18: Bitch

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18: Bitch

I had been at Laina's for a full week before I heard from Drew. There had been less than no contact between us, and it seemed like my text about needing space had been taken beyond literally, since last I had heard (or Laina had heard, since she Googled his latest whereabouts like the creeper she was), Drew was in LA, bloody thousands of miles away.

I had always known he was flighty from random articles I had read over the last couple of years (admittedly they were on the shitty Daily Mail, but we'll just ignore that fact) on how his relationships always ended on his terms, and always resulted in him running a million miles in the opposite direction. Bloody hell.

Laina had worked from home that week that I was there, insisting that she was okay to do that, although I still wondered how you could matchmake over the phone and from home.

It was on Friday that I got a call from Drew.

'Hello?' I'd answered the phone without looking at the caller ID, having been asleep in Laina's huge sleigh bed that we had been sharing the past week, the phone buzzing beneath the pillow. It had been like a weeklong slumber party, minus the jokey boy talk and crap makeup application, since Laina had taken a course on doing wedding makeup on a whim when we were seventeen.

I blearily rubbed my eyes, yawning, though every ounce of drowsiness disappeared as soon as I heard him speak.

'Hi. It's me.'

There was a pause, during which I tried to stop my heart from completely leaping out of my chest at the familiar sound of his velvety voice. Mother of fudge, I had missed it: the way it was so damn expressive, the way his laugh sounded... I missed the arsehole so much that it felt like a part of me was lost, and the feeling hit me so hard and abruptly that I felt winded.

'Hi,' I replied breathlessly. 'Are you all right?'

'Yeah, I'm doing well.'

Another moment of silence. At the rate it was taking us to communicate about five words to each other, I probably could have given birth to Jelly and ten other babies.

'I was just calling-' Drew started to say, just as I began to ask, 'Are you-'

'You go first,' I said with a small, awkward laugh.

Laina had stirred awake by now, and I felt bad for waking her, although she didn't seem to mind. She looked amused as she listened intently to our conversation, propping her head up on her elbow and stifling a drowsy yawn in her hand and blinking herself awake.

'I was just calling to ask if you wanted me to come today,' Drew queried. 'To the scan, I mean.'

His voice was strained, its expressiveness relaying the tension that was between us, and it made my blood surge at the fact that things had become so painfully awkward between us.

I was due for my scan at the hospital since I had hit the nineteen week mark, meaning I could potentially find out whether Jelly was a baby girl or a baby boy. My heart raced a little at the fact he had remembered that it was today.

'Are... are you back from LA?' I queried.

'Yeah,' he replied, thankfully not asking just how I knew that that was where he had been, because I didn't exactly want to admit to Google stalking. 'I wanted to speak to you properly before it, though,' he added after another break.

'Mm,' I agreed.

'Go for breakfast,' Laina mouthed, pointing from me to the phone.

Quickly glancing at the clock on Laina's bedside table, I replied, 'Well er, my appointment at the hospital is at half one, and it's just hit half nine now. Did you - do you want to go out for breakfast or meet up just before lunch or-?'

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