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"You can just tell us," I prompted her gently. She closed her eyes, and then lifted her gaze, looking between the two of us.
"I’m pregnant."
Those words hung there in the silence for a long moment, my hand still on her knee – my heart slamming against my chest as I tried to wrap my head around the enormity of them. She was...she was pregnant?
"Pregnant?" Alex repeated after her, as though making sure he’d heard her right. She nodded slowly, nervously, eyes darting between the two of us as she tried to work out just how we felt about it.
Pregnant. I mean, I should have known something like this was possible, given all the sex we’d been having, and given that we hadn’t been using protection, but being faced with the reality of it was something else entirely. I inhaled a long breath. This apartment, had felt like it was cut off from the rest of the world, reality never daring to poke its head in. But here, now, there was no getting away from it.
"You’re sure," Alex continued, and she nodded again.
"I took a bunch of tests, and they all came back positive," she confirmed. "I need to see a doctor, just to make certain, but I don’t see how all of them could be wrong. I’m...I’m pregnant, I know I am."
There it was. No getting away from it, the truth of the matter is laid out in front of us, with no space to hide from it. I leaned back in my seat, letting out a long breath, the weight of that word hanging heavy over my head.
"And I know this isn’t what any of us planned," she continued, speaking a little quicker now as if she was catching up to the part of this that she had already rehearsed. "But I...I know I want to keep this baby. That doesn’t mean that I expect you guys to stick around for it, I know you have your own lives, and I don’t expect you to just give up on them for my sake. But I thought you should-"
"Of course, I want to stick around," I replied before I could think twice about it. Shit, how could I have gone about it any other way? When I looked at her, I saw possibility – the kind of possibility I had thought I was cut off from for so long, the possibility for closeness, for care, for connection. And the thought of turning that into something more permanent...damn, it was too good for me to pass up. Her eyes widened with surprise.
"Really?" she replied, her voice dropping to a whisper. I squeezed her knee, a silent promise that I wasn’t going to back down on this.
"Yeah, really," I replied. "I...I know I didn’t exactly have the best start in all of this, but that doesn’t mean I want to walk away from my own child. I know I can do better for them than my parents did for me. I think I owe them that, whoever they are."
She bit her lip, a wash of emotion crossing her face – did she feel the same way? I knew her mother had left her behind, and I wondered if that was influencing her decision to stick by this child no matter what, to make it so that she never let them go. I knew how it felt, to be left behind by the person who was meant to care for you, and how dark and how painful those scars it left you with could burn into your skin. I would never do the same thing to my child, never. I would always want to do better by them, no matter what it took.
"Thank you," she whispered, her voice laced with a deep sincerity. The two of us, we got it – we understood each other, at least on this level.
"Who’s it it?" Alex asked, and both of us turned to him.
"I don’t know," she confessed. "I...I guess we could do a paternity test, when the baby’s old enough, if that’s what you want..."
Alex shook his head. And, for a moment, I thought he was shaking his head at the thought of this baby’s mere existence. But, instead, he contradicted me.
"It doesn’t matter," he replied, shaking his head. She stared at him, her eyes wide, doubtful. She couldn’t get a read on him any better than I could, and it was clear she was scared he was going to shut her down before this went any further – that he was going to close off in the face of all these opportunities, being laid out in front of us, the chance to have this child and raise them right.
"It doesn’t?" she murmured.
"Of course not," he replied. "Whoever this baby belongs to...it’s ours. Both of us. And Both of us should be responsible for it."
Her eyes nearly bugged out of her head when he said that.
"What – what do you mean?” she stuttered. He shrugged, as though it should have been obvious.
"I mean, I’m not going to walk away from this child, just because it might not biologically belong to me," he replied. "I’m going to be there for them. No matter what."
"But I...I thought you said that we needed to keep things professional," she blurted out. He shook his head again.
"That was before," he replied, his voice dropping slightly, growing gentler. "Before I...before I knew that there was a future here. A future with a child in it. A future...a future with all four of us."
"Four?" she asked.
"Us three," he replied, gesturing around. "And then the baby, too."
"The four of us," she echoed after him, and she looked around at us, as though it was really just sinking in for her. "I guess...I guess we would be a family. Right?"
"We could be, if that’s what you want," I agreed. She giggled slightly, a tear rolling down her cheek, the emotions clearly getting the better of her.
"Oh, I’m sorry," she murmured, swiping the tear away. "I’m not sad, I’m just...overwhelmed."
