Photo by Eric Ward on Unsplash
June 2020
Kaya, leaning into Owen’s arm supporting her, hobbled slowly and awkwardly up the stairs to her apartment. The wood creaked beneath their feet, each step seeming like a progression deeper into some strange, looming doom. When they reached the door, she fumbled for her keys, a part of her sensing Owen’s impatience.
Once inside, she dropped her purse by the door and he helped her limp over to the bed where she crawled in and leaned back into the pillows. Owen sat down beside her, facing the other way. For a long time, they were both silent.
“Why do I feel like you’re mad at me?” Kaya said quietly after a while. Owen didn’t respond. He knew why she felt that way, but he couldn’t verbalize what was happening to him interiorly. Ever since she’d agreed to the abortion, something had shifted in his perspective of her. He saw her less as his lover and more as his responsibility. Some part of him had hoped that she would fight him on it, but she didn’t, and now that she’d actually gone through with it, his feelings of affection for her seemed to rapidly mutate into revulsion.
“Owen,” she whispered. “Say something.”
“I’m not mad at you.”
“You’re not happy.”
“Are you?”
“I thought you wanted this,” she exclaimed, exasperated. From the moment he’d suggested they terminate the pregnancy, she’d sensed him distancing himself from her, and all she could think to do was try to pull him back. She’d hoped and prayed that doing what he asked would bring back his tenderness, but over the past hour, it seemed like it had done the opposite. With each passing moment, he was less her rock and more an empty shell of a man.
“I did want it,” he said, repeating, “I did,” in an attempt to convince himself as well as her. Kaya hugged her knees against her chest, sniffling as tears streamed down her cheeks. Owen looked at her, remembering 11 years earlier when she’d sat the same way, weeping and helpless—the reason unknown to him—when all he’d wanted was to rescue her. Now, in a strange twist of fate, he felt that he was the perpetrator, the reason for her broken heart.
“Listen,” he said standing up. “I have to get back to the office.”
“You can’t be serious, Owen. You’re going to leave me? After that?”
“Kaya, damnit, I’ll be back. I have a lot to take care of.”
“Bullshit! I should be your priority! You have more power in that office than anyone else. There’s no way you need to be back there right now.”
He wanted to ask why she hadn’t pushed back like this two weeks ago, when he told her not to keep the baby, but he was tired of fighting, tired of talking. He knew he could leave and never erase the image of her crying alone from his memory or he could stay. He sat back down as her weeping continued.
Finally, he reached his arms out to her. “Come here,” he said. She softened into his embrace, grieving the life that had been taken, both of them knowing somewhere deep in their hearts that this would be the last time they held each other.