It’s taken a total of four months, two weeks and six days for Ashlee to even think of telling Matt what had happened. But it wasn’t her fault. It had been two months past before she even noticed. She didn’t feel like she was gaining weight. And no one talked to her about how she was feeling. But the headaches and puking in the morning finally got to her after a month. But with only a month till he was leaving on tour, she knew it wasn’t the right time to tell him. Matt didn’t need to leave knowing he was leaving two people. She just knew she had to tell him before he came home; or before someone else told him.
That’s why she’s sitting in her hotel room with the air conditioning turned up, and eating a tub of ice cream with celery sticks. She looked at the clock seeing it was just past one in the morning.
People were walking and stumbling down the hall as she sat in the dim light of a desk lamp. The party had started at midnight. And people wondered why she asked to be on the seventh floor when she checked in. But there was nothing she could tell them.
Hearing Matt’s sweet voice echo though the hall, there was a knock on her door. Feeling her heart start pounding in her throat, she put his sweatshirt on as she went to the door. They knocked again as she looked through the spy hole. He was standing there. This wasn’t how she expected things to happen. She was waiting till he was alone. But by the looks of it, he was. Ashlee swallowed her pride and opened the door. The person she saw on the other side of the door looked at her without speaking.
“Hey, Matt; I was waiting for the right time. How did you know I was here?” He held Ashlee in a hug.
“I saw you checking in. I didn’t know what was going on.” She looked down as he let her feet touch the ground.
“Yeah, I wanted to talk to you, I didn’t really know how.” Matt kissed her forehead as he walked past her. She knew this conversation could go one of two ways.
He sat down on the lime green couch and looked at the celery and ice cream.
“Ash is something going on. I mean you hate celery.” She just stood there; looking past him, into the mirror on the wall.
“I don’t know how to start. I should just go home. Your father was right.” Getting up to hold her back from grabbing her bag and walking out the door, he didn’t know what Ashlee was planning.
“Just tell me what’s going on. This isn’t like you to come all this way to New York when we live in California. Tell me what’s wrong.” Ashlee went into the bathroom. She locked herself in there as she cried staring at her reflection in the mirror. She couldn’t tell Matt, not now. Not when she was almost five months pregnant.
The little bottle of shampoo was the only one missing from the selection. She knocked the rest on the floor. She sat in the shower crying into the white towels the hotel uses in every room. She wiped the smeared make up. Her energy was finally all gone. She pulled the sweatshirt tighter as she got some sleep. Ashlee didn’t mind sleeping it the bathtub. It wasn’t much sleep. She woke up at five to pounding on the door.
She unlocked the bathroom door as she went to see what it was. But it wasn’t her door. Matt was trying to get into his room. Ashlee went her bag seeing that one of the two key cards was missing. He wouldn’t enter without knocking.
Going back into the bathroom, she took off her first two layers. She didn’t get much further before the headache started. She went on her knees in front of the toilet, just waiting for the chunks to fly. It was the same every morning. This wasn’t like every other woman’s pregnancy. She just happened to be special.
Hearing the door click open she went to get up to lock the door. Half way there, she felt the food coming up. She knew she wasn’t going to win. The egg shell colored toilet with blue water called to her. The floor was cool on her butt. As she wiped her mouth, she felt a very familiar person pull back her hair. She let the tears roll. Matt kissed her bare shoulder.
