Love, Maybe (baby?), page 1
Love, Maybe
(baby?)
Hazel Parker
Copyright 2022 by Hazel Parker - All rights reserved.
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Epilogue
Chapter 1
Raven
“Is that coffee?” Michelle asks, climbing out from behind a clothes rack with pins between her teeth.
I nod and hold out the carton with Starbucks cups.
“Oh, God, just what the doctor ordered. I swear I’m sleepwalking at this point.”
I take my cup and sip the scalding liquid. It’s Heaven on Earth.
“How are things going?” I ask.
“I think we’re getting there. I know it’s always this crazy before we do Fashion Week, but every time I can’t believe how bad it gets.” She grins at me. “I love it, though.”
I smile at her. I love it, too. After studying fashion design in New York, I moved to Paris and started my own label. It’s been five years. The first year, I was sure I was going to fail on my ass and run back home with my tail between my legs. I barely sold anything, I got further and further into debt, and I was just about ready to give up.
When I met Michelle, everything changed. She saw my vision, understood my style, and she ran with it. The cash injection she offered as my partner didn’t hurt either.
And now, five years later, we’re representing Ruby Blue at the New York Fashion week. I’ve done two Paris Fashion Weeks in the past two years, and it was incredible. We’re here because it’s time to expand. If someone here likes my designs enough, I’m considering another branch of my fashion house right here in New York.
But I’m not going to get ahead of myself. I know what it’s like to get my hopes up, only to have my dreams dashed. My main focus is making this the most successful fashion week, and we’ll take whatever comes from it in our stride.
“You’re worrying again,” Michelle says.
I laugh and shake my head. “It’s not so bad.”
“No, it’s not. I know it looks like chaos now…” she glances at the pile of clothing on the table, the racks of outfits that the models will wear, and the paper patterns we’ve brought along in case we need to make changes to anything. “But there’s method in our madness.”
Michelle is my voice of reason when I start to doubt myself. I don’t know what made her decide to attach herself to me and my label. She always tells me destiny brought her to me. She’s everything I’m not—tall and skinny where I’m shorter with an hour-glass shape, auburn hair where mine is pitch black, freckles to my porcelain skin, and most of all, she’s charming when I’m shy and don’t always know the right words to say.
Maybe that’s why we get along like a house on fire. Since the moment we started working together, we haven’t only been business partners; we’ve been friends.
“Let’s get this show on the road,” Michelle says. She puts her empty coffee cup down and claps her hands, rubbing them together. “Amy’s popping in later today.”
“Why?” I ask. Our casting agent’s job is done—she got me the models I needed to secure my spot. I didn’t get all the models I wanted. Some of them are so highly sought-after it’s a catfight just to get our hands on them. But Amy Greer arranged a handful of women who will make my outfits shine. She doesn’t need to be here now that everything is taken care of.
“I think she’s curious,” Michelle says. “And why not? Your designs this year are spectacular.”
I smile. I know the designs are fantastic. Something happened this year that’s never happened before. The designs flowed out of me as if a faucet had been turned on, and the outfits I came up with are bigger, more dramatic, more extravagant than ever. I like to design the type of clothes women can wear every day—what’s the point of fashion if it can only be a part of the elite parties the upper class attends? I want women to feel glamorous while they’re shopping, seeing their friends, picking up their children from school.
Maybe it’s because I’ve designed outfits for so long that it came so easy this year. Or maybe, it’s because this is my year—the year everything will change.
I try not to hope too hard.
We walk to our workstations and get started. Michelle has been here since the crack of dawn. I worked until the early hours of the morning yesterday, so I took some time to sleep in a little.
Tomorrow is the big day. Tomorrow, it all starts.
“How’s Ava?” Michelle asks from behind the rack of clothing, her words flattened against the pins she pinches between her lips again.
“She’s doing okay. Maria says she’s having a blast; she’s not missing me too much.”
“Nothing like hearing your daughter doesn’t want her mom all the time, huh?”
I chuckle. “Yeah, I guess it sets me at ease that she’s so comfortable with Maria. But this is the longest I’ve been away from her. I worry.”
“Of course, you do,” Michelle says. “That’s what mothers do. And she’s still so young.”
I nod and start to lay out the pieces the models are wearing, checking for stray threads and small marks that need to be taken care of. The pieces need to be immaculate. “Don’t tell her that. When I tell her she’s too young to do something, she’s very quick to remind me she’s five—a whole handful.”
