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I peel myself away from the door, walking down the hall to my bedroom. I know the minute I step inside why I should never have allowed Dante to come here. The bed is filled with memories of him now, of his hands on me, of the things he whispered in my ear, the way he made me feel. He might have a physical reminder of me on his skin, but he found a way to leave his mark on my life just as indelibly.
And I have no idea how a person is meant to ever begin to get over someone like that.
—
A week later, that thought comes back to haunt me.
I’ve spent the week trying not to think about Dante. He’s called and texted, but I’ve ignored every one, telling myself that continuing to talk to him even for a moment will make this all so much harder. I can’t stop seeing his face just before I fled the shop, his expression colder than I’ve ever seen it before, or the way he told me to get out, teeth gritted as if he could barely restrain how angry he was.
I should have realized what he was going to do. That he was telling me to leave so that I wouldn’t have to witness it, as if that made things any better.
I’ve never seen anyone so angry in all my life.
The cops questioned me about Rico’s ‘disappearance’ and the break-in at the shop. They weren’t aggressive, exactly, but they made me nervous, especially since I do know more than I was letting on. Fortunately, I had time to come up with a story before they talked to me—one that was corroborated by the receipt I had for the morning-after pill I’d bought earlier that day. I’d thought it was ironic, then, that the mistake Dante and I made had ended up helping to give me an alibi for where I’d been while the chaos at the shop was happening.
It feels even more ironic now.
I was nauseous for days, after Dante killed Rico. I told myself it was shock and anxiety, the worry over what my future would be now that it had been upended so thoroughly. But I’ve gone through worse things and not felt like this. I spent months caring for my father, so focused on his well-being that there wasn’t time for the stress to create any symptoms. I know, deep down, that even something as shocking as what’s happened in the past week isn’t enough to make me as sick as I have been. I haven’t been able to keep anything down until the afternoon, every day, including today.
This morning, it finally drove me to go to the drugstore and buy as many boxes of pregnancy tests as they had in stock, telling myself all the while that it would be proof that I’ve just finally succumbed to the stress. That there’s no way I could actually be pregnant. That I could put that worry to rest and focus on the real problems that I need to deal with.
I slump onto the tile floor of my small bathroom, feeling as if my knees have turned to water. I barely notice how hard I hit the floor. All of my attention is focused on the thin white stick in my hand.
There’s not even any pink lines to decipher. No turning it this way and that in the light to see if they’rereallydark enough to count as a positive result—or a negative, depending on how you look at things.
Just one single word that will upend my entire life.
I re-read the word hovering in front of my eyes. I tell myself that I’m seeing it wrong. That there’s some mistake. Panic floods me, then numbness, then fear again, in cyclical waves that make my stomach lurch and revolt, even though there’s still nothing in it.
There aresix more tests scattered across my bathroom counter. They all say some variation of the same thing, but this one is the most blunt. Impossible to ignore.
Pregnant.
A confirmation that, depending on what I decide to do, Dante mayneverreally be out of my life.
What amI supposed to do now?
Numbness gives way to panic again, then to nausea that I can’t fight back, and I drop the test as I lurch for the toilet. I heave up nothing, again and again, squeezing my eyes tight as I try not to burst into tears. I need to think, and letting myself be overwhelmed by it all will only make that harder.
But surely, after all I’ve been through in the last six months, I deserve to finally be overwhelmed by it all.
It only adds insult to injury when I do the math, sitting against the wall with clammy skin and a still-churning stomach. I realize that it can’t have been the last night we were together that got me into this position. It hasn’t been long enough. It was one of the other nights—when I thought we were being so careful, when we used condoms every time, even though I wanted so badly to know what he felt like inside of me with nothing between us.
I’ve been using protection my entire life, every time I was with someone. Itwouldfail me now, with the one man that I absolutely do not want to have a child with.
Is that really true?
Even as I think it, a warmth stirs through me at the thought of a child with Dante. The idea of him holding a baby in his arms—ourbaby—seems to activate something deep and primal within me, a longing that I didn’t know I had.
Whenever I’ve thought of what I want for my life, a child has never been in any of those plans. But suddenly—
I press my hand to my stomach, feeling anxiety pulse through me.What am I going to do?
The thought of ending the pregnancy makes my throat go tight and my eyes well up. Maybe it’s hormones, but I can’t help feeling that the time to do something about this was when I took that morning-after pill—or all the times I tried to make sure we were being safe. Now, it feels too late to go back.
I want this baby. The knowledge settles over me like a heavy blanket, almost comforting in the surety of it. I don’t know what todoabout that, but I feel certain that it’s what I want. The only question is how to move forward from that choice.
I can’t tell Dante.
