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I long to tell her how sorry I am. That I fucked up.
But where do I begin?
A small squeak escapes her throat. I go to the tiny kitchenette and grab a cup of tea. When I return, she’s sitting up, looking around in confusion.
“Where are we?”
“Underground, in the storm shelter.”
Alarm flashes in her eyes. “How did we get here?”
I hand her the tea and sit by her side. “I brought us here to wait out the storm.”
“Where are my clothes?” she asks, suddenly realizing she’s naked.
“Being washed.”
She looks at the cup, blinking as she tries to piece everything together.
“I’m sorry, Lyra,” I choke out. “I’m sorry for everything.”
“Make me understand,” she whispers, her voice full of quiet contempt.
As selfish as it is, I wish she didn’t remember. I wish I could erase the last few months from her memory and start anew.
“Did you hear me?” she snaps, her hands shaking so badly, that she splashes tea onto the bedding. “Make me understand what the fuck is wrong with you? Why I can’t have the baby!”
“Because I love you,” I say because she deserves the truth.
She cocks her head to the side like I’ve just spoken a foreign language.
“There was a girl, once. Amber. I thought I’d loved her. I know I could have, but we never got to that point. We grew up next door from each other, and I’d always believed she’d be mine.”
“What happened?”
“Things started getting bad. We were born into a sick world, but it didn’t really fall apart until Amber and I were in our teens. We kept each other sane. As we grew older, we messed around a bit, but we stopped short of sex. I’d thought it was because she was scared of getting knocked up. I was wrong.” I hang my head, letting my shame wash over me.
“Did she not feel the same way about you?”
“Oh, I think we felt mostly the same, but we were hungry. A rich man at the edge of town started buying up girls left and right. She decided to sell her virginity to him, and he decided to keep her.”
“Oh…”
“I wish the story ended there, but the world isn’t that kind. He got her pregnant. She came to me during those times, looking for what we used to have before crawling back to him, which she always did. Until she couldn’t.”
“What happened?”
“Her pregnancies by him took a toll, robbing her of her health. Ten years after leaving, she came back one last time, begging to stay.”
“With her children?”
“They were all dead. Unfit for this goddamn dilapidated world.”
“That’s terrible.”
I run my fingers through my hair, trying to find the courage to tell her what a monster I am. “I threw her out, leaving her to the streets. It wasn’t the right thing to do, but I felt robbed.”
“Did she die?”
