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“You’re pregnant,” I said.
“According to the pregnancy test I took, I’m somewhere around—”
“You’re pregnant?” I asked.
I finally ripped myself from my trance, and I felt anger swelling in my chest.
“Brett, please. I didn’t know how to tell you. I didn’t know how to bring it up,” Olivia said.
“So, your decision was to hide it from me?” I asked.
“I didn’t intend on hiding it from you. I was just trying to figure out how best to tell you. That’s all.”
“And you decided that me taking you out of the country without a damn doctor to watch over you was the perfect time?”
“Why are you getting so upset? We’re here, and now you know. So now, we can figure out what to do.”
“Figure out what to do? Olivia, for the past week I knew you were hiding something from me. I didn’t know what, but I figured it wasn’t important. Or if it was, you’d eventually approach me with it.”
“And now I am!” she exclaimed.
“Not a child, Olivia! I thought it was some shit with Daniel or something! A child? You should have come to me immediately!”
“I didn’t know what to do. I was in shock when I took all of those tests Katie—”
“Excuse me, did you just say Katie?” I asked.
Olivia’s jaw dropped open as my breathing ticked up.
“She was there when you were taking these tests and not me?” I asked.
“Brett, it isn’t like that,” she said.
“Really. It isn’t like that. Just like it wasn’t like that in college?”
“What?”
“Katie was always there for every monumental thing in your life. She was the first person you called. For everything. You wanted me to love you, but not so much as to somehow rise above your friend who could do no wrong, right?”
“What does this have to do with anything, Brett?”
“It has everything to do with it, Olivia. Because yet again, you have experienced a monumental, life-changing moment—that directly involves me, I’m assuming—and Katie was the one you fucking called!”
“Well, I’m sorry if I didn’t get close enough to you in college because I thought you were cheating on me. Forgive me for protecting myself, Your Majesty.”
“Cheating on you? I never touched another woman while I was with you. I didn’t even think about it! Even though you were cozied up in some coffeehouse booth playing footsies with another man.”
“What?” she exclaimed.
“Yeah. I saw the pictures—the ones Mason took of you and some teaching assistant from one of your classes. Reading to you and giggling with him. But I pushed all that shit to the side to stand by you. To prove to them that you weren’t the girl they thought you were.”
“I never cheated on you. Are you talking about Oliver?” she asked.
“I don’t give a shit who it—”
“Oliver was gay!” she shrieked.
I drew in a sobering breath, trying to calm myself down.
“The truth of the matter is you always ran to her. You always put Katie first, and she was always the one experiencing your most important moments with you. In the end, it boiled down to you never wanting to make me enough of a priority to prove to you that I could be the man you needed. That was why I pulled away. And I’m standing in front of you a completely different man, and yet you’re still that same girl, Olivia.”
“She’s my best friend,” she whispered.
“And you’re carrying my child. But that didn’t matter when you got scared you were pregnant, did it? It didn’t matter that I was directly involved. All that mattered was Katie.”
Olivia was speechless, and a question I didn’t want the answer to popped into my head.
“The day you called out of work sick,” I said.
I watched her gaze fall to the floor, and my stomach fell to my toes. I reached behind me and grabbed the sheet off the bed, then fisted a pillow and tucked it underneath my arm. I walked by Olivia, and I felt her hand dart out. She placed it against my stomach before her eyes slowly panned up to mine.
“You can have the bed. I’ll take the couch,” I said.
“Please don’t leave me,” she whispered.
“I’m not the one that left, Olive. Yes, I might have ended it after your graduation in some blow-out fight, but you stepped back long before that. You prioritized so many other things over me. Just like you did with this pregnancy.”
“I’m scared.”
“But that doesn’t mean you’re right,” I said.
Then, I pushed past her hand, walked out the door, and closed it behind me. I wasn’t crawling into bed with her. Not when she kept something like this from me. Something so monumental. This was the secret Brittany had been talking about. The secret Katie knew Olivia had been keeping. I tossed the sheet and pillow onto the couch, then sat down, placing my head in my hands.
