Rocky Top
The solitary pink line on the test strip mocked me. A dash. A hyphen. A minus. A fill-in-the-blank, begging to be punctuated by … something. Its dark pink was almost purple, reminding me of intoxicating ditto ink that I loved inhaling back in grade school. Grade school—a simpler time, when if I followed the rules, I was rewarded. But adulthood had no syllabus.
The metallic taste of blood tickled my tongue. I unclenched my teeth, freeing the inside of my cheek. I tore my eyes away from the test strip perched on the granite bathroom counter and grabbed my phone:
Atlanta Tokyo
3:03 a.m. 5:03 p.m.
No new notifications. I thought my best friend, Lenny, was back from sea and would’ve responded by now. I needed some other way to process the panic swirling in my head. I checked the weather forecast at Thunderhead Mountain: Clear skies. A sixty-four-degree high at the summit. An early taste of spring in the Smoky Mountains. I turned to scan my closet.
I reserved the top row for work attire:
1. Shirts – Ten white, button-down, cotton-blend, long-sleeve shirts.
2. Pants – Five pairs of black slacks; two pairs of jeans.
3. Skirts – Two black pencil skirts; one gray pencil skirt; one A-line black skirt.
4. Blazers – Two black blazers; one blue blazer.
Long ago, I had adopted a work uniform to thwart decision fatigue, something that increased with each promotion. When I was forced to take a product owner position three years ago, no one prepared me for the twelve-hour workdays and monthly software release weekends. Work-life balance was a myth, but in spite of the long hours and the stress, my current job was more rewarding than any process engineer job I’d ever had.
I housed my outdoor attire on the bottom row of my closet:
1. Shirts – Five white, button-down, polyester, long-sleeve shirts with UPF.
2. Bottoms – Seven pairs of hiking pants in an assortment of grays, blacks, and tans; five pairs of black cycling shorts; one gray hiking skort.
3. Mid-layers – Three blue tops in varying degrees of thickness.
4. Jackets – A pink hard-shell; one orange, puffy jacket.
I pulled a shirt, a mid-layer, and a gray pair of pants off their hangers and then dressed. I grabbed a neck gaiter from a dresser drawer and slipped it over my head. I left my bedroom, averting my eyes from the closed door of my second bedroom down the hall. At my house’s back door, I flung my backpack onto one shoulder and grabbed my boots by their laces. My gear stayed in go mode.
I checked my phone again.
No new notifications. I navigated to a message thread. My thumbs made quick work on the screen, logging my hiking plans with Mel. I’d met her at Virgin Falls a few years back. She had recently relocated to Tennessee after an early retirement, and we had become fast friends.
Me: Hey, you’re probably asleep by now but letting you know I’m headed up your way. Going to Rocky Top. ~2-hour drive then hike. Figure I should check in no later than 3 pm. Please ping me if you can join me.
Mel: I’m up! Damn dog wet the bed AGAIN! I thought this was your hiking bye week.
My fingers paused as I debated my response. While Mel and my bond extended beyond hiking, she wasn’t Lenny.
Me: Woke up craving mountain air! I’ll do a bye next weekend.
Mel: Wish I could join you girlfriend but I’m volunteering with the chamber and then dinner with some friends. Want to join for dinner?
Me: Thx for invite, but I’ll pass. Feeling super introverted rn.
The opening beat to Bill Withers’s “Lovely Day” cried from my phone. I dismissed my alarm, plunging me back into silence. I tucked my phone in my pocket and opened my back door. One-Eyed Willy bolted from my patio chair. Her tortoiseshell fur blurred to black as she scurried from my yard. She sprinted across the street, toward her two-story Victorian home, which was occupied by the hipster neighbors who owned a menagerie of domesticated animals. I wasn’t sure of her real name, as she never allowed me close enough to read her tags, but every day, my door cameras caught her napping on my chair. If I had one eye, I reckon I’d be skittish as hell too.
I set my backpack into my sixteen-year-old Camry’s passenger seat. My car was my first big, post-college purchase. Over the years, I had been tempted to get something new, especially as my ex-husband traded in for new cars every two to three years, but now I couldn’t fathom driving anything else. While I was placing my boots next to my trekking poles behind the driver’s seat, my next-door neighbor approached, wheeling a shopping cart. I racked my brain, struggling to remember her name. It never stuck.
