Life Interrupted (3 page)

As we dr
ove away, I asked again what happened. “I don’t know.  The whole night was fucked up.  She got mad when I said I would meet her here because I wanted to celebrate with the guys first, and then she took forever to get here so I’m already half pissed when she does, and then she starts complaining that I pay too much attention to other girls, that I don’t make her feel special anymore.”

He scrub
bed his hands over his face and leaned his head back against the seat.  “I had no idea what she was talking about, and when I told her that she got mad and said she wouldn’t dance with me when I’m like this so she went and let Henry put his hands on her.  When I pulled him off, she said I was being irrational and told me to leave.” 

             
Lauren’s greatest weapon is being a girl—she knows exactly how to aim and hurt someone simply by manipulating them. Unlike me, she didn’t just punch Tripp when she got mad at him.  She manipulated him, worked him into a jealous rage until he conformed to what she wanted.  Not this night, though, I thought as I felt Tripp’s warm hand in mine.  Instead of chasing her like he’d been doing their entire relationship, he came running to me.  I held this revelation tightly like I did his hand while I drove him home, my excitement growing more when he asked if he could go to my house so he didn’t have to deal with his brothers.

             
We snuck through the back door and into my room as we had countless times when we were growing up, times when he needed a place to get away from the ever present pressure of his family, times when he’d messed up with his parents and needed a place to hang out until they calmed down.  Times when we were just friends and wanted to be together.

             
But this time was different.  We weren’t Tripp and Rachel, best friends. We were Tripp and Rachel, scorned boyfriend and the girl he’d run to.  I sat down on the bed, scooting back and leaning against the pillows and instead of taking his normal side, Tripp sat down on mine, scooting until I had to curl my legs up to make room for him, staring at me while I stared at him.  And before I could think or breathe his hands were in my hair and his mouth was on mine, his tongue sweeping inside to stroke my own, his lips taking mine so firmly, so thoroughly, so familiarly, it was as if we kissed every day.  In the back of my mind I worried over the fact that I could taste the beer on his breath, and then his hands swept under my t-shirt, pulling it up and over my head in one move, and all I could think of was him.

             
His hands possessed every inch of me that night, taking me to places I had never been with anyone else, his mouth making the same journey, and when he lay on top of me, his bare chest pressed to mine, he framed my face in his hands and looked down at me as if seeing me for the first time.  This was it, I thought.  He finally felt as I did.  I gave him everything I could that night, stopping him before he could search for a condom.  I wasn’t ready, but it was okay, because now that we were together I would have time to be ready.  He didn’t say anything when I made him stop, he just continued to kiss me and stroke his hands over my body, loving me in the way I always dreamed he would.

In the morning after what felt like hours of kissing, I lay
in my bed, Tripp next to me as he had been countless times in our childhood, but this time it was different.  He’d seen me without most of my clothes on, he’d touched me and kissed me like I was his girlfriend, and then he’d held me all night.  Stars clouded my vision and I snuck out of bed to use the bathroom and brush my teeth. When I returned, he was gone, a small text on my phone saying he had to go take care of something. 

Something inside of me broke, left me feeling hollow and empty.
  I waited for him to call all day, and when he never did, I told myself not to panic, but on Monday morning when he walked into school with Lovely Lauren, I knew.

T
wo weeks later Katie pressured me into going to Brooke Wilkins’s spring break party and when I walked in and saw Tripp in a lip-lock with Lovely Lauren, I got drunk and hooked up with Marcus Kash, secretly pleased when Marcus kissed me right in front of Tripp, even more so when he took my hand to lead me upstairs and Tripp tried to stop me.  I stood on the bottom stair, my hand in Marcus’s, my vision slightly blurry from my last drink, and I looked down at Tripp as he laid his hand on my arm.

“Don’t do this, Rachel.” 

