baby.” That word is like a stabbing hot poker to my heart and my eyes fill with full tears, unable to hold them at bay anymore.
There’s a deathly silence on the line as though everything drops into nothing, and for a long moment he doesn’t say a thing.
Neither do I.
“What happened? When? How?” Arrick’s voice is shaken, hoarse and low and I can tell it’s hitting him in the way it should be hitting me, yet I’m too calm. The silence is agony however and I have the urge to fill it with words. I can’t stand silent Arrick; it means he’s in pain and I don’t know how to deal with him that way. I have never really had to.
“I got up with cramps, and then it happened. It was done and gone in minutes. Blood… Everywhere.” I cringe and close my eyes on the memory of the weird little unidentifiable thing among the mess I left smeared across the bathroom tiles, yet somehow, I had known what it was. I knew she was mine.
I think maybe I am in shock.
“Shit… Sophie… Baby.” Arry says breathlessly, his voice dropping to barely a whisper and then he’s back stronger. That shake in his voice, his tone has dropped to an emotional level and I can hear him trying to keep himself together. “I’m coming home. I’ll be on the first flight. I’m sorry… I should have been there. I love you, and I’m sorry.” He sounds broken, emotion rasping his voice and yet still in me, nothing but the same emptiness keeps enveloping me anytime emotion tries to break through. Drawing me back into myself and that quiet space where I used to hide, the space where no one can touch me.
I sigh heavily and nod even though he can’t see me.
“I guess that means I can leave Paris now, huh?” I say it so matter of factly, and even though it’s coming from me, another part of my brain is looking on in bewilderment at how cold and weird that statement is.
What’s wrong with you?
“What? … I guess so. Are you okay though? I’ll call Boris and make him take you to the hospital with Janetta.” Arrick answers me with an equally odd tone and I know he’s probably balking at how I am being and what I said and is trying to dismiss it. I don’t know what else to say.
“I don’t need to go, he said it came out whole, it was all there and there’s nothing they can do. Just rest and move on. I thought I should let you know anyway.” My dead pan, lifeless voice doesn’t sound like me at all.
“Sophs, your kind of scaring me, where is Janetta? Is she still there?” He’s shell-shocked and concerned but it also seems like he has a rising panic in the tone of his voice. I can almost picture him; his eyes will be green.
“She’s making soup, because you know… Chicken soup cures everything right?” I inhale slowly, deliberately as I go back to counting the cracks in the ceiling … one… two… three. Only three, three little cracks all clustered together in one little space. Three little things like we should have been. Me, Arrick and bump… Three little cracks in the same ceiling who should have been a family.
I have no idea what I’m even thinking.
“Sophs, you sound… weird. I’m coming home, baby, hang on in there. I’ll be home as soon as I can get a flight to you. I hear him bark a muffled order at Miss. Boobs. beside him to go book him any flight back to Paris ASAP and then he’s back with me. I have no other words, just the empty hole and low abdominal ache that reminds me that this isn’t a dream.
“I think I need to take a nap. I’m tired. I want to go to sleep now.” I answer blankly.
Arrick breathes heavily on the phone like maybe he went to say something and changed his mind. There’s a pause while he thinks through his response and then that voice that can save me from most things is back with me. Soft, trying to soothe me and conceal his own emotions. He’s trying to be my rock.
“Okay. You do that… I’ll be there soon, Okay. Call me if you need me… I’ll have my cell on the whole time. Just call or text me. I’m coming.” He’s trying to keep the pain out of his voice, but I can hear it, even through his gently, gently, Arrick mode, where he treats me like fragile glass even from afar. This is killing him, and he wants to fall apart, but he won’t if he is trying to be strong for me and it only adds to my weight of guilt about my lack of emotions.
“Okay.” I answer a little too brightly and there’s a stumbled pause.
“I love you, Mimmo.”
“I love you more.”"