“Going for another hike, Allyn?” my neighbor asked. Her tongue slithered between her missing upper teeth. She was one of the four women who rented the house next door. From the stories she told, they had a slumlord. They were dirt-poor with hearts of gold and would inform me of strange people hanging around my property. I’d buy them fresh fruit and toiletries from time to time. Each Friday morning, I’d set out my trash, and when I would drive onto my parking pad, she would wheel my empty trashcan back to my house. Truthfully, I think she dumpster-dove.
“It’s easy to take off when you don’t have kids,” she said.
My breath caught in my throat as if she had punched me in the gut. My stomach free-fell. I locked my knees to keep them from buckling. Beads of sweat puddled at my temples. I wiped them into my hair with the backs of my thumbs. I shut my eyes. Get it together. I reopened them and flashed my twice-orthodontia-corrected smile. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” I missed the comforts of a car garage the most on days with rain—or random neighbor conversations.
“That’s what we’ve been telling my niece. You’ve met her, right?”
Her niece was the young girl with tawny skin, caramel curls, and the swollen belly that grew every week. Some neighbors likely thought she was my sister despite my tighter curls and more melanated skin. People back home would see all our differences, categorizing her as mixed and me as redbone. We’d never met, but I was familiar with her presence, so I nodded.
“We told Stevanie to leave that Guatemalan boy alone,” she said.
I scrunched my face into a frown.
My neighbor’s eyes widened. “Not that anything’s wrong with him being Guatemalan,” she said. “We love everybody, but my sister had her young, and then there was one setback after another.… Anyway, Stevanie knew about safe sex. She’s a smart girl, too. But what can you do? Kids think they’re in love, and that’ll save ’em.” Her tongue prodded at her exposed gums where her front teeth used to be.
If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Maybe I don’t need a garage, but a privacy fence could suffice. My eyes darted to my backpack, where it waited for me inside the car. “Well, I’d better get going before traffic picks up. Thanks again for always bringing in my trash.”
“All right then.” She half-saluted then walked due south on the street.
I settled into the driver’s seat, not bothering with GPS. I knew my way to the Smokies by heart. I drove past my dumpster-diving neighbor and waved. She didn’t see with her face bowed to the road. I left my historic neighborhood of Victorian and Craftsman homes rooted in yards with mature maples and oaks. The rocking-chair dotted, fairy-lit porches gazed upon manicured turf lawns contained by picket fences and also gave side-eye to the adjacent ivy- and clover-choked lots with their homes of peeling paint, boarded windows, and sagging roofs. I merged onto I-24 East and followed that until I exited onto I-75 North, leaving Chattanooga behind.
Hours later, I pulled into the Cades Cove picnic area and geared up, pulling my dark brown spirals in a topknot, applying the dark sparkly pink of my favorite Urban Decay Psycho lipstick, pulling on wool socks, lacing my boots, buckling the hip belt of my orange Gregory backpack and cinching it taut, checking that the shoulder straps supported my pack weight, and finally clicking my sternum strap and pulling it tight across my chest. The security of my straps was like a welcomed hug. I set off on the Anthony Creek Trail.
With each step, my tight muscles loosened and settled into a familiar rhythm. The trail was an old frenemy, listening to me curse and cry out in pain as my quads begged to quit. It didn’t coddle. It didn’t boost my self-esteem. It couldn’t pass judgment, and because of that, I came to it raw and unfiltered. And so it allowed me to deal with the demons that plagued my mind. It tolerated countless monologues as I worked through pros and cons lists of: “Do I stay the course or move on?” Given that this trail had helped me obtain the clarity to stay in Chattanooga after ending my marriage, it should also help me sort out that single pink line.
As the trail paralleled Anthony Creek, my pace quickened, matching my racing mind, which busied itself identifying all the variables that had gotten me into my current predicament. I separated them by type: quantitative versus qualitative. Quantitative data was my jam because numbers don’t lie.
I reached the Russell Field trail intersection. The wood trail signs stacked perpendicular to each other akin to a street intersection:
Anthony Creek Trail
<-Crib Gap Trail 1.4
<- Picnic Area (Trailhead) 1.6
-> Bote Mountain Trail 1.9
Russell Field Trail
-> Appalachian Trail 3.5
-> Russell Field Shelter 3.5
I didn’t need any trail signs to guide me. I knew this path better than I knew my own home. Russell Field provided an easier route to Rocky Top, but I turned to remain on Anthony Creek Trail. One-point-nine miles to the Bote Mountain intersection. As the trail climbed away from the rushing waters and up the ridge, my pace slowed, and I sifted through the inventory of messy, qualitative data. The threat of coming tears burned my nasal cavity. Despite three years of healing, some memories remained fresh. Numbers don’t lie, but ex-husbands do.