In the background I heard Marcus say “Who’s Rachel?” but I ignored him and yanked my arm from Tripp’s.  “Lauren’s waiting for you.”  With that, I turned and walked up the stairs behind a guy I hardly knew, hoping that being with him would erase the memory of being with Tripp.  It didn’t, and six weeks later when that stick blared the words PREGNANT at me, it wasn’t Marcus I ran to, but Tripp.  We had barely spoken in the two months since we’d spent the night together, but one look at my tear stained face and he left class, taking my hand and walking to my car with me, promising me everything was going to be all right as I sobbed on his shoulder.

Oddly, it’s Gracie that brought Tripp back into my life.  He was there when I sat down and tried to quit volleyball, bringing me back to life and reassuring me that my dreams weren’t dead, just postponed.  And he’s
still here, just out of my reach, but here to grab onto if I really need him.  Even as I think it, Lovely Lauren glides over to his table and puts her arms around his neck from behind. I watch as his hands instinctively go to her arms and then I rip my eyes away from them and give my attention back to my math homework.

I’m walking to my car after practice when my phone buzzes with a text from Katie.

Katie:
              7pm Saturday night. Dinner with Richie and Doug at The Dream on campus

Me:
              Pizza?

Katie:
              u said u wanted normal.

Me:
              thx Katie

Katie:
              don’t 4get to ask G to babysit sat night

Me:
              bossy

Katie:
              damn straight. Richies HOT

Me:
              like dougie fresh hot, or normal, healthy boy hot?

Me:
              jk

Katie:
              no wonder he doesn’t like u. b nice sat

Me:
              yea yea

I unlock my Explorer just as my phone buzzes with a text again, this time from Tripp.

Tripp: u still here?

Me:              parking lot about to leave

Tripp:
              hold up, I need a ride.

Me:
              k

If Tripp needs a ride, it can only mean one thing: Betty is acting up again.  Betty is Tripp’s classic Ford truck and she’s always breaking.  His dad owns a garage downtown and Tripp and all of his brothers are car lovers, all owning classics that they bought and restored themselves with Mr. Jones.  When Betty’s working, she’s beautiful, just like Tanner’s original Shelby GTO and Griff’s Bronco.  But when she breaks, Tripp is carless until he has time to figure out what happened to her.  The downside of a classic is it requires more time and attention than most eighteen-year-olds have, hence the reason Tripp needs a ride every other day.

S
ince Tripp is slower than a group of cheerleaders when it comes to showering off the basketball sweat and getting outside after practice, I settle down in the front seat and text G, or Grandma Reynolds, my dad’s mom who watches Gracie during the week, to let her know I’ll be a few minutes later than normal.  A minute later my phone signals a message and I laugh at the picture of Gracie eating macaroni.  There’s definitely more of the orange cheese on her face than in her mouth, as is standard for her these days.  I smile as I look at the picture, noting Gracie’s blonde hair pulled back from her face with a sparkly clip, another present from G no doubt. 

Where I fail at being a girl, G is constantly dressed as though she’s going to a dance club (an interesting look when you’re in your
late seventies, and one that can ultimately be terrifying).  She’s constantly adorning Gracie in sparkles and tutus, which paired with the converse and t- shirts I put her in makes her look a little like Avril Lavign in the early days.  I study the picture a little longer, taking in Gracie’s blonde hair and sea-green eyes, her pixie nose and already full pink lips.  She’s as fair as I am dark, the only resemblance we share in the shape and color of our eyes.  My skin is olive, thanks to my mother’s Italian heritage and my father’s Cherokee ancestors, my hair dark and thick.  My eyes are a hazel that transform from green to gray depending on the day.  Gracie’s eyes are my eyes—heavy lidded, long lashed.  But Gracie’s face is not mine, nor is her fair skin or blonde ringlets. 

When I first realized that she was going to
be a clone of Marcus, I cried and asked my mom what I was going to tell her when she asked why she didn’t look more like me.  My mother, for all of her scientific knowledge and background, looked at me and said “You tell her the truth: the sun shined so brightly the day she was born that everything about her is light.”

It was an answer I could live with.

