Excerpt: Hey Jude

I was standing in line at the grocery store when it happened. I was in line, holding a pregnancy test in my hands and feeling utterly ashamed that my life had come to this, that in my twenty-five years of living I had wasted myself away to this moment, and he walked through the door. It had been eight years since I’d seen that face, but I knew it so well: his hair was still that same shaggy dark brown, his chocolate brown eyes peering down at the ground as though he had just been scolded by his mother, and his lips were in that same pouting position that they had been that night all those years ago.

That was when the world stopped. Everything that I thought I knew since he had left my life, everything that I had thought would never happen – my world was crashing down and I couldn’t stop it. I thought I could run from my mistakes, but that one moment in time made me realize that I couldn’t. And in the midst of my blank stare in his direction, his eyes caught mine for a brief moment. I was tense. I was upset. No, more than upset: I was livid. How dare he come back into my town, into my life, after leaving the way that he had. My face went red, my eyes swelled with tears, and after a moment, I thought I had died.

Truth was, I had lost consciousness. How embarrassing.