Going Long (2 page)

Nolan

I never got tired of seeing Reed
waiting for me by my building. It made the day rush by, and I wanted to run to
him every time I saw him sitting there waiting for me. It was only a hundred
miles between our two schools, but it was still a hundred miles. I drove to his
school a few times, mostly on game days. But he didn’t like me driving through
the desert, still a little shell-shocked from our accident.

Some days he was tired, and I
could tell. But he made the trip anyhow. I knew he couldn’t stay long today,
and I knew he
desperately
wanted to have the conversation about me
transferring schools if he went through with the draft, but I wasn’t ready to
have that talk yet.

I knew he loved me. Damn, he’d
gone far to prove it. But the thought of uprooting things, just for him to find
out that there were options in the big world—women out there, that were
better
still plagued my mind. It didn’t help that his mother, Millie, never quite
warmed to me. She got my name right when we were in each other’s company now,
but there was always an air of disdain in how she spoke to me. Reed always
denied it, but it was there. I sensed it—my girlfriends sensed it. Hell,
Reed’s dad, Buck, even sensed it too, telling me more than once not to let her
bitchy
streak
get to me.

But all of that didn’t matter
when I lay in his arms. I enjoyed the now. It calmed the constant churn of
stress in my gut from my studies and the fear of blowing my
scholarship—the one thing in my mind that edged out the worry over Reed’s
draft decision.

“You’re still stressed about
this project, aren’t you?” Reed whispered in my ear, his breath sending chills
through me. I just took a deep breath and turned on my side to face him,
burying my face deep in his chest while he wrapped his massive arms around me.

“That transparent, huh?” I let
out a big sigh.

“You were never very good at
poker,” he chuckled. “Can I help? Do you want to test my IQ? I mean, I’m a
genius
,
so it will probably throw everything off, but I’m willing to play dumb if you
need me to.”

His damn smile and comforting
humor always soothed me. His hair was shorter now, but still long enough for me
to grab fistfuls, and his face was no longer the baby-skinned one I had first
kissed years ago. It was rough, and almost always in need of a shave by the
time I saw him. It was perfect. He was perfect. Kissing his stubbly chin, I
looked up at him while I lay tucked tightly in his arms.

“You know, it’s not fair that
you’re so smart and also so good looking,” I said, for once giving him a
compliment without back-loading it with a joke. He just looked at me
skeptically, and I couldn’t resist. “Something had to give, though. I guess
that’s why your hairline’s receding.”

I held my serious face as long
as I could without breaking. When I finally did, he just rolled on top of me
and dug in with a breath-stealing tickle round. He finally let up, standing to
look at the clock on my desk, his face souring a little because it was time for
him to go.

I grabbed my keys and walked him
down the hall to the stairs. I always hated this moment, but I knew I’d see him
in two days for his game. We stood still just staring at each other for
seconds, our fingers interlocking with one another, not willing to let go. I
sensed the heaviness on his mind, seconds before his brow creased and he looked
down, kicking at my feet a little.

“Spill it, Wildcat,” I nudged
him.

“We have to talk about the
draft, Noles,” he grimaced. I had made him afraid to bring the topic up, which
I didn’t like. But I also dreaded talking about it.

“I know,” I sighed. “I just…I
can’t get my head there yet. Maybe, maybe in a week or two?” Why the hell did I
throw that out there? Crap, I just gave myself a deadline.

Reed smiled a bit at my words,
which solidified what I already knew, that it was right for us to talk about
it, and I needed to come around. I just hoped that these next few weeks dragged
more slowly than any before.

“Deal. We can talk about it
during my bye week. Maybe we can get away for a bit, spend a little time
together, alone?” he smirked.

“But we are alone,” I said
coyly.

“Yes, but…and no offense…your
dorm bed is shit small. And this place always smells like burnt popcorn,” he
scrunched his nose a little.

I had to agree. And the thought
of the two of us getting away did make the impending conversation a little more
tolerable. I stood up on my tiptoes and kissed his cheek, holding his face in
my hands and looking him in the eyes. “OKAY, two weeks then,” I smiled, pulling
out a damn fine poker face if I’d ever seen one.

It was amazing how much reading
I had this early in the semester. Specializing in reading and writing
disabilities was more challenging than I had anticipated, but every time I
worked with a student in our resource center or at one of the local schools, I
knew it was worth it. Seeing someone put together words, and read aloud, made
my heart pump with pride.

