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“Can you tell me more about that? I don’t really know much about how things went for you with Ryan.” Jake stretches his arm along the back of the couch, his attention on me. “I know the basics, that you got pregnant as a teen and your parents adopted him and raised him as theirs, but that’s a very tidy version of a complex situation.”
Jake and I talked about Ryan finding out, but not about how I ended up in the situation in the first place. And maybe telling him will give us both some perspective, because for as long as I can remember, this has been a closed subject. One to be put in a box and tucked away. It came with shame and fear, both of which I don’t know I’ve ever truly come to terms with. “I didn’t realize I was pregnant until I was over four months along.”
Jake’s eyes flare with surprise. “You were almost halfway through the pregnancy.”
“I was.” Memories surface, taking a trip backward through time, to the day I finally figured out what was going on with my body. And how my entire life basically felt as though it had fallen apart. “I didn’t start getting a period until I was fourteen, and my cycle was never very regular, at least not for that first year, so what should have been a red flag wasn’t all that uncommon. Plus, I was involved in all kinds of sports, which can affect regularity. I didn’t have any of the usual symptoms, or at least not the kind I expected.” I blow out a breath, aware now of things I hadn’t been back then.
“You were only fifteen, though, right?”
“Just barely. Way too young to be having sex,” I mutter. “At the time, my parents had their hands full with Gerald. He was younger but such a troublemaker.”
“King mentioned that he used to get up to a lot of no good.”
“He tried to take our dad’s truck on a joyride. He couldn’t reach the pedals or see over the steering wheel at the same time so all he managed to do was ruin my mom’s rose bushes. I wasn’t an angel, but I didn’t give my parents the same kind of hard time he did.”
“So they didn’t pay much attention to what you were doing and who you were doing it with?” Jake asks.
“Exactly. In my freshman year I started dating a senior.”
Jake’s brow furrows. “That would make him almost four years older than you.”
“Yup. And when you’re in your twenties and thirties, or even your forties, those four years don’t mean a lot. But when you’re fourteen and he’s eighteen . . .” I trail off.
“I would have lost my mind if Queenie brought home a senior when she was fourteen years old.” Jake clenches and releases his fists. “What the heck were your parents thinking, letting you date that guy?”
I shrug. “It was different times, I guess? We lived in a small town, Kurt was captain of the football team, and I was a cheerleader. Before he went off to college, I was invited to go with his family on a mission trip. I’d just turned fifteen. Gerald had just been caught shoplifting, so my parents were dealing with that. Kurt’s dad was a pastor, so of course, my parents thought it was safe to send me with them. But we were camping in a trailer and his parents spent the entire trip at church events.”
“You were left to your own devices,” Jake says knowingly.
“We were teenagers with nothing to do for hours every day and a lot of hormones. And sex education back then wasn’t what it is now.”
“Which is how you ended up pregnant.”
“Yup. And by the time I was sure, Kurt had already moved out of state for college and his family had followed. We’d broken up a few weeks after we got back from the trip. I honestly thought the nausea and being tired and emotional was heartbreak.”
“I can see how you could make that mistake.” Jake slides his fingers under my hair, his thumb smoothing up and down the back of my neck. “How did you figure it out?”
“My cheer coach pulled me aside and asked if I’d had my period.”
“Holy shit.”
“Yeah. It was . . . not the best. I guess she noticed the weight gain and sort of put two and two together. She gave me a pregnancy test and I took it into the girls’ bathroom.”
“What the hell was your cheer coach doing with pregnancy tests?”
“Would you be surprised to hear that I was not the first girl in cheer to end up pregnant?” I lean my cheek against his forearm. “Anyway, the test was positive. I had no idea what to do. The coach called my parents, and the next thing I knew, my dad transferred offices from Ohio to Tennessee.”
