Ripped

  “Yuri, dude, don’t do this. I swear to fucking God nothing happened. It was totally innocent.”

  He opens the front door wider and focuses his gaze on the coffee table. “Get the fuck out before I do something we’ll both regret.”

  My shoulders slump as I heave a deep sigh and head out the front door. As I step onto the porch, I turn around to apologize to both of them, but the door slams in my face.

  Fifteen

  “This is the last car ride you should take until it’s time to go to the hospital,” my mom says as she pulls up in front of our house.

  Kaia helps me unbuckle my seat belt. “There you go, Mommy.”

  “Thank you, sweetheart,” I reply, reaching for the door handle. “I’m fine, Mom. Just help me out of the car, please.”

  My mom takes my hand as I step out of her Acura SUV onto the curb. By the time I make it to the front door, I’m already out of breath. I can’t wait for this pregnancy to be over.

  My lower back is constantly aching, I can hardly eat because there’s nowhere for the food to fit, and the past two days my pelvic-floor muscles have been tight and achy with constant pressure. I constantly feel like I have to take a huge dump. I’m so over this.

  My mom follows me to my bedroom, turning down the bedcovers so I can lie down. “Are you hungry? I can bring you something to eat in bed.”

  “Mom, we just ate two hours ago at your house,” I reply, grabbing my iPad off the bedside table.

  “I know, but you’re eating for three. Those babies need all the nutrients they can get in these final days of the pregnancy.”

  I shake my head, hardly able to believe that my mom is encouraging me to eat. “I’m fine, Mom. Can you just put the girls down for the night and get my phone out of my purse? I need to call Adam and see where he is.”

  “Of course,” she replies as she sets off.

  After she brings me my phone and disappears upstairs to get the girls ready for bed, I dial Adam’s phone, but he doesn’t answer, so I leave a message. “Adam, we’re back from my mom’s. She’s getting the girls ready for bed. Where are you? I thought you weren’t going surfing today… Anyway, I—” I’m interrupted by Kaia leaping onto my bed. “Hey, sweetie, what are you doing?”

  “I came to say good night,” she says, flashing me a toothless grin. “I love you, Mommy.”

  “I love you, too, baby. I’m leaving a message for Daddy. You want to say good night to him, too?”

  “Good night, Daddy. I love you to the stars!”

  I laugh and plant a loud kiss on her cheek before she heads out. “Come back soon. I love you,” I say into the phone before I end the call.

  I place the phone on the bedside table and turn over onto my other side so I’m facing the bedroom door. I want to be able to see Adam when he walks in. At this stage in my pregnancy, being surprised has the ability to make me piss my pants, which is not at all sexy. Not that I’m going to be having sex tonight or any night for the next two months or more. If Adam were to fuck me tonight, he might break my water.

  Hmm… Maybe we should have sex tonight.

  I shake my head at this ridiculous thought as I open up my eBook and continue where I left off. But after just a few paragraphs, my eyesight blurs as my mind drifts to thoughts of what’s going to happen after these babies are born.

  The nursery is ready, my mom is all set to step in should the babies arrive after Adam leaves for Hawaii, and Adam claims he’s spoken to his sponsors about retiring after Pipeline. Though I’m not sure I believe that.

  Adam is notoriously a very bad liar. He knows that, often, people who lie add too much detail to their stories in an effort to add credibility, but it usually has the opposite effect. So Adam will usually skim over the details when lying, because he thinks this makes the lie seem more credible. It’s double-reverse psychology, as I like to call it. And it doesn’t work on me.

  My mom comes in to bid me good night before she leaves, then I continue reading for a while until I come to the end of the chapter. As a former English major, I immediately see the parallels in my life and the structure of the story. I’m coming to the end of a chapter in my life. Actually, if my life were a book, we would be coming to the end of the part told from Adam’s point of view. Our whole marriage, even our relationship in college, was always about what Adam wanted. I know having your feelings and desires ignored is not a reason to cheat, but that’s what happened when Adam and I were living together in college.