Michelle laughs. My heart constricts when I think about my little girl. When I fell pregnant with her and realized I had to be a single parent, I didn’t know she would change my life as much as she did. I saw it as a stumbling block. I wasn’t ready. I had a plan for my life and children was only a part of it much further down the line.
But sometimes, these things happen. And having Ava changed my life for the better. She’s my ray of sunshine. She’s the reason I get up every morning and keep pushing to be bigger, better, to get more designs out and make more money.
So that I can give her the life she deserves. I may not have been able to give her the family I wished I could—it’s just the two of us. But I can make sure she has everything she could ever want.
“You’re lucky you have someone you can trust to look after her,” Michelle says.
I nod. Maria is my mother’s sister, and she’s lived in Paris most of her life. She’s one of the reasons I could take the leap to go over and start fresh. If I didn’t have a support system in Paris, I might never have been able to pull it off. But Maria is there for me, always willing to look after Ava or help me out with something, and I can turn to her as if she’s my mother. I can lean on her and cry on her shoulder if I want to.
Maria means so much to me. And Ava loves her like a grandmother, too.
I lift the next piece to the light. The sheer fabric has a sheen to it that catches the sun that falls through the window and brings it to life. “I just can’t wait to get back and cuddle her,” I say.
“As soon as this show is done, you should head home. If we need to stay behind to take care of business, I’ll do it.”
“I don’t know if we’re going to do anything here,” I say and carefully fold the clothes, putting them into plastic packets with the models’ names on them. “I don’t know if it will work.”
“Of course, it will work,” Michelle says and emerges from her clothes rack. She pulls her hair back into a ponytail. “Your stuff is incredible.”
“Our stuff,” I correct.
Michelle rolls her eyes. “There’s no reason you should give me credit for your designs. I work on the business end. I’m happy with that, trust me. And when we open our branch here, I’ll find someone to mentor to do the same thing.”
“You’re getting ahead of yourself,” I say.
Michelle comes to me and looks me square in the eye.
“Faith, Raven. That’s what you need. You’re better than you think you are. And everything we’ve done led us up to this point. In a week’s time, nothing in your life will be the same.”
I smile and she hugs me.
“Stop expecting everything to go wrong,” she says when she lets go of me. “And let’s go out tonight for a glass of wine before we kick off the festivities tomorrow.”
I agree, even though we need to get to bed early before the week starts. It’s going to be crazy,
Well, aside from one small slip-up.
Noah.
I came to New York a week ago to make sure everything was as it should be. The first night, I ran into Noah in a new restaurant.
Noah, the man I left the country to escape.
Noah, the man who broke my heart, even though it should have just been a one-night stand.
Noah, the father of my child.
We used to know each other in college. We were in the same group of friends and went out together from time to time. But he was the dumb jock who loved attention, the star of the football team, the guy who everyone loved, handsome as hell and good in bed. Which he never failed to proclaim—and everyone he’d been with confirmed.
Just thinking about it makes me roll my eyes.
It had been a drunk night together, and I slept with him. I shouldn’t have done it; he wasn’t my type. I liked the quiet, sensitive type. I needed a grown-up, someone who could be an adult with me.
But that one night had changed everything. Not just how I felt about him, but the rest of my life, too.
When he didn’t return any of my calls back then, when I needed to tell him I was pregnant, I got the picture. Despite knowing each other enough that I should have been able to tell him, he was a slippery eel. Sometimes silence speaks louder than words, and he was clear.
He doesn’t settle down. He doesn’t do commitment.
I’ll be lying if I say I didn’t think about him all the way over here. But seeing him again would just be a mistake.
And it was.
Sleeping with him again only reignited the feelings I shouldn’t have for him. He’s everything I don’t want in a man. Everything I shouldn’t be focusing on right now.
But it was a mistake that felt incredible. We slept together because I can’t resist him. I’ve never been able to stay away from him. He’s an Adonis, with baby blue eyes that make my heart skip a beat and a smile that makes me go weak at the knees.
After we slept together last week, I told him I was leaving the next day to protect myself. The last thing I need right now is a distraction—especially one that’s destined to end in disaster. It’s better to keep my head in the game and focus on the things I know I can control. If I get involved with Noah again, it’s just going to break my heart all over again. And despite knowing he wasn’t the guy for me, it’s taken me a long time to put it back together again.
And to accept that the life Ava and I live now—just the two of us—is enough.
“What’s wrong?” Michelle asks, snapping me out of the spiral of my thoughts.
“What?”
“You have that look on your face.”
“What look?”
Michelle shakes her head. “I don’t know. You get these moments where you close in on yourself and start brooding over something. What’s up?”
