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“I wish it would just so I could throw it all over again,” I told him.
“What’s going on?”
“I just broke this piece. I was trying to hammer it back out so it doesn’t have this bend in it, but as soon as I got it most of the way back to how it should be, the damn thing snapped in two,” I said.
I tossed the two metal pieces to the ground as well, and Kenton clicked his tongue as he shook his head.
“Not your day, I’m taking it,” he said.
“Not my week,” I said. “It’s been a shit show since I got back from Seattle.”
“I’ve noticed you haven’t called me at all. I mean, now that you’re home, I’m not sure I even need a phone anymore. It’s like my boyfriend is back, so why bother?” he asked with a smirk.
“Because the day’s going to come when you find yourself a pretty girl and you want to be able to get a hold of her, but you’re not going to be able to unless you have one of those modern talk boxes that lets you text and call her whenever you want. Or, should I say, whenever she wants,” I said.
“Fair,” he replied. “But now that you’re back home, I’m not sure I’m as lonely as I once was.”
“You realize just how creepy you sound when you say shit like that, right?” I asked.
He laughed. I wasn’t sure if he did actually realize it, or if he liked to sound like he was my lover when we both knew we were straight. But, I didn’t mind him doing what he could to cheer me up. It had been a rough week. It had been rough ever since I walked out of that hotel room and left Laurel.
“I’ll be creepy if it gets you to smile,” he said. “You’ve been back a week, and you hardly want to do a thing. Every time I see you you’re pissed off, too. So talk to me. I didn’t sign up for a friend who’s going to be pissed off all the time. You’ve got to leave some of that anger for me, you know.”
“Fuck you,” I said, but I couldn’t hide the smile on my lips. I knew he was once again doing what he could to cheer me up, but the fact of the matter was that there wasn’t much of anything he could do that would work. I was hurting on the inside, and while I appreciated the teasing, that didn’t mean that it would take away the hurt I was feeling in the meantime.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “I know you get worked up when you can’t fix your plane yourself, but this has to be more than that. I know you well enough by now to know when there’s something on your mind.”
“There’s a lot on my mind, but nothing at all,” I said. “It’s a weird feeling.”
“What do you mean?”
“Laurel,” I said. “I made a mistake. I can’t get her off my mind no matter how hard I try, and I’m sick of it. I want to fly back to Seattle right now and tell her that I’m sorry for walking out on her that way. I really do feel like a massive piece of shit for it.”
“Did you ask her if she’s pregnant?” Kenton asked.
“I asked her if there was anything she wanted to tell me, and she said there wasn’t. I don’t know how else I could have asked her without telling her I had gone through the bathroom and gotten the pregnancy test,” I said. “But I just can’t get it out of my head that I’m being the massive jerk here. What if she is pregnant, and I walked out on her? What if she’s now thinking that she has to raise a baby on her own because I’m the jackass who wasn’t able to handle it? I mean, I’m not sure she’d piece it together that way, but I told her that I couldn’t keep her from work anymore, and that’s why I was doing it.”
“But you really broke up with her because you’re afraid that she’s pregnant,” Kenton commented. “Not sure that was the best course of action.”
“I don’t know.” I sighed. “I mean, I want to believe that I broke up with her because I didn’t want it to affect her job anymore than it had, but I also know that I got scared about the pregnancy test. I just – I guess I wanted her to tell me that she either was or wasn’t when I asked her if she had something she wanted to tell me, you know?”
“How would she know that you wanted her to say she was or wasn’t pregnant if she doesn’t even know that you found the test?” Kenton asked. “Seems to me like that’s not quite a fair question to ask her. She’s not a mind reader.”
I sighed again. I knew he was right. It wasn’t fair for me to have put that on her, and I felt bad that I had. I knew it was wrong for me to assume she would know what I was talking about, and if she did happen to guess that’s what I was hinting at, how would she feel knowing that I had walked out on her because of the fact she might be pregnant?
Sure, the idea of being a parent scared the shit out of me.
I had always had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to be a parent one day, but I never thought that it would happen so soon. And now that there was a chance that it had happened, I didn’t know how to handle it.
On the other hand, was it very fair of me to have walked out on her because I was scared? She would likely be scared, too, and if she was pregnant, how was it fair that I walked out on her and got to go on and live my own life when she had no way of doing the same?
The only right thing to do here was to go back to her and tell her that I was there in it with her.
“You’re right,” I admitted. “But that’s not like it solves any of my problems.”
“What do you mean?” Kenton asked.
“I mean I can go back and tell her that I’m going to be there to help raise the kid, but how is she going to react? I’m sure she’s going to be pissed off when she hears that I left knowing about the pregnancy test, but even more pissed off when she hears that I’m coming back because I knew it was wrong to leave her to raise the kid on her own,” I said.