I had been working on the poem
project for a little more than a semester now. I had a dozen or so students
that I met with on a regular basis, writing poetry. It was going to be part of
my final portfolio, showing how teaching language through poetry helped with
written and verbal communication skills. We were going to have a reading at the
end of the semester at a local coffee shop where I spent most of my mornings
and afternoons studying
.
Reed knew a little about the project, but I was
keeping the reading a surprise. I wanted to invite him for a special evening.

Finally done with my homework
for the night, I flipped out the light and kicked my feet into the giant
comforter on my bed, breathing it in since it still smelled of Reed. My mind
raced, “Two weeks. Two weeks until I gave him my blessing to enter the draft.”

I knew I had to support Reed; I
was being selfish. What I wasn’t sure about was if I truly wanted to transfer.
It wasn’t so much that I minded moving to a different school, but I did worry
about how I would pay for it. Reed always told me not to worry about the
finances, but I didn’t think I could let him help pay for my schooling. As
ashamed as I was to even admit it to myself, I think part of my worry was that
he’d end up breaking up with me and leave me stuck completely.

I also wasn’t sure we could
survive a full year being that far apart. I wasn’t even sure what life after
graduation meant for
us.
Reed always talked about me in his future, but
he’d never really talked about kids or marriage. I think his own broken
childhood colored his outlook on things like
forever
a little. Sure, we
talked about living somewhere because of football. Buying a house thanks to
football. Paying my tuition anywhere…with the help of football. But we were
always careful not to cross that line into what that meant beyond football.
Neither of us.

I wrestled with these thoughts
for an hour, never coming up with answers and debating how our conversation
about the draft would go. Sleep wasn’t coming easy, and I blame that partly for
the thought-stopping epiphany that hit my nerve endings with the jolt of a
lightning bolt.

Sprinting from my bed, I flung
my desk lamp on and flipped frantically through the pages of my day planner. I
wrote everything down in that planner. Most people liked to keep their
calendars on their phones or iPads, but I always had to have mine in writing.
Writing it down always helped me remember, or so I thought. I flipped to the
current week and rubbed my eyes, hoping they weren’t focusing. When a second
and third look confirmed what I saw, I sunk to the floor, my heart beating at
the speed of a hummingbird’s wing.

I was four days late.

Nolan

The Internet is a scary thing at
3 a.m. Like a fortuneteller, it tells you what you think you want to hear. Or,
in my case, what I desperately wanted to prove wrong. I sat there for hours
with my iPad, flipping through site after site about the signs of pregnancy,
and how long before you could tell. I was pretty sure I could pee on a stick at
this point and know for sure. But I also liked living in the 50/50. Peeing on
the stick could mean 100-percent certainty. And I only wanted that if it meant
I wasn’t pregnant.

It’s funny how your body and
mind can operate on autopilot. I didn’t move from that spot on the floor until
the sun rose. I didn’t sleep, and I was sliding my feet to the resource center
in the middle of campus for a few morning sessions with some of my students. I
didn’t register a single word my students read during our sessions. I heard
muffled sounds that resembled words, I smiled, I nodded and I encouraged. I was
getting good at poker faces.

Autopilot took me to Sarah’s
apartment next. When I didn’t see Calley’s car in the parking lot, I pushed
forward up the steps, knowing she’d likely gone to work, leaving my friend at
home alone. By the time she answered the door, I must have lost my ability to
bluff, because the tears started to come, and words evaded me.

“Jesus, Nolan. What’s wrong?”
Sarah asked, pulling me inside and slamming the door behind me. She grabbed my
hand and led me to the couch, pushing me down and kneeling in front of me with
a truly confused look on her face.

I just shook my head back and
forth, trying to form words with my lips but not even knowing where to begin.

“Okay, you’re going to have to
speak. Is it Reed? Did that asshole cheat on you?” she was grabbing my
shoulders now, clearly going from her zero-to-sixty, friend-ready-to-defend-you
mode.

I just shook my head no,
fighting to slow my breathing down. After a few seconds, I slumped my
shoulders, defeated, and looked up at her.

“I’m late,” I said, twisting the
side of my mouth to show her how helpless I felt.

She just blinked at me in
return, taking her time to register what I’d said. Her eyes grew wider when it
settled in. “You mean, like…late, late?” She kept a firm grip on my shoulders
while she questioned me.

I nodded
yes
slowly,
never blinking, and staring her in the eyes without really looking at anything.