I close my phone and drop it in my lap, looking over as a car pulls into the spot a few down from mine in the almost deserted parking lot.  I want to say I’m surprised to see Marcus hop out of the driver’s side and walk oh-so-casually over to the pick-up truck waiting, a small parcel in his hand, but I’m not.  I slouch further down in my seat and watch as he makes a quick exchange before pocketing something and slipping back from the truck as it peels out.  Turning, he walks back to his own car, looking up in time to see me watching.  He pauses to register that it’s me, then he smiles, a slow menacing look spilling across his hollowed out face.  The same face that even now sits on my phone, covered in sweet potato mush.  Then he ducks into his car and drives away.

~

I found out I was pregnant with Gracie in the spring of my sophomore year.  Traveling season for volleyball was in full swing, so when I found out I opted to do the mature thing and ignore it.  No one knew (other than Tripp, and he never said anything) because it was no one’s business, and besides, I hadn’t decided what
I was going to do. 

There’s an advantage to being a tall girl when you find yourself the recipient of an unwanted pregnancy
: I was six months before I started showing.  My appetite has always been large, and I was so sick the first twelve weeks that I actually lost nine pounds.  But when school started again after summer and double days for the high school team stretched out, I realized that I’d made my decision and I wasn’t giving the baby up, in any form.  It was September when I broke down in Coach’s office and told him I had to quit volleyball for personal reasons but I hoped to be welcomed back on the team next year.

He
stared at me, his mouth working like a guppy as he tried to say something.  Finally, when he croaked out “Why?” I couldn’t take the pressure.

Whether it was due to raging hormones or fear and
self-loathing or all of the above, I laid my head on his desk and started sobbing as I told him I was six months pregnant and I couldn’t give up the baby.  His first reaction was not what I expected, but then, no one’s was.

“But, how
…? Isn’t Katie the one with the boyfriends?”

Stacy had a similar reaction, if more volatile. 

“How?” she finally asked after what seemed like an hour of her sitting on the sofa staring at me as if I’d grown three heads.

             
“How what?” I asked her.

             
She gestured to me with her hands, encompassing my whole being as if dumbfounded that my plumbing worked the same way as everyone else’s, and shock of all shocks, it had actually worked better than hers, the girl who had been trying to get pregnant since the day she got married.

             
“How
this
? How did you get pregnant? You don’t date, you don’t sleep around like Katie.”  She gestured to Katie, whom I’d brought so I could kill two birds with one stone—and so she would be there to help me clean up the devastation that would be Stacy at the end of my confession.  I knew my sister well enough to know that this conversation was going to be about her by the end.  “You hate germs, for Jesus’ sake.  I mean, you barely share water with me and I’m your sister.  How in the hell did you go from being a virgin nobody to
pregnant
?” The last word came out as a shriek.  She stood, her body trembling as she looked at me as if something would finally come to her and explain the reasons behind this cruel twist of fate. 

             
“You had sex,” Katie said on a gasp and looked at me.  The fact is, it did probably just dawn on her that my pregnancy was due to sex.  In all likelihood, she had taken my announcement at face value and was wondering what toilet seat I had sat on and thanking God it hadn’t been her.  Things were always a little slower to add up for Katie, which was why she was more interested in who I had slept with than the fact that I was pregnant.

             
“Oh my God, when did you have sex and with who? You don’t even like to kiss boys, how did you get pregnant? And why didn’t you tell me?”

“The normal way,” I said
, insulted.  It wasn’t that I didn’t like kissing boys, it’s more to the point that I couldn’t really see myself kissing the boys at our school (unless it was Tripp and really, that was more like self-defeat than fantasy). Most of them were a good three or four inches shorter than me minimum—they lined up with my chest and said inappropriate things hoping I’d be so flattered that they spoke to me that I’d fall at their feet.  Not exactly a turn on, if you’re me.  Katie, on the other hand, had gotten most of her homecoming dates in just that scenario.

