Two Steps Back Read Online Free Page B

know what to do, Johnny. And I’m tired of trying to figure it out.”
    “I know, babes, I know. But things will work out, I promise. Just…” he hesitated, “please don’t kill our baby, Jaylah. Please. Not after today.”
    Jaylah put her clothes on in silence and tried the process the last 15 minutes of her life. She walked into the doctor’s office intent on ridding herself of the blob, but now it was a baby, her baby.
    “Did you hear what I said, Jaylah? Please don’t kill our baby. We can make this work, I know it.”
    She wasn’t sure they could overcome the odds, but everything within her prayed Johnny was right.

 
    Four
     
    Jaylah stood in the middle of her living room and surveyed her former life. The walls she meant to repaint three years ago still lacked the cheerful colors she’d picked out; functional, yet nondescript, furniture dotted the room; and pictures of her family clung to the walls. The whole scene looked appropriate, but impersonal—much like Jaylah’s old life.
    Six months ago she sleepwalked through the days, going from her cubical at the L.A. Weekly to her assignments and back to her couch. Jaylah threw herself into work, never refusing to cover an album release party, concert, or film screening no matter how much she thought she was better suited for weightier assignments, or didn’t want to attend. The result? She grew to hate her job, and her personal life was damn near nonexistent, consisting of very few friends, men she slept with on occasion, and her parents—always her parents—stepping in to fill the gaps.
    Getting fired from the L.A. Weekly felt like a huge slap in the face. After five years of writing about topics she could give a rat’s ass about, Jaylah felt like she’d paid her dues and should have had free reign to cover things she was actually passionate about—the social implications of pop culture, politics, race. Her time at the paper afforded her a comfortable lifestyle and the façade of success, but it didn’t make her happy. Instead, she felt like she was drowning.
    Six month s ago Jaylah did not, could not, know that getting fired would be the best thing that ever happened to her, but it had. She became a woman unleashed, no longer burdened by a job she couldn’t stand, a city she felt she’d out grown, and a mother who showed love by controlling her every move.
    Losing her job, leaving L.A., and moving to London had been her chance at liberation. And she grabbed it and ran.
    Jaylah gazed around the room trying to decide what would get boxed and shipped to London and what would be housed in her parents’ garage. She picked up a vase her boss had given her for Christmas and marveled at just how ugly it was with its frosted glass and cobalt blue waves. She moved to put it in the box marked “storage,” but quickly changed her mind. Instead, she went to the balcony, checked to make sure no one was around, and hurled it to the ground.
    A surprising sense of satisfaction spread through her as shards of glass scattered across the driveway. Old Jaylah would have wrapped the vase in paper and stored it away for safe keeping despite hating it. But this new woman, unbound by her former life, wanted it gone. She returned to the living room looking for something else to smash to bits, but realized her things were too well kept to destroy. In that moment, she devised a new plan.
    Jaylah moved through her apartment snapping pictures on her phone and thinking about how much she could get for the items she no longer wanted. There was no need to pay thousands of dollars to ship things to London and no need to hire movers to haul her stuff to her parents’ garage when she knew she would never need them again.
    New Jaylah didn’t want anything from Old Jaylah’s life except for her vast collection of books, the jewelry box and diamond earrings her parents had given her when she turned 13, and her pictures. Everything else could go up for sale.
    Before her old,