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“Vera, I need you to tell me what’s going on right now. I can’t play guessing games with you at a time like this. You’re freaking me out,” I reply as my blood pumps madly through my veins.
She takes a shuddering breath, turning to face the window as she stares out over the water. “I need to go back to school,” she says softly. “This has been the most intense, interesting time of my life, but I’m wasting my scholarship to be a part of this. I never would have been able to go to college without it, and I feel so selfish by choosing to fail my classes and follow this case.”
First, I lose Misha, now Vera.
This couldn’t be happening at a worse time.
26
Vera
I’d practiced for this conversation multiple times before I got back to Ruslan’s house, but I just can’t spit out the words in a way that makes them sound good.
I feel like such a coward, using my studies and meaningless college experience to hide the truth. Ruslan deserves better than that, especially with the grief he’s been carrying like a hot stone for two weeks now.
“Why?” he asks, his eyes full of betrayal. “When did you decide this? Be honest, please.”
“It’s been creeping up on me for the last week. Every day that passes, I can feel my grades falling further and further into a place where I’ll never be able to fix them. If I lose my scholarship, I’ll have to move back in with my family and work a dead-end job. I can’t do that, not after seeing how proud my parents were when I got accepted.”
His face falls, and the guilt begins to settle in much worse than I expected it to.
Why am I feeling so guilty? This is just as much his fault as it is mine. Even if I’m not telling him the full, honest truth, he should understand that it’s insane for me to stick around and risk my life for him. Maybe someone else would, and maybe they’d even trust him to care for them and raise their baby together.
But that person isn’t me, and every minute that passes before this conversation ends is agonizing.
“I just don’t understand. I thought you felt out of place there, like you’ve been tormented by everyone else since you started,” he replies, trying to catch me in a lie.
“That’s true, but I’m almost done with my degree. If I quit now, I’ll lose so much of that progress, and I might never be able to return if I regret leaving. I don’t know what the future holds for me without my education. I don’t just have millions of dollars to rely on,” I reply, feeling a sting on the emphasis on my last sentence.
I wish I had decided to lie to him long before we started talking. I’d have a much stronger case for myself, and I’d be able to keep myself calm more easily. If I burst into tears from the stress of hiding a pregnancy, he’ll know that something is up.
How far would he go to get the truth out of me?
“You’ve spent the last three years in an institution that you hate, slaving over homework and deadlines, and you still never found fulfillment there. What makes you think that’s going to change now that you’ve been with me?” he replies vindictively.
I’m stunned by how personally he’s taking this. He’s so far removed from my reality and my background that he can’t understand why I’d hesitate to throw my future away.
But that’s what I’m doing either way, isn’t it?
I’m keeping his baby from him, and I know for a fact that my mother willnothelp me raise it. She’ll be more disappointed than anyone else, especially after she spent so much time and energy teaching me how to avoid this situation altogether.
“This isn’t about you, Ruslan. I hardly know you, that’s part of the problem,” I reply, standing up to give myself the higher ground as he sits on the couch. “I’ll have to answer to myself for this for the rest of my life, and I don’t think I can justify it for much longer.”
His expression is unreadable, but I can sense his displeasure and disappointment from across the room. “This is fucking ridiculous. You havenothingthere, you said it yourself. You’ve seen more of this town with me than you have since you moved here, and that’s because you lack ambition and don’t care about expanding your horizons. How far do you think that’s going to get you in the real world?” he spits.
I hate that he’s right. It’s too hard to face the truth, but he’s the only person who has ever said it out loud to me. Everyone else was just excited that I got accepted to college at all, and that praise got worn out as soon as I started to struggle in my statistics class sophomore year.
“I need to try, Ruslan, I reply, becoming more animated as I access a well of anger that is usually far out of reach. “I need to at least finish what I started. You and I are clearly too different if you think I’m being unreasonable by not wanting to pay back thousands of dollars in scholarship money.”
He gets up off the couch, towering over me as he approaches me. “You know, you’re going to end up just like your sisters that you hate. You’re going to spend the rest of your life in a gray box trying to figure out what’s missing, and you’ll never find it again.”
The mental image of my inevitable future flashes before my eyes, living in a messy apartment alone with a toddler as I struggle to pay my bills.
The fact that Ruslan can afford to support me ten times over crosses my mind, but I’m in too deep now.
I can’t tell him that I’m pregnant, or it’ll make him insane with worry. He needs to focus on processing his grief, and I need to get out of his world before I’m sucked in without an escape.
Not to mention, if I tell him I’m pregnant, he might assume that the baby is Eric’s and that I’ve been lying to him.