And then Katie
, never as clueless as you need her to be, figured it out.  “Marcus Ka-”

Before she could finish
, I slapped my hand over her mouth.  I didn’t want Stacy to know who Marcus was, to see him, to check in with him, to talk to him.  It wasn’t because I was afraid that Marcus would find out I was pregnant and want to be a part of it.  It was because I was already devastated enough that I had to tell her I was pregnant, that I had to show my sister who was ten times more perfect than me that I was a high school girl who had thrown her dreams away on a one night stand.  I didn’t want her to know it was to the resident drug dealer whose only potential lay in the fact that when he finally went to rehab, his enabling parents would have a job waiting for him in the family business.

~

Tripp steps up to the passenger side and watches Marcus’s Beemer speed out of the parking lot.  Then he looks at me with a raised eyebrow.

“Why was he here?
He graduated last year.”

Tripp has an unreasonable hatred for Marcus. I don’t know if it was there before that night at the party, but I know it’s been there since and each time he sees him, he goes all protective.  It would be cute if I needed protecting. Or if he was my boyfriend.

“Oh, you know, wanted to check in with the family, see how his offspring is, if he can do anything to help raise her, the usual.”  I roll my eyes as Tripp’s brow creases and his eyes darken.  “Jesus, Mom, relax.  He was making a deal. We barely made eye contact.”

He nods and gets into the car, throwing his bag into the backseat.  “Has he asked about Gracie?”

“Nope.”

“Do you want him to?”

I slide a glance at him while I’m waiting at the stop sign which leads out of the parking lot.  “Why would I? He made it clear the day he told me to keep my mouth shut that he didn’t want to be attached to her, and it’s not like I was into him before that.”

I see him visibly relax from the corner of my eye and resist the urge to roll them
again.  Tripp’s big brother, over protectiveness went into overdrive the minute Gracie was born.  As thankful as I am, it’s also as annoying as it is sweet. I mean, my big brother he is
not
, otherwise, the day he had his tongue down my throat would be scarring for more reasons than the ones already there.

The day that Marcus
cornered me in the girl’s bathroom to make sure I understood in no uncertain terms that he didn’t want people spreading rumors that the kid was his anymore, I had to enlist both Tanner and Griff to keep Tripp from tracking him down and beating the shit out of him.  There is no rationality when Tripp sees Marcus, it’s all male ego and emotion and as understanding as I try to be about it, at times it grates on me that he’s protective of me from Marcus, yet he can’t see that he’s the only person to ever make me feel like less.  The only person to ever break me.

“
Just stay away from him and let me know if he bothers you.  He’s into some deep shit with some bad people.”

“Aye-a
ye, Captain.”

His lips twitch.  “I’m being serious, smartass. 
Griff said he was closing out the other night and saw Marcus in the alley off the bar, packing some things into his car with some guy.  He’s getting into bigger things now that he’s in college, Rachel, and you need to be careful.”

Yeaaa, careful went out the window the day I decided that I needed to get under him to get over Tripp
.  Because I’m thinking he won’t like this response (and won’t Ms. Flynn be impressed by my self-control), I leave it be and nod my head.

When we arrive at G’s house, Tripp goes to hop out and I rest a hand on his arm.  “Uh, I should probably warn you.  G’s got a boyfriend these days, and she’s super vocal about him and, uh, their…dates.”

“Sweet Jesus.”

“Exactly, so just be forewarned that when she mentions Walter, you should tune her out because it’s gonna get ugly.”

              He makes a face as we walk up the drive and into the house.  G is my dad’s mom, but unlike my dad, she’s been a part of my life since I was born, stating that she had a “good for nothing son and wanted to try again.”  She and my mom are close, bonded by their intense disapproval over everything my father does, so G picked up a lot of the slack with us while my mom was working.  Now she watches Gracie five days a week for free, no matter how much I insist on paying her.

             
“She keeps me young,” she always says and waves my money away.  I’m as grateful as I am guilty.  I mean, she’s almost eighty and she’s hanging with my one-year-old every day, but then I remember her social calendar and the way she hops from man to man, bingo nights to the ELKS dance nights and so forth and realize it really does keep her young.  And involved.  I don’t know if it’s awesome or pathetic that my grandmother has a hotter social life than I do.