TW: Miscarriage

The siren screams through the apartment, sharp and accusing. Tessa and I bolt to the kitchen, our socks sliding on the hardwood as we round the corner. Thick, acrid smoke pours from my pot of green beans—or what used to be green beans. Now they’re just blackened offerings to the god of my inadequacy in the kitchen.

“Jesus, Viv!” Tessa coughs, already grabbing for a dish towel to wave at the detector. “I told you,” she attempts to make me laugh through the chaos, her voice strained as she fans the smoke toward the open window. “We should’ve just gotten takeout. Wesley’s folks don’t care about homemade.”

Easy for her to say. His family is also her family. They’re cousins. I’m still the girlfriend, three years in, trying to prove I’m more than the girl with the “cute little dream” of opening a boutique. That’s what Wesley’s mom called it last Thanksgiving. Cute. Little. Like my ambitions were a puppy I’d eventually outgrow.

I cough the smoke out of my lungs, covering my mouth with my arm. The acrid taste coats my throat. “I should’ve just cooked fajitas. At least I would’ve made something I actually like.”

“You hate green beans,” Tessa reminds me, dumping the charred remains into the trash. The smell makes my stomach turn, but then again, everything makes my stomach turn lately.

“Wesley’s mom loves them,” I mutter, scrubbing at the burnt pot with more force than necessary. “She mentioned it that time we went to that French restaurant. Remember? She ordered the haricots verts and went on about how her mother used to make them every Sunday.”

Tessa gives me that look—the one that says I’m trying too hard, that I need to relax, that Wesley’s parents will come around eventually. But Tessa doesn’t understand what it’s like to be on the outside looking in. She’s already in.

After about twenty minutes of clearing the smoke and cleaning up my charred green beans, a car door slams in the driveway. My heart jumps into my throat. Please let it just be Wesley. Please don’t let his parents be early, catching me with my hair smelling like smoke and my kitchen looking like a crime scene.

“Hello?” The familiar husky voice echoes to the kitchen. Thank goodness. Tessa and I meet him halfway, and I can see the amusement already forming in his face as he takes in my disheveled appearance. His hair is windblown, tie loosened after a long day at as a patrol officer. He’s beautiful in that effortless way that makes me forget, just for a moment, about everything else.

“Hey hun,” I start, my voice smaller than I intended. “I kind of had an accident while I was trying to cook for your parents.”

Wesley lands a soft kiss on my lips, then my cheek, his hand cupping my face with a gentleness that makes my chest ache. “It’s okay. My parents said they couldn’t come anyway. Something about my dad’s work friends having a party.”

The relief floods through my body from head to toe, so intense it makes my knees weak. I have to steady myself against the wall. If I could just get Wesley without his parents, my life would be perfect. His dad isn’t so bad—he asks about the boutique sometimes, even if his questions feel more like gentle interrogations about my business plan. But his mom. God, his mom. She always drinks at these dinners, and she can’t hold her liquor well. Last time, she’d put her hand on my shoulder and slurred something about how “some girls are meant to be wives, not businesswomen.” Wesley had driven her home early, apologizing the whole next day, but the words had already burrowed under my skin. Usually if she comes with his dad, she’s not too bad since he controls her intake, measuring out her wine like she’s a child who can’t be trusted. But alone with just us? I’ve been dreading it all week.

He puts my chin between his thumb and index finger, tilting my face up to meet his eyes. They’re an emerald green in the afternoon light streaming through the window. “That gives us the opportunity to keep trying.” My stomach twists. Trying. That word used to mean something different between us.

“Okay,” Tessa throws her hands up in the air, backing toward the front door with an exaggerated grimace. “I’m sure you guys don’t need me for that part of the evening. I will see you later, Viv.”

The door closes with a soft click, and suddenly the apartment feels too quiet, too intimate. Wesley starts kissing me with more passion, his hands finding the small of my back, eventually making his way to my neck—that spot just below my ear that usually makes me melt into him. But now my stomach is in knots. I haven’t told him. I haven’t told him that it happened again. The cramping started three days ago at work. I’d been reorganizing the storage room at the office where I work, moving boxes of inventory, when I felt that first familiar pull low in my abdomen. By the time I got home that night, I knew. The bleeding started a few hours later. This is the second time in eight months. Everything going on with my job. My manager hinting that corporate might be downsizing our location. The stress of his parents coming over, I just never got the chance to tell him. Or maybe I never found the courage. How do you tell someone you’ve lost something they didn’t even know you had?

Again.

I start to slowly pull away, my hands on his chest, putting space between us even though every part of me wants to collapse into him and sob. “Something wrong, Vivian?” Wesley brings my hands to his mouth, kissing my knuckles one by one. It’s such a tender gesture that it nearly breaks me.

I shake my head, unable to meet his eyes. “No, I’m just hungry.” I attempt to laugh, but it comes out brittle and false.

“Good idea,” he continues, seemingly oblivious to the way my voice cracked. “Chinese? Or something very filling.” Wes towers over me, whispers in my ear in that low voice that used to make me shiver with anticipation. “You’re gonna need that fuel for later.”

Later. As if my body hasn’t betrayed me. As if I haven’t spent the last three nights curled up in bed, feeling empty and hollow and broken.

“Chinese sounds perfect,” I manage, stepping away to grab my phone from the counter. Wesley orders our usual—kung pao chicken for him, vegetable lo mein for me—and I busy myself setting the table while we wait. Two plates. Two sets of chopsticks. Two glasses of water. Everything perfectly arranged, like if I can just get the surface details right, the underneath won’t be falling apart.

