AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I’d bent over backwards for Tripp that night. I’d gone out of my comfort zone to make sure he was taken care of, and when he woke me up by going down on me, I thought it was because he finally saw that we were right for one another.
Instead, he’d been having drunken, horny dreams about his girlfriend, and I was the surrogate body he used to get off. Then, he was out the door never to be heard from again, which takes spectacular effort, considering he’s still prospecting alongside my brother.
That was a different story. I was angry with Mack for not beating the shit out of his friend. My dumbass brother shrugged it off and said he had hoped for a better outcome, but that shit happens and maybe that was my cue to finally move on and forget about my crush. Not that I had much choice in that matter, since Tripp had made it perfectly clear with his disappearing act that he didn’t want anything else to do with me.
I wasn’t stupid. Mack wasn’t that callous about things. I knew it bothered my brother, but he was also caught between a rock and a hard place. Causing friction while prospecting could lose one, or both, of them their spot. Making a big deal about it at home would mean he’d have to deal with me moping about things forever, and then he’d get pissed, and cause friction at the club.
I didn’t like it, but I understood his position.
There was no telling what his position would be once he found out about my news. He would have to know, because apparently I needed to clean my shit out of my old closet of a room, so I could fit a crib in there. Either that, or I had to get a smaller bed for my bedroom and just keep the baby with me for the first year or so until I could afford to find a different place.
The house had been left to Mack, not me. So, technically, I lived there because he allowed me to. That brought on a whole new slew of questions. Would he even want me to stay there with a baby on the way? Should I even bother to tell Tripp?
His girlfriend was due back in a couple weeks, and he had already chosen her. Then there was the issue that he might want the baby while keeping her. That bitch was not going to be my kid’s stepmother. There was no way in hell that I could ever allow that to happen. Tripp had mentioned her cruel streak already and I’d seen it for myself, too. I’d put a new bullet-shaped hole in her head if she ever said a mean word to my kid.
Then, there was the fact that I felt like crap for all the accusations Tripp had lobbed my way. He made it sound like I’d set him up and taken advantage of him in the one time he talked about it with my brother. Mack tried to set him straight, but Tripp wasn’t hearing it and instead of pushing, Mack dropped the subject to maintain peace between them. He wouldn’t even believe my brother had been the one to undress him and leave him there in my bed. He thought Mack was just trying to cover for me, since I was his sister.
Tripp was an asshole.
Truthfully, the whole thing had been enough to cure my crush on the man right up until I started to get sick, and my boobs felt like I was starting my period. They tingled in an uncomfortable way, and I’d increased a bra size damn near overnight. You would think throwing up most of what I ate would have the opposite effect, but no.
My once healthy C-cups were now burgeoning D-cups and my ass had grown, too. There was no denying that my body was changing, and despite being concerned for almost a week, I’d waited until today to sneak off to a clinic in Augusta for a confirmation of my fears.
“Her are your options,” the woman said as she waved a few pamphlets at me.
“I’m keeping it,” I explained.
“Take them anyway. Lots of people change their minds. I’ll get you a prescription for prenatal vitamins just in case you don’t change your mind. You’ll need to see your regular OB/GYN if you plan to keep it. You should schedule that soon and they’ll take a look inside to make sure everything’s on track with the date of conception you gave.” She glanced at me warily and then back down at the paperwork I’d filled out. As if she didn’t believe I’d know the exact date.
“I was only with him the one time; it was easy to pinpoint.”
“Okay. Well, if you don’t have any other concerns…” The woman didn’t even wait for me to answer, not that she made it a question, before she walked out the door and left me there alone in the tiny little room. A cold chill ran up my spine as I stood and got dressed. I didn’t know why I had to wear the stupid paper gown to begin with. She didn’t even check me out down there.
I growled out my frustration as I slipped my shoes back on my feet and went to the counter to pay the stupid bill. An over-the-counter pregnancy test would have been more friendly and concerned than the doctor who had just seen me. It would also have been a hell of a lot cheaper.
“She’s like that with everyone,” the girl at the counter told me. “Don’t take it personally.”
It was hard not to do so when someone with less personality than a robot informs you that your pregnant and sends you on your way with a library full of fucking pamphlets. I was so angry that tears started dripping from my cheeks before the girl at the counter finished printing my receipts and the record of my visit to take to my doctor. She handed me a tissue along with everything else.
“Good luck, honey. Whatever you decide.”
There was no judgment in her tone. She truly meant what she said. “Maybe you should be the one to deliver the news to patients from now on. I’m sure it would help.”
She giggled and grabbed another tissue for me before she had to pick up a phone call. I saw myself out after that and went to sit in my car and cry for a few minutes. I was thankful for the extra tissue because it had been needed. I guess I was sort of like my mom after all. We both loved the wrong man, screwed up, and got knocked up. The difference was that I would have never been embarrassed to be by his side. In my case, the opposite appeared to be true.
I would be a single parent and show my kid all the love in the world, no matter our circumstances and no matter if their father was in their life or not. I guess my biggest hurdle would be that I worked two jobs to bring in money and that wouldn’t be feasible as I got bigger. My main job was stocking groceries at the Piggly Wiggly in Jeffersonville four nights a week. The other job couldn’t really be counted since it was only a ‘sometimes’ gig with the newspaper. Occasionally, the bigger paper over in Augusta would pick up some of my work, but that was only if I was lucky enough to get a good shot that they needed.
I wanted to be a photographer when I grew up. The one thing my dad splurged on before he died was a really nice Nikon camera for me. I wasn’t able to develop the film myself, which sucked, unless on the rare occasion Tommy’s dad let me slip in and use the darkroom at the high school. His dad, being the football coach, and oddly enough one of the yearbook advisors, had access to the building.
I didn’t take him up on the offer too often though because Tommy’s dad also had a reputation for maybe paying too much attention to the older female students. He hadn’t hit on me, but I also hadn’t missed the way he leered the couple times he let me into the darkroom. Probably the only thing holding him back was that he feared the club, and my tenuous proximity to them, more than he wanted to push boundaries with me.
Come to think of it, the darkroom was probably not the safest place to be for a pregnant woman. I wasn’t sure what the chemicals would do, if they were harmful or what. I’d have to try to find out. My night job wasn’t going to be a cakewalk while pregnant either. I had to push and pull heavy pallets of food from the back to fill the shelves, then there was all the bending, reaching, and walking. All. Night. Long.
I’d have to start looking for another job, during the day. Then everything spiraled as I wondered what the hell I was going to do when the baby was here, and I needed to go to work. Could I afford daycare and everything else I’d have to pay for? Would Tripp even help if I told him about the baby? I’d have to tell him. Mack wouldn’t let me go without doing that much.
I was not ready for a baby. I had so many things to figure out. Panic blurred my thoughts and sent me on a spiral when I realized that there was a ticking clock placed on my shoulders and it was already counting down far too quickly.
~*~