With her love letter clutched in my hand, I cornered my husband in the kitchen that we had designed in our forever home. For us, forever translated into five years. Even though neither of us were fond of cooking, we had hand-selected the custom white cabinets and the black quartz countertops. I had convinced him that the counters had to be black because Black withstands almost any stain while every imperfection showed. Then there was the Moroccan tile backsplash, the Sub-Zero fridge, the blue Wolf range, the farmer’s sink, and an island to top it all off.
“How could you do this? We were trying to get pregnant.” I wanted an answer, but no answer could justify his actions.
“I never wanted to be a father.” He narrowed his blue eyes while his thin lips curled into a sneer.
“What?! I’ve never met anyone who didn’t want something but still tried for months to get it. This isn’t Stockholm syndrome. No one put a gun to your head. We talked about becoming parents, and you very much wanted this.”
His smug smile dissipated.
I continued, “But I don’t know you anymore. You lie as effortlessly as you breathe, so who knows if anything coming out your mouth is true. Or ever was. I knew it had to be her. I fucking saw her long, straight hair clinging to ketchup bottles in the fridge, and you brushed it off as me being crazy. Guess I’m not fucking crazy after all.”
Even if I burned the letter, its words had already seared into my mind. Her large and curly cursive on scented stationery—revealing their pet names, the long glances at work, the parking lot talks and hugs—had confirmed I had lost him and the possibility of a baby long ago.
I didn’t blink. My eyes stung. I paused, waiting for a response, always waiting for him to do the things he never did. “I suspected this nine months ago. Nine months!” I couldn’t shake that number’s significance. Instead of creating life, he used that time to destroy mine. “You’ve been lying to me for fucking nine months! The long workouts after work. Hiding your phone messages. Locking yourself in the bonus room to play video games. Accusing me of being paranoid whenever I questioned anything. All the fucking hair products you use now. Did you really think I’d never figure it out?” I tossed the love letter on the counter.
He could no longer refute my claims in the face of evidence. Quantitative data. I crossed my arms and cocked my head. “How insulting for you to think you could outsmart me.”
I paused, again expecting a response that wouldn’t come. He stood there with the same glare. Probing for some sign of life, I said, “You’ve lived this double life. My gut told me you were fucking around with her, but I trusted you instead of my own gut. You’re a piece of shit.”
“We didn’t have sex,” he said.
“We’ve already established you lie about everything. How can I believe anything you say?” Emotions constricted my throat. My face contorted, trying to spew the words out. “You allowed yourself to get caught up with your coworker! A, a”—I struggled to find the words to string together a complete sentence—“a married woman with a five-year-old son. All while you were trying to conceive with your wife. And you say you didn’t want to be a father? Well, riddle me this: If you didn’t want to be a father, why have an affair with a mom?”
A vein bulged on his forehead. He leaned back against the counter and crossed his muscular arms. I couldn’t recall the last time they held me.
“I would’ve been fine being a dad to her son because she’s a good mom. You’d be a horrible mom.”
I was stunned into silence. I stumbled back as if his words had balled into a fist and uppercut my chin. I gripped the Blackness of the kitchen island, struggling to regain my composure and confidence. Whoever said, “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” lied.
I could have handled him making a mockery of our marriage but calling me a bad mom was something I couldn’t forgive, something we could never recover from. Even if he had said that out of anger and spite, even if I knew he was a habitual liar, he had just articulated my worst fear. Torn me open.
“Well, I’ve been on mom duty for the last ten years,” I said. “Cooking, cleaning, picking up your dirty drawers and socks off the floor, filing taxes, scheduling all the doctor appointments, making sure you save for retirement—”
“But you couldn’t even care for a cat.”
I scoffed. “Seriously? That was, like, seven years ago! We were both stressed coming home to cat piss on the bed, and crating him for ten-plus hours a day seemed cruel. I don’t think rehoming a cat constitutes bad mothering.”
“You just push, push, push. Everything has to be done a certain way, and if it isn’t, you freak out.”
