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But those all felt like regular, ordinary fears. They were nothing like what I was feeling right now. My stomach was in such knots that I couldn’t eat. I just kept picking at my food. I was pretty sure my parents could tell that something was up. Mom, especially, kept glancing at me. I was close with my parents, I wasn’t exactly good at hiding my feelings from them.
Cal seemed relaxed and confident next to me. They were letting him sit next to me, they were letting him chat with me, and I was sure they would regret that the moment they knew the truth. How could Cal be so calm about this? I knew Dad was going to freak out. Mom, I didn’t know, honestly. Mom was fiercely protective of me, and she tended to get in a snit about little things, but oddly enough when it came to the really big things, she was very calm. Dad was the opposite. He never stressed the small stuff but big things he would lose his damn mind.
Like when I told him I was pregnant during the summer before my junior year—I waited until the last second, but I’d been six months along and my parents knew a baby bump when they saw one—Dad had flipped. He had been especially upset that he couldn’t meet the father.
“Dad, he’s not in the picture, and he never will be,” I had told him. “I chose to keep this baby, I’m choosing to have this baby. It’s not fair to him to ask him to be a part of this. I should have made sure there was a condom, it’s on both of us.”
Dad was a bit old-fashioned and hadn’t seen it that way. And hey, if Cal had refused to use a condom, or if he had known about the baby and done nothing, that would’ve been different. But it was a one night stand. It might as well have been a hookup at a party. Keeping Fern, choosing to have her, that was on me. Nobody else. I wouldn’t let anybody take my choice, my agency, away from me, even in an attempt to protect me.
If that had been how he’d reacted back when I’d told him I was pregnant with some random guy’s child, I couldn’t even imagine how he would be once he learned the man was his best friend. Cal hadn’t known about Fern, of course, but how much would that really help?
And nothing about this situation changed the fact that I had lied to my parents. They were so supportive of me, and they adored Fern, and here I had gone and kept this secret from them for five years. As terrifying as the idea of telling them the truth had been, the idea of telling them now was even worse. Five years of lying, how could I make up for that?
Maybe Cal had a point, in a way—the longer we waited, the worse it got, at least as far as keeping it all from my parents went.
I was more scared for Cal than myself, honestly. I watched throughout dinner as Cal and my dad joked and laughed together. How long would that last? How long would their friendship remain once my dad knew the truth? I knew that my parents wouldn’t change how they treated Fern. They loved her, and it wasn’t Fern’s fault, not any of it. It wasn’t like she’d asked to be born this way. But there was a real chance that they wouldn’t accept Cal as Fern’s father.
Already my brain scrambled through dessert over the worst-case scenario. Could Cal just stay in Nashville and I’d come up for some holidays with my parents, and do other holidays with him? It was like a divorce almost but in the weirdest way possible.
“Would you like the rest of my dessert?” I asked Fern, pushing my plate of a half-finished brownie with mint ice cream towards her.
Fern grinned in delight, since I rarely gave her dessert and certainly never gave her extra. But I didn’t care. If this was all about to go to hell then I wanted Fern at least to be happy and occupied. We could let her out into the backyard to run out all the sugar inside of her—my parents had a whole playset and a sandbox out there that they’d gotten for her, since my old playset had been donated by the time I was in high school.
“Thank you,” she said politely, smiling at me as she dug into her dessert.
“Of course, baby,” I replied. I might throw up.
“How about we go outside and get some fresh air?” Mom suggested. I think she could sense that I was considering running to the bathroom and wanted to help me out.
Dad took Fern out, while I helped Mom quickly clean up the dishes, and then we were outside together, the four of us, while Fern played on the playset.