When the food arrives, we sit across from each other at my small kitchen table, the same table where we’ve shared hundreds of meals. Wesley talks about his day, something about a difficult client and his father breathing down his neck about closing the deal. I nod in the right places, make sympathetic sounds, but I’m not really hearing him. I push my noodles around my plate, managing only a few bites. My appetite has been gone since it happened. Everything tastes like cardboard, and my stomach feels like it’s full of stones.

“You’re not eating,” Wesley observes, his chopsticks pausing halfway to his mouth.

“I had a big lunch,” I lie. He studies me for a moment, and I can see the concern starting to form in his expression.

Wesley knows me too well. Three years together, and he can read my moods like a book. “Viv,” he says softly. “What’s going on?”

And there it is.

The opening. The chance to tell him. The words are right there, crowding behind my teeth.

I was pregnant. I lost the baby.

Again.

I didn’t even know until it was gone.

I’m sorry.

I’m so sorry.

But what comes out instead is. “I’m just tired. Work has been stressful.” It’s not entirely a lie. Work has been stressful. But it’s not the truth either, and the weight of it sits between us like a third person at the table.

Wesley reaches across and takes my hand. “You know you can talk to me about anything, right?”

I nod, blinking back tears. “I know.”

“Is it the boutique? Are you worried about the loan application?”

“Yeah,” I seize on the excuse gratefully. “The bank still hasn’t gotten back to me, and I’m worried they’re going to reject it.” It’s a real concern, one I’ve been carrying for months, but right now it feels trivial compared to the grief lodged in my chest.

“They’d be idiots to reject you,” Wesley says fiercely. “Your business plan is solid. You’ve done the research, found the perfect location. You’re going to make it happen, Viv. I believe in you.” His faith in me makes everything worse. How can I tell him I’ve failed at something even more fundamental? Two times now, my body has failed to do the one thing it’s supposed to be designed for.

“What if your parents are right?” The question slips out before I can stop it. “What if I’m not cut out for this?”

“Hey,” Wesley stands up, comes around the table, and kneels beside my chair. “My parents don’t get a say in your dreams. Especially not my mom when she doesn’t know when to keep her opinions to herself.” He cups my face in both hands. “I love you. I love your ambition. I love that you want more than what everyone expects you to settle for. Don’t let anyone make you doubt yourself. Especially my family.”

I want to tell him that it’s not his family making me doubt myself. It’s my own body. It’s the universe telling me that maybe I’m not meant for any of this—not the boutique, not the family, not the future I’ve been dreaming about.

“I love you too,” I whisper instead, because that part, at least, is uncomplicated truth. Wesley kisses me, soft and sweet, then returns to his seat.

We finish dinner in comfortable silence, or what would be comfortable if I wasn’t drowning in secrets. When we’re done, Wesley stands to clear the plates. I watch as he stacks them, scraping the leftovers into the trash—my plate still mostly full, his scraped clean. He runs water in the sink, and I sit there staring at my empty plate, the chopsticks resting across it like a small bridge to nowhere. Empty.

Like my womb. Like my arms. Like the future I’d started imagining before my body decided I didn’t get to have it.

“Leave them,” I say suddenly. “I’ll do dishes later.” Wesley turns, studying me again with those perceptive eyes.

“You sure you’re okay?”

No.

“Yes. Just tired.”

He accepts this, but I can see he doesn’t fully believe me. He’s giving me space, waiting for me to come to him when I’m ready. That’s what Wesley does—he waits, he’s patient, he trusts me to find my way to honesty. But what if I never do? What if I become a collection of empty spaces, things lost and never mourned? Wesley pulls me up from the chair, wraps his arms around me.

I press my face into his chest and breathe in his familiar scent—cologne and laundry detergent and something uniquely him.

“I’m here,” he murmurs into my hair. “Whatever it is, whenever you’re ready, I’m here.” And that’s when I break.

The tears come silently at first, then in great shaking sobs that I can’t control. Wesley holds me tighter, not asking questions, just letting me fall apart in his arms. “I lost it,” I finally gasp out between sobs. “I lost the baby. Again.”

His body goes rigid, then his arms tighten around me. “Again?” His voice is strained. “Viv, when—”

“Three days ago. I couldn’t—” The words tangle in my throat.

Wesley pulls back just enough to look at my face, his hands on my shoulders. His eyes are bright with tears. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know,” I sob. “I was scared. I thought maybe if I didn’t say it out loud, it wouldn’t be real. And then with your parents coming and work falling apart and the boutique and everything—”

“Vivian.” He says my name like a prayer. “A baby. Our baby. Twice. And you carried that alone?”

The pain in his voice makes me cry harder. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” he says fiercely, pulling me back against him. “I’m not mad. I just wish…I wish you’d let me be there for you. I wish I’d known.”

We stand there in my kitchen, holding each other while I cry out eight months of grief I’ve been carrying alone. The empty plates sit on the counter, waiting to be washed. The burnt pot is still in the sink. The smoke alarm has long since gone silent.

“We’ll figure this out,” Wesley says eventually, his voice rough with emotion. “Together. No more secrets, okay? Whatever happens, we face it together.”

I nod against his chest, unable to speak.

“I love you,” he whispers. “And I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” And finally, held in his arms with my secret no longer burning a hole inside me, I start to believe that maybe we’ll be okay.

Maybe the empty plate doesn’t have to stay empty forever.