“Well, I don’t hear you complaining about all the vacations and that Tesla in the garage!” I blurted out. “It’s a far cry from me having to cosign for your Camaro when we first got married, isn’t it? If someone pushed me from being a college dropout, answering help desk calls, to becoming a highly paid network architect with all the bonuses and stock options, I’d be damn well appreciative.”
His hands gripped his hips. “Yes! I like the things we have, okay?” His right hand moved to touch his hair. Before his fingers could disrupt his gelled hair, he threw them in the air. “But have you even noticed how miserable I’ve been? You just, you just get laser-focused on achieving some goal that … that—”
My eyes widened in anticipation of something prophetic. Something logical to explain why the easygoing, quiet man I married, who had supported all my dreams, had been wilding out.
He folded his arms. “You just pushed so much that you pushed me away, okay?”
When a trail sign came into view, I filed that kitchen-scene memory back in my mental divorce folder. Like scenes from my failed marriage, I could recite the sign from memory:
Anthony Creek Trail
Russell Field Trail 1.9 ->
Cades Cove 3.5 ->
Bote Mountain Trail
Lead Cove Trail 1.2 ->
<- Appalachian Trail 1.7
At the Bote Mountain Trail intersection, I broke for water and prepared to power through the 1.7 mile climb to the Appalachian Trail, or “AT,” as us hikers called it. Powering through was kind of my MO for life. I had clung to my marriage for another six months after that fight before I resigned myself to the fact that the Happily Ever After I sought could never be with him. It was hard to accept after all the investments I had made in us. A year after our divorce, he had a whirlwind romance with some woman he had only been dating for three months, an elementary school teacher. He remarried, and six months ago, he sent me a photo birth announcement. Seeing my ex’s arms wrapped around a stranger holding their baby sent me into a tailspin. My friends called him an asshole for sending the announcement. My gut reaction agreed with them, but I had spent the last few years working hard to not breathe life into negative energy, so I sent the happy parents a gift, wishing them well. All new life was a blessing that should be celebrated, but despite me trying to see the silver lining of being replaced, Bordeaux drowned my bitterness in the months that followed. Another woman had reaped the rewards of my efforts. I suppose my ex had found his Happily Ever After, and here I was, back on the trail, staving off an emotional breakdown over a damn pink line.
What the fuck was I doing with my life?
I spotted the AT trail sign as it started to drizzle:
Appalachian Trail
Eagle Creek Trail 0.1 ->
Spence Field Shelter 0.2 ->
<- Jenkins Ridge Trail 0.3
Bote Mountain Trail
Anthony Creek Trail 1.7 ->
Lead Cove Trail 2.9 ->
Laurel Creek Road 7.2 ->
Northbound was another 1.5 miles and a final, quad-killing push to reach Rocky Top. At the trail sign, I slid my pack to the ground and guzzled water. Scents of raspberries, cedar, and vanilla wafted toward me on a light spring breeze. I turned my head south, in the direction of the perfumed air. A couple wearing matching pink, cotton-blend Breast Cancer Awareness shirts and daypacks approached the trail intersection. Not thru-hikers.
“Hey,” I greeted them in between sips.
“Hi,” they acknowledged me in unison. The woman asked, “Are you hiking to Rocky Top?”
“Yeah, how about you guys?”
“Oh, no. Spence Field was our final destination. We came up Russell Field and are heading down Bote,” the man said, nodding in the direction I had come.
“Was the weather this dreary your entire time on the AT?” I asked, looking up at the tree-filtered sky. If they had taken the Russell Field Trail, I calculated they had hiked for an hour and a half along the AT if they kept a two-miles-per-hour pace.
“Yeah, for the most part. We had a break in the clouds for a little bit but not long,” she said.
“Somehow this trail curses me. I’ve never had a clear-day summit at Rocky Top,” I said.
“What time did you start this morning?” she asked.
“Around seven.”
“You’re making great time,” she said with a smile.
“Thanks.”
They took a few photos at the trailhead before the man tilted his head and asked, “Are you from around here?”
“Oh, no. I live in Chattanooga, but I come up to the Smokies fairly often. I have a friend who lives in Sevierville. She and I hike together a good bit.”
“Oh, you’re Allyn ‘No Facebook’!” the woman said. Her face lit up like a Christmas tree.