“Oh…shit,” Sarah said, not able
to hide her emotions. I suppose that’s why I came to her. I needed someone to
freak out for me, to think quickly on her feet. Sienna was the practical one.
But Sarah, she would go bat-shit crazy with me. And this revelation? Well, it
called for bat-shit crazy.

“We need to go to the drug
store, Noles. Like now. You have to know for sure,” she said, pushing her feet
into her shoes and rummaging around her kitchen counter for her purse and keys.
I didn’t move until she was standing right in front of me, my own feet dug
deeply into the carpet and my legs unwilling to move.

“I…don’t know if I want to
know,” I looked at her, my eyes pleading. Just then, my phone buzzed. Autopilot
again, I pulled it from my purse and saw a text from Reed.

Miss you, baby. Have a late
dinner tonight with family friend to talk about that thing we’re going to talk
about. Someone in the business. Call you after, K? Love you.

His message was short and sweet,
but I took my time reading it, almost as if it was a full five-page essay. I
didn’t budge until I felt the weight of Sarah plop down next to me and felt her
shove my arms down to get my phone screen out of my face.

“Noles, snap out of it. You HAVE
to find out. You can’t live in between,” she said, standing and pulling at my
armpit to lift me from the couch. She was right, but that didn’t stop me from
craving the blissful ignorance of
right now
.

The drugstore was only a block
or two from Sarah’s apartment. And unfortunately, our walk to get there didn’t
take us nearly as long as I would have liked. The rows were filled with
appealing colors. I tried to drag us down the nail polish aisle, thinking maybe
a new color on my toes would be nice.
Yank
. Sarah tugged my arm. I tried
again for the candy aisle, thinking maybe a big bag of M&Ms would soothe
me, but
YANK
. No such luck.

We stood there in front of the
selection of various pregnancy tests in a section vividly labeled
Family
Planning
. The entire thing was surreal. I heard words escape from Sarah’s
lips, but I wasn’t listening. Everything sounded muted, and slow. She was
throwing box after box in our small basket and soon was grabbing my hand to
pull us to the register.

The judgmental look from the
checkout lady was something I will never forget. If I hadn’t been stunned and
frozen with the constant stab of shock, I might have said something to her. I
was getting better at sticking up for myself. But with this, being in this
situation, I just let her judge. Who was I?

We walked back to Sarah’s
apartment with $60 in pregnancy tests. Sarah pulled them all out on the counter
and went to work reading the directions immediately, first handing me a plastic
wand and telling me to try to only pee a little so we could knock out a few
tests. I just stood there holding the stick, staring at the small circle on the
end that would give me my fate.

“Nolan, come on. You have to pee
on it. Go!” She was chastising me. She left the bathroom for a few minutes to
give me some privacy. I stood staring at the dry filter strip, considering
briefly running it through the faucet and pretending I had taken the test. But
fooling Sarah wouldn’t do me any good in the long run.

I turned her sink faucet on to
help me have to go and sat waiting—finally taking a deep breath and going
a little on the tip of the test strip. Sarah was reading directions from the
other side of the door, telling me that I needed to let the test sit on the
counter for two minutes. But that wasn’t necessary.

The colors were changing almost
instantly, and when I saw the small
plus sign
start to appear, I wasn’t
surprised. But I
was
terrified.

“Are you done? I’ve got another
one, tell me when you’re ready,” Sarah was leaning on the other side of the
door.

“I don’t need it,” I said,
faintly.

“What? Why?” she cracked open
the door as I was pulling my shorts back into place, the stick dangling from my
hand. “Nolan, you have to set it down and wait for two minutes. Didn’t you
listen to anything I said?”

I held it up in front of me,
showing her the positive result. Sarah just looked at it with tightly closed
lips, considering the best reaction.

“You don’t know for sure, Nolan.
Those things aren’t always accurate. Come on, try one more,” she was already
pulling a new stick from the box and handing it to me.

“It’s going to be the same,” I
said, shaking my head slowly. “I just know.”

“No, you don’t!” she said
forcefully, putting the new test in my hand and pushing me back while she
closed the door.

I humored Sarah and went through
five of the tests—all positive—before she finally relented and slid
down against the bathroom door to sit on the floor across from me. We didn’t
talk for about 20 minutes, just looking up at the row of tests every now and
then and sighing, considering.

What was I going to do? How
could this have happened? Well, that’s a stupid question; I know exactly how it
happened. But we were always so very careful. This was going to ruin
everything. I wouldn’t be able to finish my degree, Reed might not be able to
enter the draft, or worse, he might not want anything to do with me—or a
baby.

