Overlooked(165)

They're heading back south for a couple more dates in Louisiana, and Papa Smurf said he didn't mind us leaving at all, given the circumstances.

Now we've been here three nights, and we're sitting on the bed in our cheap motel figuring out our next move.

I figure I'm over two months now, and I still haven't seen a doctor. Papa Smurf paid decent money, but he certainly didn't provide any insurance benefits.

"Where do you want to live?" Steel asks.

We'd put our heads in the sand and avoided this question for the past month. Or maybe we're each just trying to figure things out in our own heads.

"As far as I'm concerned, we should go where you can get a job you want," I say.

"Well as far as I'm concerned, we should go where is best for you and the baby. You don't need to worry about me finding work. I don't want you to be somewhere all alone during the day. What if something happened?"

This is new, he's never raised that point before.

"What are you saying? All my family is around Colmar. We don't want to go there, trust me."

"Not there, but somewhere not too far away. Close enough where you friends or your mom or someone could come help you out or come in an emergency."

"My mom?"

I haven't even told my mom yet. I've been avoiding it, but maybe it's time to tell her, regardless if we move back to North Carolina or not.

"Yes, my baby's grandmother."

"But she was so rude to you."

"She can treat me however she wants, all I care about it how she treats my child, and you."

"But … "

Steel interrupts me, and says, "Family is important to me. I never had one, and I've been thinking a lot about it. I want the baby to know what I never did. I never knew anything my father. My mother ran away to Niagara Falls when she was pregnant, so I never met my grandparents. Hell, I don't even know if I had any aunts or uncles. I don't want that for my child."

His words break my heart. I move close to Steel, and sit alongside him, pressing my body into him. He's never told me any of this before, no matter how much I've tried to get him to open up about his past.

"You didn't know your family?" I say, my voice low.

He doesn't say anything.

"Why did your mother run away?"

"She never told me."

I don't know how else to ask this, I take a deep breath and blurt, "Is she still alive?"

"Don't know. Don't fucking care, either."

"Don't you want the baby to know her? After what you just said about family and all."

"It's different."

"How? You ran away from your mom, I ran away from my parents."

"I didn't run away from her, I ran from my foster parents."

"Oh, sorry, of course." I feel like an idiot. I knew that, it just came out. His mother mustn't have been a part of his life if he lived with foster parents.

"Did you live with your foster parents long?"

"Long enough to know I wanted out of there. Couple months."

"I don't want to go back to my parents."

"We wouldn't. We can live in Woburn or somewhere like that. We'd have our own place. That's not going back to them."

"But they were jerks."

"You haven't even spoken to them in over six months. How do you know what they'd be like now? They might've gotten over everything and are waiting for you to call."

"Why are you defending them when they were so rude to you?"

"Because they might be a bit crazy, but they ain't bad people."

"What are you talking about?"

"I mean, they aren't criminals, they aren't drug addicts. They're judgmental and rude, but that's not grounds for banishing their grandchild from knowing them."

"You're pretty forgiving," I say, my voice steeped in sarcasm.

"It's not for me, it's for my baby."

"Stop it!" I snap.

I don't know why I snapped at him, hormones probably. All this talk about what he wants for the baby, but that clashes with what I want for me.

Steel puts his hand on my belly, and all the tension vanishes from me.

"I've never felt so lucky in my life," he says, capturing my eyes in his. "At first I was freaked. But now I think that you carrying my child is the most amazing thing that's ever happened to me. It's also the most daunting, and I don't want to fuck it up."

"You really think it's the best thing?"

"I know it is."

I look away, breaking our eye contact. What he says makes sense. Life isn't just about the two of us anymore. I have to think about the baby's needs.

"Maybe."

He kisses my cheek, and says, "Plus, we're going to want the free babysitting, for all the times I want to take you back to the Motel 6 and fuck you senseless."

Laughing, I say, "I'll try calling my mom and see how she is."