Allyn “No Facebook” was how Mel and others in the 865 hiking community tagged me in photos. I chuckled. “Yeah, I am. How’d you know?”
“Well, you looked familiar to us when we were coming up. Your lipstick and clothes are kind of like hiker preppy. And then when you said you were from Chattanooga with a friend who lives up here”—she glanced at her hiking companion and giggled—“we knew.”
I was unconvinced my lipstick and hiking uniform were the only inputs to that conclusion. I suspected my rare status as a minority on the mountain was a bigger contributor to her guess.
“Would you take a photo with us?” he asked while removing his phone from its holster belt.
“Sure.” I picked up my pack and fastened my hip belt. As if we were members of a cheerleading squad, we positioned ourselves around the trail sign, squeezing and crouching in sync, ensuring our faces, packs, and sign were in the shot. I smiled wide, exposing my molars. Satisfied with the photos, he fastened his phone back in its holster.
“Well, I’ll have to let Mel know I ran into you,” I said.
“Oh, Miss Melinda doesn’t know us. We’ve only been on a couple of group hikes with her, and we’re always in the back.”
“I’ll still let her know I ran into you.” Thanks to Facebook, Mel would know before I made it back to my car. “Well, I better head off. I hope you two have a great rest of your hike.”
“You too,” they replied in unison.
I turned north to follow the AT as it loosely matched the Tennessee and North Carolina state border. I passed a patch of blackberry bushes that signaled the point where my ex-husband and I had turned around on my first summit attempt. He and I never summited Rocky Top together; in fact, we’d never returned to this section of the AT after that July Fourth hike, when he said his leg pain was too unbearable to continue. Years later, I came back alone, and I summitted. In doing so, I learned that alone I could achieve what I could never have done with him.
But could I, or was that just the pep talk I rallied behind?
I blinked. The drizzle camouflaged the salty tears that trickled down my face.
My divorce had maimed me in ways I never let on. I was convinced everyone saw my failure as if I had a scarlet “D” branded across my left breast. Divorcée. Over and over, I asked myself, “What did I do to deserve this?” I had done what I was supposed to do. I followed the syllabus, but I still flunked.
+Earn college degree
+Obtain lucrative job
+Buy home
+Get married
-Start family
A dash. A hyphen. A minus. A fill-in-the-blank of anything but that check mark.
I channeled my frustration into powering through the final push to Rocky Top. As I was huffing and puffing and grunting, laughter echoed ahead. I used my poles to push my body up to the summit. Four backpacks taller than most human torsos sat on the ground. Sandals and folded, silver sleeping pads were strapped to some of them. Two women—one tall and blonde, the other short and brunette—and two lanky men stood near the packs. The brunette woman busied herself with a sketchpad. Oil and sweat muddled with the scent of an approaching spring. Thru-hikers.
Rocky Top was quintessential East Tennessee, and its location had inspired the namesake song, which happened to be one of Tennessee’s ten official state songs. I smiled, knowing Rocky Top’s peak was actually within North Carolina’s borders. Once I’d caught my breath and chugged a bit of water, I engaged in conversation, maintaining my distance per the six-foot CDC recommended guideline to combat the spread of coronavirus.
“So, are you guys thru-hiking all the way to Maine, or are you flip-flopping?” I said. This time of year, they must have been trekking northbound, or “NoBo,” as us hikers called it.
The short woman with dark-haired, stocky legs answered while continuing to sketch. “Well, my goal is Harpers Ferry since I did the north section last year, but at this point, I’m going as far as I can because we may not be allowed on the trail much longer. In fact, we’re being advised to leave the trail. Technically, we’re not allowed to sleep in shelters anymore, but it was so cold last night, we slept at the Spence Field Shelter.”
The thin, blonde woman beside her said, “Hiking as far as I can go. The goal is Katahdin.” She grinned. “You thru-hiked this before?”
“Oh no,” I said while shaking my head and letting a chuckle escape. “I have no aspirations to thru-hike anything. I like flushing toilets and hot showers too much for that, so I’d only last a couple of weeks. But I have a few friends who have thru-hiked a few trails, and I admire the mental grit it takes. Where are you from?” I asked the blonde. “I can’t place your accent.”
“I’m German, but I live in England. I married an English man.” She blushed. “I’ve planned to thru-hike for over a year. I’m unsure how I can get home now that countries are closing borders, but I’ll worry about that when I’m done.”
