But I Love Him (7 page)

I can’t have a baby. Not now. Not in this world. Things have to be fixed first. Connor and I have to figure out how to take care of ourselves first. He has to get better at controlling his anger and be happy, and we have so many things to fix.

I leave before sixth period. I don’t even care that a guard sees me pull out of the gravel lot, rocks flying behind my little car. I know he wrote down my plate. I know I will get detention for this. It seems silly, detention. Childish. Do they really think I would care?

I drive to Aberdeen, the next town over where no one will recognize me, and find a drug store. I’m ashamed of what I’m doing. I know I’m eighteen. It could be worse. But this is so wrong.

I buy three tests, just to be safe. I don’t want to have to come back if one doesn’t work right. I don’t want to stand at the register, praying the clerk uses a bag you can’t see through. I hate every second of it.

My stomach is twisting and turning so hard it’s painful.

This can’t happen. It will ruin everything. It will ruin me, break Connor, and spite my mother. She’ll hate me for sure now.

I take the tests to McDonald’s and park in the lot, staring at those stupid golden arches that seem too bright and perky, that seem to be mocking me.

I’m frozen. If I go inside and take this test and it says positive, it will mean so many things. Things I can’t handle. It will mean my life is really over. It will mean I can never be the person I used to be. I can never return to who I once was.

And I will have to tell him and I don’t think I can do that. I don’t think I can put that on his shoulders when they already sink with the weight of the world he carries. I don’t think I can look him in the eyes and watch the disappointment and despair I’m sure will be there. A baby doesn’t deserve a reaction like that. A reaction like I’m feeling right now—the utter dread and fear. A baby is supposed to be a happy thing, not a death knell.

An hour passes before I finally stuff all three boxes into my purse. If I don’t do this now, I never will. I have to know. Not knowing is killing me.

I walk across the tile floor as if it’s the plank, and these tests are my scarlet letter for all to see.

The bathroom is empty. I take the big handicap stall and hang my purse on the door. I set a box on the top of the paper dispenser, my hand a little shaky, and then I slide my jeans down and sit down on the toilet.

And then I see it … and then I know.

I’m not pregnant.

The relief I feel is so swift and intense I collapse and bury my face in my arms, and rest on my knees and sob.

All alone, in the McDonald’s bathroom.

April 30

Eight Months

For two days, I skipped school. Two days I avoided everything. I stayed in bed almost all day, the curtains drawn, the covers pulled up to my chin.

But I know I have to go back to class before I miss too much. Before they call my mom.

I bring a stool into the tiny bathroom in his apartment and sit on it under the harsh light, and stare at the angry blue bruise under my eye.

Gingerly, I touch the darkest spot and wince. It’s still tender even though it’s been a few days. It’s turning a grotesque shade of yellow around the edges.

I dig through a bag of makeup, trying to find the best concealer. I choose the weird green goop and pat it under my eye, then follow it up with foundation and powder. I just need to cover it up so no one will see it. I’ll keep my head down and get through class. The bruise will fade and no one will ever know it was there.

I look up after I dab another layer of powder under my eye.

It’s not an improvement. I look like I’ve spackled pancake batter on my face.

I take a washcloth and wipe it off, but the pressure makes my whole face throb.

I look down at the linoleum for a moment and take a few deep breaths to will away the emotions welling up in my chest. This is stupid. I need to just cover it up and get to school.

I can do this.

I grip the sink and stare straight back at my reflection.

And I don’t recognize myself.

Before I can stop it, my lip starts quivering. A tiny bit at first, then it’s shaking and I have to bite it. My vision shimmers, and then I see the big tears brim and roll down my cheeks, dripping off my chin, one after another.

The girl staring back at me is not me.

It is someone else.

It is not me.

Her eyes turn red as I watch her in the mirror. Her sparkling blue eyes look so hollow.

She’s like the zombie version of me. The undead version.

There is no way that is me.

I close my eyes because I can’t look at her anymore.

School can wait. I can make up another day. It’s Friday, anyway. By Monday the bruise will be gone and no one will have to know about it.

I need to go back to bed, where the world doesn’t exist.

I swipe my hand across the counter and the makeup crashes to the floor, and then I walk out the door and switch off those ugly bright lights.

I’m going back to bed. And when I wake up maybe that ugly girl will be gone.

April 27

Seven Months, twenty-eight days

I should have known when he said, “You’re so lucky I don’t hit girls,” that one day he would.

And he did. He just hit me. I can’t seem to process it. I’m too shocked to move, as the same image replays over and over in my mind. The way his knuckles smashed into my cheek, the loud crack when skin met skin.

Connor wouldn’t do that to me. He wouldn’t turn on me like that. He hits things, not people. He told me that himself, that first month we were together, when I saw all those scars on his knuckles.

He loves me as much as I love him. And he would never hurt me like this.

But I know by the look on his face that he’s more stunned than I am, and that it has really, truly happened.

He hit me.

I just keep thinking it, over and over, trying to wrap my head around it. I just keep staring at him, my face stinging so hard it burns. This didn’t happen. He doesn’t even look angry anymore. It couldn’t have happened.

I sink to the ground but he catches me, picks me up before I can slide all the way to the floor. He carries me to the couch and sets me down as if I’m glass, as if I might break.

He doesn’t see that I’m already broken.