The minute the words leave my lips, my laughing stops and my chest fills with butterflies.

"Should I phone now?"

"No reason not to."

The butterflies triple. I know. I fish out my phone and turn off the airplane mode. It's the first time I've taken it off airplane mode since the day I arrived at the carnival. There wasn't a need to call anyone there, we all lived and worked together. The only thing I used my phone for was playing Candy Crush.

It beeps and chimes and vibrates like crazy. The number eighty-two shows in the bubble on the messages symbol. Somehow I manage to pretend I didn't see it, and scroll through my contacts. My thumb stops on Courtney, and I hit dial.

"Emily," she shouts, her voice bursts out the earpiece on my phone.

"Hey, how are you?"

"How am I? How are you, Courtney?"

"I'm good. Really good."

"And Steel?"

"Yeah, he's great too." I look at Steel and shrug.

"You're still together?"

"Absolutely."

"Where are you?"

"Is this twenty questions?"

"Are you kidding me, you took off in the night months ago, and you don't think I have some questions?"

"Fine, but I need to ask some first, then I'll be able to tell you what's going on."

"What's going on?"

"I said I'd tell you after."

"What do you want to know? How berzerk your parents went after you left?"

"Have they calmed down?"

"I don't know. They stopped talking to a lot of people. All the gossip was about you and they got tired of listening to it."

That's hardly surprising.

"Because they disagreed with it?"

"No idea. I saw your brothers at this year's carnival and asked how your parents were doing. They said your parents are heartbroken."

"That could mean a lot of things. Like they're heartbroken because they miss their daughter, or because their daughter ruined their reputations."

"I wish I could tell you. Why call now anyway? Everything okay?"

"Yeah, um, if I tell you you have to promise not to tell anyone."

"Of course. I'm no gossip, you know I hate that about this town as much as you."

"I'm pregnant."

Courtney gasps. "No," she says.

"Yes, and Steel and I got married."

"Holy crap, I can't believe all this."

"Believe it, it's true. We're thinking about moving back to the area, for the sake of the baby, but I'm trying to get a sense of how my parents would react."

"I'm sure they're rather have you here than somewhere else. Especially if you have a baby."

"That's me. What about Steel? Because he's never leaving me, and if they can't accept that, then there's no point in me moving back."

"What do you want, me to ask around or anything?"

I sigh. "No, I'll phone."





Into the Void (Steel)

We left Memphis a couple days ago. For the past two nights, we've been staying at a cheap motel in the Cherokee National Forest. It's real pretty here, and I've taken Emily hiking.

She still hasn't phoned her parents.

The idea was that we'd leave Memphis and go back to Woburn. We can meet up with her parents there on neutral territory. The problem is, she hasn't phoned them yet. Which is why we stayed in the forest a second night.

Now I've told her not to phone at all until we get there. If she phones now and they freak, she won't want to go back to the area at all. And I want my baby to have a family.

"Ready?" I say, holding open the passenger car door for her.

"As I'll ever be," she says and gets into the car.

I take her hand and bring it to my lips. "You got nothing to be nervous about. You want to move to be near family with your husband and soon-to-be baby."   





 

"I hope you're right."

"Why? What do you think's going to happen? That they'll lock you in your room again like a little kid?"

"No. Yes. If they could, I'm sure they would."

"That ain't going to happen, Goldie. I'll bet they've grown up since you've been gone."

We drive the next five hours, talking about all sorts of things, but avoiding the issue of her parents.

Mostly, I'm wondering how I'm ever going to get a regular job. How can I?

"I think we should get married for real," I say.

"We are," she says.

"I mean in the eyes of the law."

Emily turns her head, and after we pass a transport truck, I glance at her.

"You're right," she says.

"Awesome," I say.

I flash her my smile, and rub her thigh. I never thought I'd ever suggest a legal marriage, but then I never thought I'd be living outside the carnival. I've got to do this right for my kid, and right now, it's the only way I can figure to be able to get a good enough job.