Face Your Fears

Chapter 4

 

          The first thing I did once I barged my way out of the apartment complex was march towards one of the nearest convenience stands on the street corner and buy a pack of Marlboros. 

  I felt slightly guilty about this, as it’d been a considerable amount of time since I’d last inhaled any type of smoke, but smoking was the one thing I knew that would almost instantly calm me down.

  I definitely needed to calm down.

It felt like my insides were being tossed through a blender and I was hit with vertigo.

 Of course Mom had been right. Of course Mom had been right. Weren’t mothers always right, anyways?

  So Hadley really was…

Oh, hell. Now that I actually knew this was frighteningly real, I couldn’t even think of the sentence without shuddering.

  I wasn’t so sure if I was about to lean over the sidewalk and throw up everything I’d eaten in the past twenty-four hours.

  I slipped one of the cigarettes out of the pack and lit up, almost inhaling half of the entire thing in one drag.

  My feet unconsciously began to carry me towards Central Park, even though it happened to be several blocks away from the apartment.

  Even at twenty-six, Central Park was still the one place where I always went for a long, hard thinking session.

  But I didn’t think all the cigarettes in the world and a stroll through Central Park would remedy what was going on inside my head. 

  There was one thing that was gripping me like an iron vice and wouldn’t recede.

 It was fear.

  I was frightened. Actually, more than just frightened. I was scared shitless.

How was I supposed to do this? How were Hadley and I supposed to do this together?

 Having a baby wasn’t just some joke. A baby was a shock of reality, something that proved your life was no longer yours, because from the moment that little life takes its first breath, it’s your responsibility to love and care for the thing.

  A baby was frighteningly, unbelievably, completely real.

I, Archer Incitti Morales, was going to be a father.

  I could not fucking believe this.

Weren’t you careful, you idiot? I mentally berated myself as I started down a pathway in Central Park. You’re not stupid. You know if you have unprotected sex, you’re gonna wind up with a screaming, snot nosed brat.

  Well, when had been the last time Hadley and I had actually had sex?

That question made me stop and think for a moment.

  It wasn’t like there was a lack of spice or romance in our relationship. We’d been at it numerous times right after we were married, and up until recently, a year and a half later, it had still been that way. With my photography business taking off and Hadley getting more and more patients at the hospital, we’d just both been so busy lately that we barely got any time alone together.

 So, it had been awhile since the last time. And now that I thought about it…more than enough time for symptoms to start showing up.

 How could I have possibly not noticed it sooner?

Hadley had definitely gone up a cup size, and then with the extra sleeping, the random cheery moods, and the McDonald’s, it could’ve equated to her being pregnant.