Tears flow down his cheeks and slide off his jaw. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He keeps repeating it.

He’s so far away. I’m so deep inside myself that I can’t respond, can’t talk.

He’s done it. He’s hit me.

He touches the spot on my cheek with the backside of his fingers. I’m sure it is red. It is swelling; I can feel it grow, heat spreading across my face. My eye feels heavy, like it’s trying to close all on its own.

“Oh, God, Ann, I’m sorry,” he keeps saying. Over and over. It is his mantra. He is sorry.

He’s kissing my face and my hands and crying.

“I swear to you I didn’t mean to. I don’t know why I did that. I’m so sorry. So, so sorry.”

I know he is. I know he hadn’t wanted to do that.

Just like I knew he would. It was inside him. I know that. I knew that it would come out.

And even though I thought I was ready, I wasn’t.

What do you do when the one person you want comfort from the most is the one who caused your pain? How can I want so desperately for him to wrap me up in his arms but also want so much for him to leave me alone?

“Please,” I whisper, though I have nothing else to say. “Please.”

I don’t know what I’m asking of him. I don’t know what I want right now, except to rewind the last ten minutes and erase it all.

It didn’t happen.

No.

It didn’t happen.

He is sobbing. I can’t make out his words anymore because they garble together into incoherent babble between his tears.

Hitting me has broken him. What his father failed to do, he has done himself.

All the times he has cried for himself, cried for the things he’d lived through, he’s never sobbed like this.

But now he knows. Now he knows, just as I have known on some level, what is inside him. It lurks behind his eyes, growing and changing and waiting.

And now it has happened. Now we both know who he is.

We both know what he is.

He cannot deny it anymore.

And neither can I.

April 25

Seven Months, twenty-six days

Connor is in the kind of mood I rarely see him in. The kind where he smiles and cracks jokes. The kind that give me hope that someday he’ll be whole again. I know if we can make a life for ourselves, away from all the drama of his old life, he could be like this all the time.

People don’t understand us. They don’t understand me. They think it’s so black and white, that he makes me miserable and that I should be with someone else and that I deserve something else.

But it’s not black and white at all. It’s gray. It’s a never-ending world of gray.

They don’t understand that there is so much to him that they’ll never see. That he only shows to me. They don’t understand that late at night, he tells me how beautiful I am. He tells me all the things he will give me one day, when our problems are over. They don’t understand that he would die for me.

We are going sailing today. After last week, when he missed our appointment, he used his own money to rent the boat again. Even though I know he can’t afford it. Even though I know it means he isn’t going to pay the light bill so that we can do this.

I don’t care, because this moment is all I need to get through the darkness.

He’s holding my hand and talking about sleeping on the boat. He wants to tie it to a buoy out in the bay and stay there overnight, listening to the water and forgetting about everything but the moment and the night.

I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever heard.

Connor knows exactly what to do and he shows me how to untie the boat from the dock and flip the bumpers over the edge of the little railing. He motors out of the marina and then I hold on to the little rudder and he starts tugging on nylon lines and whipping things around and in seconds the boat picks up speed and we are gliding, and he kills the engine.

The silence is beautiful. All I hear is the water and the way it splashes the bow, and the sound of the sail as it slaps around if he turns the boat out of the wind.

He’s concentrating, so I lean back on the bench and let the sun warm my face, and I relax. For the first time in weeks, I let the tension leave my body and let myself dream of life like this, when Connor is always happy and things are just … easy.

We sail for nearly an hour before Connor speaks.

“You look cute on this boat. It suits you.”

I open my eyes and look at him, still in my dreamlike state. “You look cute sailing.”

He grins at me, one of his genuine smiles. “I love you,” he says.

“I know. I love you too.”

He tilts his head and stares at me, his blue eyes sparkling with such genuine happiness it brings tears to my eyes, happy tears for once, and I have to slide over and get closer to him. He keeps one hand on the rudder and wraps his free one around me. The wind is whipping my hair around, making it dance, and it gets in his face but he doesn’t move away from me.

“I’m so glad I found you. You’re everything to me. I couldn’t do this without you. I would have given up a long time ago.”

I know that he doesn’t mean it figuratively; I know it’s literal. I know there were nights he wanted to find a bridge and jump right off. But he knew I would be there for him. He knew that together, we could do anything, and life could be good for him. For us.

I try to get closer to him, though it’s not possible.

“I wish we could do this every single day,” he says. “I wish this was our life.”

I nod. “It will be, some day. We’ll get a boat and we’ll fill it with food and fishing poles and we’ll sail the world. And we won’t give anyone our phone number or anything, and no one will be able to touch us.”

He sighs and rests his lips against my temple, and I close my eyes. There are no shooting stars or wishbones or magic dust, but I make a wish anyway.

I wish that we both last long enough for it to happen.

April 18

Seven months, nineteen Days

We were supposed to go sailing today. We were supposed to be alone together and have a day on the water and forget about the problems that plague us.

But he’s not here. I sit on the dock next to our rented sailboat, listening to the seagulls and the lapping water, and I wait.

And wait.

But he doesn’t show and I do not know why. I try to imagine what he could be doing, what dragged him away from something he was so excited about.

But it doesn’t matter, because even when he explains why, I will not understand. I will never know why he does the things he does because I have never lived his life. Because he has lived things I can’t even dream.