  I played the part of the nagging girlfriend who wanted to know what Adam planned to do after graduation. I thought I had a right to know, since we were living together. He played the part of the moody, angry boyfriend who was being stifled by his live-in girlfriend’s demands. The truth was that Adam wasn’t angry at me. He was angry at his father, and the world, for making him feel like he had to quit surfing and take over the family construction business.

  This is exactly why, when Adam and I got back together, I set aside any dreams I may have had and threw myself into being his number-one fan. I wanted him to know that I supported his surfing career wholeheartedly. I thought this was the right thing to do. But it seems the more I give Adam, the more he takes. And the moodiness and anger are still there, unless he’s getting high.

  I have no problem with his smoking weed. I do have a problem with his refusal to put his family first. His refusal to put me first, the way I’ve done for him for the past nine years.

  He hasn’t even bothered to ask me what I want in the nine years since we’ve been back together. I’ve tried talking to him about it a few times, but it always seems like a passing thought shared over dinner. Oh, yeah, that sounds nice. Pass the potatoes, please.

  I’ll admit I should have been more assertive about having my own life, and what’s in the past should stay there. But I’m ready to be more than just a mother now. I’m finally going to talk to Adam about my dream of working with girls and boys with eating disorders. I’ve already spoken to Dr. Broadbent of the Chrysalis Center for Eating Disorders and she’s very excited to bring me on and start training me in about six months, when the twins are old enough to be left alone with Adam or a nanny.

  I still have setbacks related to my anorexia every day. Sometimes I catch myself purposely skipping meals, throwing away food when I’m still hungry, or obsessing over calories. I’ve been in recovery for more than eleven years and I still have to take it one day at a time. I want to be able to do for others what Dr. Broadbent and the other counselors at Chrysalis did for me. If I can give just one person hope when they’re at the point in their life where they feel like they’ve lost control of everything, I’ll feel like the past eleven years of struggle will have been worth it.

  I tap the home button on my iPad so I can see the time. It’s 9:42 p.m. Where the hell is Adam?

  I set the tablet on the bedside table and pick up the phone to dial his number again. This time, he picks up on the first ring.

  “I’m right outside. I’m coming in,” he says, and I can tell he’s walking.

  “Where were you?” I ask, but the line goes dead before I can get the last word out.

  I get a sudden sickening feeling in the pit of my belly, and the hairs on my arms stand on end. As if my body can portend that something bad is about to happen. Or has it already happened?

  I try to push aside the thoughts that have plagued me for the past few months. Like dwelling on the fact that Adam had a girlfriend when we met in college, but I didn’t find out until we had been dating for a couple of weeks, after he broke up with her. Or the fact that Adam has been propositioned by hot girls in bikinis at every single surfing event he’s competed in since we’ve been together. Or the fact that I haven’t been to his past three events with him, but Lena has. Or that Lena and Adam have been spending more time together than Adam and I have.

  As Adam walks into the bedroom, I get a sharp pain in my abdomen, just above my pubic bone. I wince at the pain and Adam rushes to my side.

&nb
sp; “Are you in labor?” he asks, his voice fraught with worry.

  “No,” I reply, though the word comes out more like a growl. “Where were you? Why weren’t you answering your phone?”

  “I’m taking you to the hospital,” he says.

  I grab his wrist before he can get up. “It’s just a mild contraction. The doctor said not to worry unless they’re coming closer than six minutes apart.” I look him in the eye. “Answer the question, Adam. Where were you?”

  He stares at me for a moment, then his shoulders slump and his gaze falls to the mattress. “I was at Yuri’s. I… I went there after the interview because I told Surfline that I’m not retiring.”

  The angst is like a rope being tightened around my insides. “I knew it.”

  He holds up his hand. “Lindsay, listen. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I—”

  “What have you been thinking about?”