“It’s nothing; I’m just stressing about the models,” I lie.
“They’ll be where they need to be,” Michelle says. “This isn’t our first rodeo, and it isn’t theirs, either. We’ve got this!”
I smile at Michelle and decide to try being as positive about it as she is. It’s not that I believe I’m going to fail. I’ve made it this far. I just don’t want to get my hopes up. I’m not a pessimist, but I am a realist. If the past five years with Ava in my life have taught me anything, it’s to stop looking too far into the future and roll with the punches.
That way, everything works out the way it should because there are no expectations that can be waited on, only to find out it’s never going to happen.
Chapter 2
Raven
By the time I get home from the bar where Michelle and I went for a glass of wine, my head throbs dully, and my eyes are gritty from lack of sleep. I dump my handbag and coat at the door and kick off my shoes before collapsing on the bed.
I glance at the time. Despite saying we were going to make it an early night, it’s past midnight already. That means it’s already early morning in Paris.
I dial Maria’s number. I know I’m taking a chance, but Ava has never slept in past five-thirty, and I doubt she’ll let Maria have the sleep she won’t let me have.
“Hello, hello!” Maria says when she answers the video call. Her hair is wet after a shower, but the lights are on. The sun will rise in another hour or so. “I thought you would have gone to bed already, darling.”
“Hi, Aunt Maria,” I say with a tired smile. “Just about to turn in now, but I couldn’t go to bed without calling first. How are things?”
“Perfectly fine, you don’t need to worry. We’re having a wonderful time. Ava is an angel. Do you want to talk to her?”
I nod, and when my daughter appears on the screen, my heart constricts. Her hair is like spun gold, and she has large blue eyes that stare right into your soul. She’s Noah to a tee.
“Mommy!” she cries out and plants fat slobbery kisses all over the phone screen before she wipes it with her sleeve. I laugh.
“Hello, my cherie, I miss you!”
“I miss you, too. What are you doing?” Her French lilt when speaking in English is adorable.
“Right now? I’m ready to go to bed.”
“It’s time to wake up!”
I laugh. “Not over here. It’s last night, still.”
Ava pulls a face and I laugh again.
“What are you two getting up to today?” I ask.
“Auntie Maria is taking me to the zoo! I want to see a baboon. And an elephant. Are there elephants where you are?”
“Only in zoos,” I say. “I wish I could come with you!”
“How long are you going to be away?”
“A few more sleeps, my honey. But I’ll be back before you know it. You’re having so much fun, time will fly.”
“When you get back, can we all go to the zoo together?”
“You bet,” I say. “Have a great day, okay? And ask Auntie Maria to take photos at the zoo. I want to see what you see.”
She promises she will before she gives the phone back to my aunt and bounds away.
“She looks happy,” I say.
“She is. Nothing to worry about, like I said. Are you ready for your big week?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I say.
“You’ve got this.”
“I hope so.”
“Raven, Raven, Raven,” Maria tuts. “It’s time to start believing in yourself. Your life until now is nothing but victories.”
She’s right. Sometimes, when I’m in a bad place, I spiral and I think about how everything is different than I would have wanted it. But Maria reminds me to look at the bright side. I have a wonderful daughter, even if she wasn’t planned. My fashion business took off, even though I moved to a different country. I’m a candidate at the New York Fashion week, even though I thought my life would fall apart when nothing worked out the way I’d dreamed when I was a child.
There is so much to be grateful for.
“Go to sleep, darling,” Maria says. “Tomorrow is a big day.”
I say my goodbyes and we end the call. I lay in the bed for a while longer, thinking about my little girl and the life I wish she had. I’d always dreamed of the perfect family—a husband, a handful of kids, a dog. Two incomes, Christmas around a tree. Nothing worked out that way, and there are days I beat myself up about the life Ava doesn’t have.
Noah pops into my mind, and I feel a pang in my chest. What would our lives have been like if he’d taken my calls all those years ago? Where would we be now?
I push the thoughts away because it doesn’t matter.
Ava doesn’t know that life, the one I had in my head for so long. All she knows is the life she has now. The life I’m giving her. And as far as raising a kid alone goes, I think I’m doing okay.
Who needs a man to make a family? Ava and I are a family. And Maria, too.
Who needs a husband to build a successful life? I have my company and I’m here, halfway across the globe, making a name for myself.
Maria is right when she tells me again and again my life is nothing but victories.
I dress into pajamas, fall into bed, and before my head hits the pillow, I’m asleep.
