Reeve sneered. “Bridge?”
“Yeah.” For half a second I worried Amber had told him this story – it was a name he’d certainly not forget.
Except the Amber I knew never looked back. Never talked of the past. And Reeve was likely just making fun of the awful name. “Terrible, wasn’t it? Anyway, he was an okay enough guy. Much older than her. Fifty or so. Wealthy. She was really into him, but I don’t know. Let’s just say, she’d done better. But she said she loved him. Really loved him. And he was good to her, so I was happy for her.”
Bridge had been a drinker, but Amber was a complete coke addict by then. Together they made sense somehow.
“I, on the other hand, had just left asshole number too-high-to-count, because when I’d told him I was pregnant, he thought he could give me an abortion by kicking the shit out of me.” Richard had been his name. He was married, running for a seat on the senate, which he’d lost. Karma sometimes works out.
“You were pregnant?”
I nodded. Admitting an unplanned pregnancy always seemed to open the door to judgment, more than admitting a drug addiction or an interest in sexual perversity. Not that I’d told anyone about my baby.
Perhaps it was my own judgment that I’d been avoiding.
As if to back that theory up, Reeve’s expression was absent of condemnation and full of something else – compassion, maybe? “Did he —?”
“He didn’t succeed,” I interjected, “but he left me in bad shape. And, as she always did when I got in trouble with a guy, Amber came to my rescue.”
Now Reeve’s brow furrowed and I realized too late what I’d said. “Amber?”
Fuck.
I’d been so careful the whole time I’d been with him to never mention her name, and now I’d let it slip in the worst story ever.
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
My heart pounded so hard it felt like it was coming from my stomach as much as my chest. My hands felt sweaty, and my throat dry and chalky. I coughed, pretending I’d gotten something caught in my throat while I talked myself through recovery.
There could be lots of people with the same name, right? My Amber didn’t have to be his Amber. There wasn’t any way to recognize her from this story was there? That I could never know since I had no idea what she’d told Reeve and what she hadn’t. All I could do was hope.
When I felt confident enough about it, I said, “Yeah, that was her name. Amber.” Innocently, I smiled up at him. “Why?”
He shook his head, incredulous, perhaps. “It’s just odd. Amber is the name of the woman who reminded me of you.”
“Ah. Strange coincidence. I hadn’t realized it was that common of a name.” I picked up a stick from the ground and poked at the fire, hoping the act would distract or calm my panic attack.
“Funny that we both have an Amber that had an impact on our lives.” Reeve’s eyes narrowed as he considered me. “Anyway. I didn’t mean to interrupt. Go on.”
I cleared my throat and dove in as if the name situation was no big deal. “I didn’t have any money. Didn’t have anywhere to go. I’d been instructed to take it easy until my body fully healed.” Specifically – no sex. “Which meant I couldn’t depend on, um, my usual methods of survival. Besides, I’d decided with a baby I didn’t want to do that anymore. I had to find a better life.”
“You were going to keep it?” Again, there wasn’t judgment in his tone. There may have even been awe.
“Yeah. Dumb, I know.”
“Not dumb. It was yours.”
My throat tightened. Even Amber hadn’t understood my reasons for not terminating the pregnancy. But Reeve had hit it square between the eyes – I’d never had anything that had been mine. Earned and created by myself rather than given to me by someone else. That tiny multiplication of cells, though its makeup was half dependent on a man, was still half dependent on me. On my existence.
It was the first time I’d felt there was a reason to my life.
The only time – until I’d gotten the call from Amber.
“So she invited me to stay with her and Bridge until I got on my feet.” I tossed the stick to the ground and waved at the smoke, pretending that was why I was choked up and teary.
But Reeve wasn’t stupid. He knew. He didn’t say anything, though. Just waited for me to go on.
I still coughed to keep up the act. Cleared my throat again. Plunged ahead. “It was great for the first couple of weeks. Bridge seemed generous. He gave me whatever I needed. I had my own room in his mansion. I got to be with her. And I was growing a child. It was maybe the best time in my life.
“But it was all a mirage. The more time I spent with them the more I realized it. Underneath Bridge’s nice-guy exterior, there were dark undertones that she never noticed because she was out of her mind addicted to cocaine.”
“Dark undertones?”
“Well, one time when they were both high, I watched him fingerbang a stray cat while she looked on and giggled. When he moved to reach for the fire poker, I left the room.”
Bile gathered in the back of my throat. God, if I couldn’t get through this part of it, how the hell was I going to get through the rest?
It didn’t matter how. The words were surging now and wouldn’t be stopped. “I tried to talk to my friend – to Amber – about it. But Bridge had never done anything to hurt her, and that’s all she really cared about. And I get it. I do. He wasn’t married and he treated her like more than a mistress. Like a wife. Let her run his house and play Rich Girl of Beverly Hills, and that was really all she’d ever wanted in her life. To feel safe and get to be in charge of things.”