  His eyebrows scrunch up in confusion. “About me retiring.”

  “About you retiring? About you? Is that all you ever think about?”

  He stares at me for a moment before he turns away to face the wall. “This is so fucked up.”

  “That’s one way to put it,” I reply, clutching my belly as an uncomfortable heat builds at the base of my abdomen. “Adam, you’ve been living your dream for nine years. For nine years, you’ve been the comeback kid, traveling the world to exotic locations, being adored by fans, not for being a great husband or father. For being one of the best surfers in the world. When will it be my chance to be more than a wife and mother?”

  He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he runs his fingers through his hair. “I fucked up.”

  “Why do you keep saying that?”

  He shakes his head, still clutching his hair. “I got in a fight with Yuri.”

  The dread in my belly grows into a painful, burning knot. “What happened with Yuri? What did you do?”

  He takes a few breaths before he sits up and turns around to face me. “I was at Yuri’s with Lena.”

  “Oh, God,” I whisper. “I don’t want to know. Just get out.”

  “No, you don’t understand. It’s not what you think.”

  I cover my face to stop him from seeing my tears. He doesn’t deserve my tears. “Just get out!” I shout, my voice coarse with anger as bile rises into my throat. “Get out.”

  “Lindsay, baby.” He touches my hand and I feel as if I could vomit.

  “Don’t touch me!” I cry, roughly pushing his hand away. “Don’t you fucking touch me. Get out!” I cover my face again because I can’t bear to look at him. “I knew this would happen. I’m so fucking stupid.”

  “Nothing happened, Lindsay. Please listen to me.”

  “Get out,” I whisper, my entire body trembling with rage as my heart breaks. “Get out, Adam. You make me sick.”

  Sixteen

  I step into the hotel lobby in a daze. I don’t have any luggage or any clue how long I’ll be here. I’m a man with no home. A rootless drifter.

  The skinny guy in the suit behind the counter smiles at me. “Good evening, sir. Do you have a reservation I can look up?”

  I shake my head. “I… I just need a room.”

  “Of course,” he replies, with way too much pep for this time of night. “Will it be just you or are there any other guests staying with you?”

  I look at him almost incredulously, as if he can’t tell by the cloud of misery hanging over my head that I’m completely alone. “Just me,” I mutter.

  “Would you like a junior suite, a deluxe suite, or a grand deluxe suite?”

  I sigh, unable to believe that I have to answer such inane questions at a time like this. “I don’t fucking care. Just give me a room that’s not facing the beach. That’s all I ask.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He takes my credit card and driver’s license, then slides them back to me with the room key as he points me in the direction of the elevators. I trudge across the lobby, suddenly aware of how much space I’m taking up. I feel enormous and small at the same time. As if I’m stepping through a world of my own creation with endless possibilities from here on out, where I am the center of gravity, everything revolving around me. Yet, I also feel minuscule. As if I’ve fallen into a bottomless well, the whole world disappearing into the distance somewhere far above me, with every person I’ve ever known continuing with their lives as if I no longer exist.

  Somewhere out there, Kaia and Mila are sleeping peacefully, completely unaware that their father isn’t sleeping a few feet away from them, ready to protect them at any moment. Just a few blocks away from this hotel, Yuri and Lena are probably still fighting, not at all preoccupied with where I am or how I’m doing. The only person out there in this whole fucking world who I know is thinking about me right now is Lindsay. She also happens to be the one person who has every right to wipe me from her thoughts after everything I’ve put her through.

  I punch the button for the sixth floor and swallow the painful lump in my throat as I lean back against the wall of the elevator. When did my life set off on this collision course? If you had asked me this four months ago, I would have told you it was the moment Lindsay and I found out we were having twins. But now I realize we’ve been headed in this direction for years.

  I lie awake most of the night, thinking up ways to fix this mess. There’s no way I can lose my girls. I realize now that for a very long time, I bought into my own hype. The truth is, without Lindsay and the girls, I’m nothing.

