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“Nah, I ate, see ya in the morning.”

He left to walk the perimeter of the house, keep me safe, surround me with protection. All I could do was sigh. I turned on the television and watched The Office, season 3, an episode I had watched too many times before. I still laughed and that felt good.

Magnus and I had been looking forward to a new kind of night, taking care of Ben, just the three of us. It would have been a chance to be ‘parents’ even if it was just pretend. And that was... I really really wanted to take care of a baby, like I would have been if I hadn’t lost ours.

Plus we were going to be mostly alone in our house, something we rarely got. I thought back on that first night, when I spent the night in Magnus’s room, while he slept in the chair.

That had been a lovely night full of fresh hope and getting to know each other. We needed more of that. Our time together was always brief and too far apart.

But he would be home tomorrow morning.

I went to the laptop on the kitchen counter, a stack of midwifery and birthing books beside it because I had been researching, and googled my name, Kaitlyn Sheffield.

I was in the news.

There was a screenshot: me, a little out of focus, in the midst of writhing, my lips parted sexily, a blur applied to my naked parts, because this was the ‘news’ after all. The caption said, “The private videos of former YouTuber, Kaitlyn Sheffield, are released as part of a YouTube ratings battle.”

“Fuck you, I’m not a ratings battle.”

I checked YouTube and the live links all said, “We are unable to show this content.” Someone had taken the videos down already.

Unless of course I kept looking.

I didn’t want to, but I did, scrolling deeper into the Google search results until I found a link on page two. And there I was having sex with Braden. He was talking to me, saying sweet, stupid, and sometimes sexy things, and I was nodding and acting like I was turned on. I closed my laptop lid. I opened it again and cleared my search history.

I started a list, number one, hire a lawyer.

I didn’t think I would be able to sleep.

Magnus had a son.

He might right now be in the future seeing her. The mother of his son. Probably not. But he could. I didn’t really understand what he thought about her, felt about her. He hadn’t given me a clear explanation. And now there was a child.

I kind of wondered if I was in shock because I was taking it really well considering.

But maybe it was a little like being up on a shelf, there would be a time coming to deal with the emotions of all of this.

Was I abandoned again?

I didn’t feel like it, maybe because I had made the choice.

Ultimately from now on, this was what I decided to do.

That was a relief having decided.

I finally curled up on my bed and fell asleep.

19 - KAITLYN

Iwoke up very early. I opened the curtains and looked out on a brisk, windy, but clear day. The day after a storm was usually a pretty good day. There would be a lot of rubbish to deal with, but yeah, the air was fresh. The sky blue. Wisps of clouds racing from horizon to horizon above.

I padded into the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee and in the fridge found the breakfast Zach had left me — plain yogurt. A note in his scrawl said: the granola is in the pantry. I had never once liked granola. Unless it was on ice cream and that was only because the ice cream masked the taste.

Irritated, I checked the pantry. The granola box was on top of a box of brand new mixed-fancy donuts. With a note: a heart, signed ‘Emma and Zach.’ Under it, in parentheses it said, ‘You should really eat better,’ in Zach’s scrawl.

I said to the empty room, “Well, you’re my chef, if I eat badly who’s to blame, really? See how I got you there?” I opened the lid. The assortment was magical: frosted, sprinkled, glazed, baked. I decided which ones Magnus would like and I picked the ones I would eat and while the coffee brewed, I took a bite of each of them. Because it was an empty house and I could.

I pulled a sweatshirt on over my head, a pair of flannel pajama pants on and a pair of wool socks on my feet, and carried a stack of cloth napkins under my arm, the box of donuts, and two mugs with a carafe of coffee out to the deck. I returned for the jug of milk. There were two wooden rocking chairs out there, close to the house, right beside each other, protected from the wind. It was eye-level to the beach. My views stretched to the windswept sea grass and the frothy foaming deep green sea beyond. Actually the color was more like that Gingham filter on Instagram, like a deep green but with most of the green taken away. It was beautiful. The direction of the wind was perfect for keeping my hair out of my eyes. Three birds were flying and swooping and cawing out over the beach.