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“I know you and Dylan didn’t break up because he’s been hounding Jack about where you were for the last few hours. Did you have a fight?” she now asks as I pull up a chair and sit across from her in the empty shell of a house. It at least has a half-finished kitchen and the walls are up, but damn, it’s echoing in here when I finally fess up.
“I’m pregnant,” I blurt out, and maybe it’s not the empty house but the actual admittance of it that seems to echo.
“So this is going to sound funny, but I thought you were,” Lauren admits, again smiling at me. “I guess us preggos know one of our own.”
I start to cry again, my eyes feeling like they’ve been coated in sand from all the tears. Dried out and done with this mess.
“He’s not going to leave,” Lauren now says. “I worried Jack would leave. It was my biggest fear when we first got together, but he stayed. He stayed because he loves me. He stayed because he knew that we’re better together. But more than that, he stayed because we were honest with each other.”
“Being honest with him feels like a terrible idea. Remember what happened when we all had dinner together at Tommy and Penny’s?”
“When he was an asshole about getting married and having kids?” Lauren questions, rolling her eyes. “Dylan is an idiot. He’s the type of guy who feels like that’s the go-to response he should give. He has no idea what he wants until it tries to leave. Case in point, you. Once you disappeared, he was all like, oh fuck.” She shakes her head, clicking her tongue as if she’s shaming him and he’s not even here.
“Yeah, but we still never discussed having kids and when I tried to, he was weird. You think he’s not going to lose his shit on me when I tell him it’s no longer just a scenario?”
“If he does, then it’s his loss, Tessa.”
I look right at her, my head tilted to the side, my eyes narrowed as if to ask her if she’s serious.
“Okay, yeah, yeah, I know that’s easier said than done. Just be honest with him about what’s going on and give him time to respond. Some people are reactive. Judging by his comment at Tommy and Penny’s, he might be one of those people. He might just need time to process everything.”
“It is a lot. I’m still processing it.” I let out a hard sigh, reaching for a piece of pizza.
“Has anyone said congratulations? Do you want me to?” Lauren asks, a bit of a cautious tone, hesitant but hopeful.
“I think I am excited. This isn’t how I wanted it to go down, but I’m twenty-nine and having kids has always been something I wanted. I guess I just didn’t expect it to smack me in the face.”
“It smacks you in the face no matter what,” Lauren jokes. “Jack and I were trying, and it was still a huge shocker. We spend so much time actively trying to not get pregnant and then when it does happen, it’s like, what the fuck did I just do?”
“Yeah, I guess I just wish things between Dylan and me were more established.”
“Established? Um, you’re not serious, right? I’m pretty sure Dylan thinks things are well and solidly established. He’s a different guy than when he first started here. He’s obsessed with you. He spent the last few hours trying to track you down. I’m surprised he didn’t start pinging your phone.”
Thank fuck he didn’t because he’d have found me sitting in a church parking lot, which would’ve been even harder to explain than me being pregnant.
“Yeah, I guess I’m still hesitant because of what happened in our past.”
“Stop defining your life and yours and Dylan’s relationship by what happened in the past. Has he given you any reason to doubt him and his feelings for you besides the one time he spit out some inappropriate response to a question about marriage?”
“No,” I reply, realizing I’m not giving Dylan enough credit. He’s been amazing. Spending the night together. Him helping me with work and making dinner and being around pretty much all the time. It’s been months of this and if anyone should be untrustworthy, it’s me. It’s always there in the back of my mind when it shouldn’t be. He’s done everything right.
Now it’s my turn to do everything right. It’s my turn to be honest with him and tell him that I want to have this baby. That I want to have this baby with him.
“Then give him the benefit of the doubt,” Lauren says, reaching for another piece of pizza. “Go home and tell him everything. Not just the fact that you’re pregnant, but that you worry about him leaving.”
“Can I stay and eat this pizza with you first?” I ask, wrinkling up my nose. “Craziest thing, since finding out I’m pregnant, I’m kinda hungry all the time.”
Lauren laughs, her head falling back, a hand resting on her round belly. “Oh, just wait. I had Jack order an entire pizza just for me.”
“And you’re sharing it with me?”
“I felt like you needed it too,” Lauren says, winking.
Lauren and I finish the pizza and I thank her for talking me off the ledge. It’s nice to have friends who understand you and can help you out when you can’t help yourself. I don’t bother to text Dylan to let him know I’m on my way home. I figure I might as well just walk in and come right out with it.
So when I open the front door and find Dylan sitting at the kitchen table, I walk over and take his face in my hands. Pressing a kiss to his lips, I let it linger there for a few seconds. With my heart racing and my knees trembling, I tell him something we haven’t said to each other, something I hope he realizes is the absolute truth and it has nothing to do with what’s about to come next.
“I love you,” I murmur against his lips. “And I have something I need to tell you.”