The woman who was sketching added, “All of our normal supply sources have been wiped out with the panic buying. Even if we stay on the trail, we may not have a food source.”
My heart ached for them. Many thru-hikers dream for years of trekking the AT. They spend at least a year planning logistics and often quit their jobs or take a sabbatical if they’re not already in retirement. The mental effort of overcoming the Appalachian Trail surpasses its physical toil. Their pain resonated so deeply with me: dreaming for years, planning and investing, and then meeting an unexpected outcome. But their fight wasn’t done; they were clinging to hope. And why shouldn’t they?
“I have four protein bars I’m willing to give you,” I said. “I swear I don’t have coronavirus. I live alone and hermit in my house when I’m not on the trails. I can lay the bars on this rock in between us.” I had packed four protein bars that I wouldn’t eat on my trek back to my car.
They hesitated, but ultimately they wanted the bars. After sanitizing my hands, I placed the bars on a rock six feet equidistant from us. Once I backed up, they snatched the bars like starved squirrels. They ripped open the packaging and moaned in satisfaction, resisting the urge to inhale the bars whole.
Despite the gloomy day that matched their outlook, I wanted them to treasure that moment and bond with that peak the way I had. When there was a break in the clouds, I pointed south. “Do you see Fontana Lake?”
“Wait, no. Is that it?” the blonde asked, standing on her tippy-toes and then a boulder.
“Yeah,” I said.
“We were just there yesterday,” the sketcher said.
All four in the group marveled as clouds played peekaboo with the lake.
“I hope you guys stay on the trail long enough to see Max Patch and Carver’s Gap. Carver’s Gap is really a slice of heaven. Three-sixty views for miles. It’s less than a hundred miles south of the Virginia border.”
They continued in conversation about needing a double-zero day as I maneuvered around them, taking photos. I stowed away my camera, lifted my pack onto my back, and called out, “Good luck on your journey.” I turned my back to them and headed south, passing at least five thru-hikers on my way to the parking lot. I empathized how disappointing this all must have been for them. I wished I had packed more food.
The test strip remained on the counter, untouched since the predawn hours. I twisted my mouth. While my hike had been productive, there weren’t enough miles to sort through the entirety of my qualitative list. What was I going to do?
My phone buzzed. I glanced at the screen. Lenny’s WhatsApp photo stared at me—an Ankara headwrap covered her updo while her gold hoop earrings kissed her shoulders.
Lenny and I had been dorm mates our freshman year at Georgia Tech. Our first semester on campus, we were cordial, exchanging greetings as we passed each other, entering and exiting the communal bathroom, the dining hall, the Student Center, and Skiles. For spring semester, we signed up for the same Calculus II class and section, where we had a well-meaning but ineffective teaching assistant who struggled to solve integrals as much as we did. We teamed up as study mates. We went on to earn As in that course and became best friends. In the almost two decades that followed, our friendship had collected four degrees; spanned five continents; and survived “don’t ask, don’t tell,” a death, a divorce, and a hysterectomy.
I answered the voice call.
“Hey, I’m so sorry it took me this long to get back,” Lenny said. “We were held up at port. Things have been insane with this coronavirus. They’re looking at cutting my assignment short to get me back stateside. It’s a good thing you visited over Thanksgiving.”
“Is it really that serious?” I asked.
“Yeah. You know the Japanese don’t play. Are things not in lockdown there?”
“I mean, it depends on where you’re at, really. Like, I’m so thankful I didn’t go home for Mardi Gras this year. Things are pretty locked down there, but my family’s okay. But here?” I blew a raspberry. “It’s not the massive lockdowns like you hear about in the bigger cities. Our corporate campuses are still open, but they’ve limited in-person meetings. It seems like it’ll blow over in a month.”
Lenny sucked her teeth. “I don’t think it will. But whatever, we can talk about that later. How didn’t I know you already bought sperm, much less had three insemination rounds?!”
“Sorry, you were out at sea, and it’s been way too much to email, text, or send an audio message. And I know you’ve had your own challenges with your tour. I didn’t want to burden you.”
“Girl, stop. Tell me what’s going on. How are you feeling?”
I pushed out all the air from my lungs, forcing my belly button to my spine. “Disappointed. I don’t know if that’s the right word. Fuck, I’m angry.”
“Angry? What happened?”
I glowered in the direction of the test strip and recounted my last visit to the fertility clinic.
