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“Well. Hmmm. What are you going to do now?" she asks, in a tone that sounds as confused as I feel.
“I really don’t have the slightest idea. I haven’t thought this far out.”
I know that I should have, especially since I’ve known this could be a possibility, but, like I said, I’d been purposefully deluding myself into thinking it was just a stomach flu. My mind can’t wrap itself around the gravity of this life-changing event. It didn’t even feel real until just now.
“That’s okay. You have time to decide,” Janice reassures me.
“I’m so glad I have you,” I tell her. “I have so many decisions to make!”
“I feel like it comes down to one, basically,” she says.
Not really, I think, because there are already so many others running through my mind.
But I get that there’s one main question I have to decide before the others even matter.
Or more like two. Although I’m sure she or any reasonable person would think the second decision shouldn’t be up for debate at all.
Should I tell Steve I’m pregnant?
I can’t even voice my question out loud at first— not even to Janice, my very best friend.
We walk back to the living room and sit on the couch together. I quickly wrap up the test inside all the packaging and I make sure to bury it in the trash can where my brother won't find it.
I'm quiet as I try to think of what to say.
This completely changes everything and renders me speechless.
We sit on the couch for a few minutes as I try to gather my thoughts.
Finally, I look at Janice.
"Well, I've decided one thing, at least, and that’s that I'm not going to tell Steve just yet. I mean, he just started his football career. I don't want to jeopardize that," I answer. “And I’m not sure if I’m going to keep it, so why bother him about something that might not even matter?”
Not after we haven’t even talked for six weeks!
I don’t say this part out loud, either, because I feel embarrassed about how sad and needy I’d felt ever since Steve left to start training with the Leviathans.
I know we said it was just one night, and then we had to part, but I was stupidly hoping he’d at least write to me or something. He didn’t have to go to the lengths of sending me an old-fashioned letter in snail mail, but a little email couldn’t hurt.
Still, I hadn’t heard a peep from him since that night he’d taken my virginity.
Did he want to just use me and throw me away?I wonder, hating to think that maybe Derek was right.
He’d always been so over-protective of me because he’d said that men are just horndogs who would break my heart. He hadn’t seemed to make any exceptions for any man—not even his best friend, Steve—and perhaps I’m just now seeing a glimpse as to why.
Is Steve just some player who likes to hit it and quit it… even with me?
I’d never thought of him like that and didn’t have any evidence to support the theory, other than the fact that he’d just disappeared like that after we’d finally made love.
And yet I didn’t want to unfairly condemn him by voicing my judgment against him out loud, because I could understand why he’d wanted a clean break.
We had to keep our distance because there was no way we could be together in real life. Society’s judgment against both of us would be too harsh, and there was no way that Derek would approve. It would ruin Steve’s long friendship with him, and my relationship with my own brother.
Still, I wish we could somehow find a way to carry on in secret.
Now that we’d made a baby, I didn’t see any way of making it work, and I just wanted to curl up into a ball in despair.
"Are you sure about that? You don’t want to let him know? What about you? I'm worried about you and how this is going to affect you," Janice confides.
