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In my class, Leanne had looked terrible. Not the kind of terrible that someone looks if they just have a hangover or didn’t sleep much. It was the look of someone under a severe strain—her complexion paler than usual and her eyes dull and distracted. She didn’t look directly at me, wouldn’t meet my gaze. Once I even called on her, said her name out loud, and she didn’t answer. She didn’t even hear me. I was worried. I’d talk to her as soon as class was over—that was the plan.
Until another student came up to me at dismissal and started having some kind of anxiety attack about his final project and how the screen on his laptop broke and he didn’t back up the file. I tried to talk him down quickly, keeping an eye out for Leanne so I could signal for her to wait. But she slipped out while I was reassuring the student that I was sure it would be fine, and he had several days to try to retrieve the file. I sent him to the student support lab to see if they could help him access his essay. Leanne was long gone by then.
RU ok?I texted her,I wanted to talk to u after class.
She didn’t respond. I checked my phone more times than I’d like to admit that day, and the fact was, she left it on ‘read’ and didn’t reply. Something was wrong. It wasn’t like her at all. If it was her dad, if his health had taken a turn, she wouldn’t have been in class. I reassured myself that it couldn’t be too serious, but I knew her. She’d show up to class and work unless she was in the middle of a life-or-death emergency. This was something big, I thought. I’d learned to trust my gut, and my instincts were telling me that Leanne was suffering, that something was very wrong.
At the gym that afternoon, I hung out on the main workout floor instead of going into my office. I was waiting for Leanne to show up for her scheduled shift. She was always fifteen minutes early, so we’d have a chance to talk before her session. But when she showed up, it was one o’clock on the dot. She breezed right past me, didn’t even look in my direction. She went straight to Melody who was waiting for her session to begin. They walked over to the treadmills, their heads together conspiratorially, and she never looked back. I waited patiently until her session ended and then called her into my office.
Leanne didn’t make an excuse or try to avoid me then. She walked in and sat down heavily in the chair across from me. Her whole body drooped, the brightness she’d put on for Melody’s training had drained out of her like the effort was just too much of a burden to keep it up.
“Hey, are you okay?” I said, my voice soft.
She nodded, but she didn’t even look up to meet my eyes or say a single word. I knew something was wrong. She was holding something back, and I needed to know what it was.
“Lee,” I began to ask her. The door swung open and JT from the reception desk bustled in.
“Hey, boss? Sorry but we’ve got trouble out front. Can you come?”
“Sure,” I said tightly. I wished like hell that I’d scheduled a manager for this shift instead of covering it myself so I could see Leanne.
“Wait here, please,” I said to her in a low voice and followed JT out front.
By the time I’d defused the dispute about a charge on a membership auto-renewal—the man didn’t want to keep paying for his soon-to-be-ex-wife’s gym membership when he swore that she’d met her lover in a martial arts class—fifteen minutes had passed. I knew when I returned to my office that she wouldn’t be there. Leanne hadn’t waited, or if she had, she’d given up when the issue took so long.
Frustrated, I busied myself until her next training session ended so I could intercept her before the yoga class she was covering started up. When I emerged from my office to try to catch up with her, I found myself confronted with the soon-to-be-ex-wife from the previous front desk drama.
She was crying and attempting to apologize for all the trouble and offering to pay cash for her membership. I tried to get JT to handle it, but he was shooting me panicked looks. I knew if I walked away and left him to it that he’d bolt for the bathroom. So, I tried to calm her down, wondering exactly how many hysterical people were going to get in my way today. Nothing I said sped up the process at all. When the ex-wife finally calmed down and left, I glanced at my watch and saw that the yoga class was already underway.
Granted, I’d had issues to deal with at the front desk, but Leanne knew I wanted to speak with her. She could’ve waited for me, could’ve postponed the yoga class for five minutes, letting them know she had to talk to me about something important. It didn’t make sense to blame her for not waiting around for me to have time to talk to her, but it made me suspicious. Something was off with her, and it seemed like her haggard appearance and her reluctance to talk to me pointed to the obvious. That she was rethinking things now that the semester was coming to an end. She may have changed her mind about us and didn’t know how to tell me. My chest hurt just thinking about it.
When she’d yawned and gotten off the phone so quickly after I let her know I told my friends about us, I should have taken notice. She might have been uncomfortable about that or felt pressured. Just because I was so sure about her didn’t mean that she felt the same way. Maybe she needed time and I’d acted like we were already an established couple. She was pulling away from me, not texting back, not being available when I had expressed a need to talk to her. It didn’t look promising. I needed to tell her that if she wanted me to take things slow, I would.Just don’t give up on us, I thought.
I resorted to waiting by the door so I could catch her when she left. She shouldered her backpack, looking run down and miserable, and headed for the door when she saw me and stopped.
“Can we talk?” I said in a low voice. She nodded and followed me into my office, lagging behind a little like she could barely lift her feet.
She dropped into the chair and let her backpack slide to the floor. She looked edgy, maybe close to tears. There was nothing to do but tell her what I was thinking.
“I’m sorry if I pushed you too far when I told my friends about us. If you want me to back off and take things more slowly, I will. And if you’ve changed your mind and you just don’t want to be with me, you can tell me,” I said. My voice was strained, trying to hold in the emotion and speak calmly.
Leanne finally looked up and met my eyes. Her face contorted and she burst into tears, sobbing into her hands. I dropped to my knees beside her chair and took her hands, gently drawing them away from her face.
“What’s wrong? You can tell me,” I said, making myself stay back even though I wanted to gather her in my arms and kiss away her tears. “Lee—”
“I—I do want to be w-with you, but I’m scared of what you’ll think,” she managed to say, her voice breaking.
“What I’ll think about what?”
“The baby. I’m pregnant, Aaron. I’m sorry. I didn’t plan it, I just—” she broke off.
Pregnant. With my baby. Our baby. Stunned, I held her hands in mine for a moment before I let them go so I could grab her and hug her. Joy filled my chest as I held her close.
“I love you, Leanne. I love you,” I told her.
She looked at me, bewildered, through her tears. Then she smiled. “You do? I love you, too!” she said, and I kissed her, loving her, loving her smile against my lips and our future together and the baby we had on the way.
EPILOGUE
