Free Abandon by Cassia Leo

…”
    I clear my throat and smile. “I was eight when Molly was born. I was still living with … with my mom.” Senia doesn’t need to know that I only refer to her as Elaine. “I was still living in Maine with my mom.” Man, it feels weird to call her my mom. “We were living in a shitty apartment in South Portland and I hadn’t slept the whole night, waiting for my mom to come home with Molly.”
    “Who was with you?”
    “No one,” I reply without thinking, and she looks at me with a sad look that I’m all too familiar with. “It’s not like it was the first time I had spent the night alone.” This doesn’t make the concerned look on Senia’s face dissipate, so I continue before she can ask any more questions. “Anyway, when my mom came home with Molly, I finally fell asleep on the floor next to her bassinet. I think that was one of the happiest moments of my life. So …”
    Her eyebrows are scrunched together awaiting the next words out of my mouth. “So … what ?”
    “So … I think I know why Chris and Claire got back together. And I think I want to tell them about the baby … soon.”
    “Oh.” She puts her feet up on the coffee table and sits back as she contemplates this. “I just don’t know how she’s going to feel about it. And you should be worried about how Chris is going to take it. From what I’ve gathered, he is hanging all his hopes on this whole open adoption thing. If he finds out you’re having a kid …”
    “It will kill him.”
    For the last few months, Chris and Claire have been embroiled in negotiations with the adoptive parents of Abigail, the daughter Claire gave up for adoption earlier this year. I still don’t understand how Chris could forgive Claire for doing something like that without giving him any choice in the matter. I know he thinks she did it so he wouldn’t cancel the tour and give up on his dreams, but I don’t think I’d be as forgiving in his place.
    “Do you want to kill your best friend?” she asks.
    “Maybe it will help him to think that I know a little about what he’s going through.”
    Before Senia can respond, her hip twitches and she pulls her phone out of her jeans pocket.
    “Who is it?” I ask. Not that I have a right to ask, but I can pretend I do.
    “It’s Claire,” she says. “She’s spending the night at Chris’s condo. Chris has a condo?”
    I shrug, even though I already knew this. He told me about it a couple of days ago after he and Claire got back together. “That means you can stay the night here,” I murmur as I reach over and tuck her dark hair behind her ear.
    She scoots farther away from me and shakes her head. “No, it doesn’t. I still don’t know what time she’s coming back to the dorm in the morning.”
    She grins at me as if this is just an invitation for me to convince her to stay a little longer, even if she doesn’t stay the night. “Yeah, maybe you should just go.” I don’t need to tell her that I always have breakfast with Chris on Saturday mornings. It’s a tradition that began after he broke up with Claire and we stopped doing the usual breakfast with the band on Sundays.
    “Are you telling me to leave?”
    I stand from the sofa and smile as I hold out my hand to help her up. “You should probably go so you don’t fall asleep in my bed and your whole secret is blown wide open when Claire sees your empty bed in the morning.”
    “Fall asleep in your bed?” She takes my hand and allows me to pull her up from the sofa. Our noses are centimeters apart when she replies. “What makes you think you can even get me into your bed?” She shakes my hand loose and heads for the foyer. “I guess we’ll break the news to them sometime before Christmas. Until then, I’d appreciate it if you could keep this to yourself, and … I’ll let you know how the exam goes at the health center.”
    “Thanks,” I mutter. Then in one swift motion, I take her face in my hands and plant a soft kiss on