  * * *

  The second I get back to my hotel room after the semifinal, I call Lillian again. She sent me a text message twenty minutes before my heat against Kevin Grady.

  Lillian: We’re at the hospital. The babies are coming.

  I texted her back immediately.

  Me: Is she okay? How long has she been there?

  She didn’t respond, so I texted her again.

  Me: Going into the water in 20 minutes. Please answer the phone.

  Of course, Lillian didn’t answer the phone. She’s only answered one of the dozens of phone calls I’ve put through to her since I arrived in Oahu two days after Lindsay kicked me out of the house. And she only answered that time to tell me to stop calling or she was going to block my number. But some merciful grain of humanity in her soul has found it necessary to keep me updated via the occasional text message.

  The day before I left for Hawaii, I texted Lillian asking if I could see the girls before I left. Her response cut me straight to the bone.

  Lillian: Is there a difference between not seeing them for 10 days and not seeing them for 12? It didn’t seem to matter when u told that reporter u weren’t retiring.

  I know that Lindsay has already spoken to Lena and Yuri. And Lena assures me that Yuri and Lindsay are about as understanding as we can expect them to be at this stage. Apparently, where I really fucked up was in lying to Lindsay about retiring. And until I can figure a way out of the grave I’ve dug for myself, I have a feeling I’m going to be dealing with a lot of snarky text messages from Lillian.

  I send her another message asking for an update on Lindsay’s condition, throwing in there that I won the semifinal against Kevin Grady. I don’t bother mentioning that Carlos Ferreira also won his heat against John Cruz, so we’ll both be advancing to tomorrow’s final. He’s fourteen hundred points ahead of me in the championship tour rankings. The surfer who takes first place at each event is awarded 10,000 points toward their CT rank. Second place gets 8,000 points. This means that whoever places first tomorrow wins the whole fucking tour.

  None of that will make any sense to Lillian, and I guess that’s fine. All she cares about is the well-being of her daughter and her granddaughters. And her two grandbabies who are on their way into this world soon.

  I knew when I stepped onto that plane in Wilmington that I would probably miss the birth of my twins. But Lindsay and I had planned for this. Her mom is supposed to record the birth with her phone us
ing the Ustream app, so I can watch the streaming video of the live birth here in Hawaii. Somehow, I doubt Lillian is willing to go through that kind of trouble for me today.

  But I can’t miss seeing my twins being born. I may not be there to hold them, but fuck if I’m going to miss the whole damn thing.

  When Lillian doesn’t respond to my text asking for an update on Lindsay, I sit down on the small sofa in my hotel room to think. I put my sandy feet up on the coffee table, closing my eyes as I lean my head back. I have to pull out all the stops and call Lindsay’s stepdad. There’s no other way. If there’s anyone who understands how easy it is to get on his wife’s bad side, it has to be Michael. He has to have some sympathy for me. At least, I hope he does.

  Michael answers on the third ring. “Hello?” he whispers.

  My heart clenches in my chest as I sit bolt upright. I’ve never been so happy to hear this man’s voice. “Michael, it’s Adam. What’s going on with Lindsay?”

  He’s silent for a moment, though I can hear a bit of rustling as if he’s walking. “She’s stable, but if her water doesn’t break in the next thirty minutes, they’re going to pop the sac and induce labor.”

  “Where are the girls?”

  “They’re with Lindsay’s friend Sarah. They’re spending the night there, I think.”

  “Michael, you have to record the birth for me. Please,” I plead, not bothering to hide my desperation. “Lindsay and I agreed we’d record the birth and stream it so I can watch it over here. Please, Michael. I’m begging you not to take this away from me. I know I screwed up, but I need this. Please.”

  He’s silent for a long while, then he sighs. “I’ll see what I can do. I’ll call you back.”

  “Thank you so much,” I reply enthusiastically. “You just made my night.”