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"How the hell should I know? Instead of trying to wet your dick in someone else, maybe you should go figure out why she didn't want me to tell you. Or why she doesn't know if she wants to keep it. I've heard enough crying for one day."
"Crying?"
"Yeah, crying. Waking me up early, barely any time after returning from my honeymoon. A blubbering fucking mess coming from someone I haven't heard cry since we were kids. I love her, but she should be calling you at the crack of dawn because she just left the doctor's office. If both of you can fuck irresponsibly, then saddle up and welcome to parenthood. The two of you are taking me away frommygirl before we have to film again, worryingmywife about what she may do to the seed the two of you fertilized. If you can nut in her, you can deal with the consequences. You learned in biology how babies are created. Take care of your fucking shit. I'm out of this," he says. "Next time I talk to her, the two of you better be working this out . . . together, whatever that is. Frankly, it's none of my business what decision the two of you makes. You two are adults, but my wife seems to think you need to keep this problem and work it out, because apparently she sees something between the two of you that no one else does. It’s not shit to me. I'm going home."
He turns and storms out, leaving me alone in this locker room. I pummel my fist against the metal of a door repetitively, my knuckles skinned and bloody, my chest heaving up and down. I run outside, grabbing my belongings on the way out, getting in my truck and pulling my phone out of the center console, calling her.
"It's Tynleigh. Leave me a message."
Straight to voicemail. I toss it on the dash and spin out. I have no fucking idea where I'm going to go, but somewhere I'll end up . . .
Chapter Twenty-Four
Tynleigh
Imade it back to my apartment, not feeling any better since talking to Saxton. His response was pretty simple: tell Bryant and decide together. Be safe. Make the decision you can live with forever. First of all, I can't tell Bryant. This is completely my fault. I take the blame one hundred percent. He asked that morning in the shower. I told him I was on birth control when I should have never taken the risk, regardless of whether I was or not. Secondly, what is safe? Being a single mother is dangerous emotionally, physically, and mentally. A procedure is dangerous, well, emotionally, physically, and mentally. Pretending it isn't there is even more dangerous medically. No direction is safe. Thirdly, how the fuck am I supposed to know what decision I can live with? I've never had to make this decision before.
If I keep it, I risk struggling as a single parent and then regretting it too late, when a pair of innocent eyes are looking at me, calling me mommy, and I can do nothing about it. Sure, I make good money, for a single woman. Babies require daycare and then private school as kids, a shit ton of stuff, and the list goes on and on. My job requires a lot. It's unfair to another person to have to share so much of me. It's why I don't care to have a relationship. What child wants to grow up in a cement jungle? Then it’ll become a prep school brat wandering around this city getting into trouble because I’ll be too busy working to make ends meet: sex, drugs, and God knows what else. My eyes water up again. I love this city. It's my home and I don’t want to give it up.
On the other hand, if I get rid of it, I can never reverse it. I can never get this baby back. What if I wonder for the rest of my life what it was, what it looked like, what it would have acted like? Could I miss something I've never met? Fuck if I know. What if I abort it and then end up sterile? It can happen. I've heard of it. I don't think I want kids, never have thought much about it, but now I don't know. Maybe one day when I'm done playing career, I might want babies. I don't want the option permanently taken; I do know that.
Shit, I'm getting nowhere.
I have no idea what to do to get myself out of this. I don't know if I should talk to a friend, my mother—no, definitely not my mother—or just keep it to myself. I turned my phone off in hopes it would eliminate one distraction, yet the biggest one of all remains and has my face so swollen from my tears that it feels numb.
I pace the room, before grabbing my laptop and sitting down on my bed, the bed that still smells like him because I can't bring myself to wash the damn sheets. Yes, it's disgusting coming from someone that washes them weekly. We've soiled these sheets many times, a black light would prove it, but then I get a whiff of his cologne, his soap, his sweat, and I'm paralyzed in a memory that makes me miss him. I can't afford to miss a man. I swore the last time I had feelings for a guy and he broke me that it'd be the last. If men just want sex with no attachments from as many women as they can get into bed, then they're going to get it on my terms. It's worked for me all of these years. Why this one broke through the exterior barrier I've built I'll never know.
For such a smart girl I'm really stupid right now. Graduated high school and college with excellent grades, never have I been arrested, or even been given a ticket. I worked hard and landed an awesome job in the best city in this damn country, at least to me. I make it to twenty-eight fucking years old with a spotless record, and now, here I am, pregnant out of wedlock like a damn teenager.
My shoulders drop. I open my laptop, pulling up Safari, and bringing the cursor to the search bar, typing in the magical word.
Pregnancy
Thousands of hits come up: symptoms, stories, shopping websites, what to expect articles, forums, websites for weekly updates. The list goes on. I click over on the Google images tab, making this a little easier. Hundreds of photos come up of women with swollen bellies, images of babies inside the womb, and stretch marks. My eyes widen in disgusted disbelief. Nursing photos come up: I don't know that I could stomach that—a tiny human sucking on my boob. It’s weird to me.
I go back to the search bar and try something different.
Childbirth
Hundreds of photos show the same things: women lying flat on tables, legs back and spread while they push babies out of their vaginas, pain written all over their faces. Blood is everywhere, the babies covered in some disgusting white stuff. The photos of C-sections are worse. It's barbaric. Yet one thing remains: all of the women look happy somehow, regardless of what is happening to them emotionally and physically.
My stomach rumbles. I slam the computer shut, barely able to toss it aside before lurching from the bed and running to my bathroom, expelling everything my stomach can house into the toilet, hugging the sides of the porcelain. My muscles continue to contract, trying to rid of more contents, over and over, until all that is left is the acid burning up my throat.
I stand and wipe my mouth on the hand towel, flushing the disgusting proof that this is all real, before walking to my mirror, grabbing a small circular throw pillow off my bed along the way. If I keep this baby, I'm going to be sacrificing my social life for at least nine months, the body I've worked so hard to maintain, and my vagina. How will it ever be the same once it's stretched like that? Will sex feel the same? Will men still be attracted to me? What if I end up with a stomach full of markings that I can't remove no matter how hard I work out?
I shove the pillow under my shirt, imaging myself with a belly like those photos. It's not appealing to me at all. As a matter of fact, it brings the tears back once more with the realization that I can only hide this for so long. What the hell do I tell my boss? Oh, God. Am I going to be puking at my desk?
Suddenly I'm tired, exhausted actually. I just want to go to sleep and pretend this is all a really bad dream. I step out of my shoes and toss the pillow on the floor before walking to my bed, setting my computer on the floor. I crawl under the covers and bring the pillow Bryant slept on to the front of my body, snuggling up to it, allowing myself to miss his smell, and to hope for a little peace in my sleep where I can just go backward before any of this happened, when it was just the two of us having a lot of fun and no worries, because after this weekend I'm going to have to live with the consequences of my decision, whichever direction I choose. And right now, I have no fucking idea which way to turn.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Bryant
He sits across the table from me; as he does each time I come to visit. He doesn't look any better, or any worse. "Dad. How are you feeling today?"
"I'm well. Just missing home, and Rebecca. How are you, Son?"
His voice is tired, no emotion behind it. At least he's responsive today in ways other than a made-up reality in his head. There is always a spark of hope when I can talk to him in some kind of real conversation, watching him piece small things together before his mind pulls him back under to the place that I don't even recognize him anymore.