Almost as if she was hearing my
inner dialogue, Sarah interrupted my stream of thoughts. “You have to tell
Reed,” she said, abruptly.

“No,” I shot back quickly. “I
mean, not yet. I have to think this through. I should make sure, you know, with
a doctor first.”

I took another deep breath and
pulled my knees up to my stomach, hugging them for comfort. My brain was
searching for answers. I didn’t know how I was going to deal with this.
Suddenly, Sarah got to her feet and walked into her bedroom to grab her cell
phone. She started dialing and I grabbed her hand.

“No, please. Don’t call him,” I
tried to stop her.

She just stared at me and then
kept dialing, finally speaking. “I’m not calling Reed, Nolan. That’s your
conversation to have. I’m calling the student health center to get you an
appointment.”

I watched as Sarah pretended to
be me on the phone, answering the personal questions and looking to me for help
with some, such as when was the last time I had intercourse. Things that I
considered to be so private were instantly too public, and I wanted to bury
myself and hide.

“Okay, Tuesday, in two weeks.
Got it, thank you,” Sarah said, hanging up and writing down a note on a scrap
of paper for me. “Okay, you have an 8 a.m. appointment in two weeks. They said
you need to be farther along before they can know anything for sure.”

I just grabbed the paper from
her hand and stuffed it in my front pocket. “Thanks,” I said, attempting an
appreciative smile that just curled my lip slightly to one side. I looked down
at my lap, thinking about how my belly would grow soon. I knew what this all
meant, but it also didn’t seem real. It didn’t feel like I had a baby, Reed’s
baby, growing inside me. But science, I suppose, begged to differ.

“What do you want to do?” Sarah
said, instantly regretting it and trying to fix it. “I mean, right now. Not,
about…that. Sorry…” she just grimaced.

“It’s okay, I know what you
meant,” I said, pulling myself to my feet and smoothing out my shorts. “I guess
I’ll go home. I have a ton of studying to do, and I have to get a huge paper
out of the way before we head to Tucson tomorrow.” In my mind, I conceded, that
I might be in denial.

“Are you sure? You can stay here
if you want, Calley doesn’t mind,” she was acting fragile toward me.

I shrugged a bit and let out a
heavy breath. “No, it’s okay. I promise,” I lied. I was not okay.

Sarah walked me to the bottom of
her steps, her face heavy with wanting to talk, but not knowing what to say. I
could tell, and I loved her for it. But truthfully, there really weren’t any
words I wanted to hear right now. I wasn’t used to this new starting line that
life had thrown me, and I needed to get used to the new game board, figure it
out and know what my rules were.

By the time I printed my final
paper and proofed it, it was a little after 10 p.m. Reed would be home from his
dinner soon, and I knew he’d be calling me. My mind was still pushing the new
information to the back—the proof of that in the paper I had just
finished writing, which was likely my best work to date.

I brought my phone into the
bathroom and set it on the towel rack in case Reed called while I was
showering. My body ached, and I just needed a little steam on my face to help
me reset things, to think.

The hot water was like an eraser
for my anxiety, my shoulders suddenly relaxing and my face almost smiling at
the splash against my cheeks. I pumped a handful of body wash into my hand and
smoothed it over my neck and shoulders, rubbing the smooth peach-scented wash
over my chest and then stomach, my hands instantly stopping and holding
protectively the spot around my belly button, instantly bringing me back to
reality.

Looking down, I thought hard
about what was inside me. For the briefest moment, I thought to myself how I
wished it never happened. I didn’t want this.
I. Did. Not. Want. This. Baby.
Then I slid down to sit on the shower floor and cried harder than I ever
had, ashamed of what I’d just thought and wanting to delete the words from
existence.

I left the shower stall when the
water turned cool. My skin was wrinkled from the soaking, and my hair hadn’t
really been washed, but I was too weak to finish the job. Wrapping my hair in a
towel, I wrapped another around my body and picked up my phone, flopping myself
on my bed to wait for Reed’s call.

When the phone rang near 11
p.m., I forced myself to answer it. Somewhere between the time of my shower and
now, I had decided I was going to pretend—at least for a little while.

“Hey you,” I forced myself to be
chipper.

“Ah that’s a sound for…sore
eyes? No, wait. That’s not how that goes. Aw hell, you know what I mean,” he
chuckled. “Sorry I’m so late.”

He sounded so good. Everything
about his voice was everything I needed. Frozen a little with the fear of
losing it all, I sat up strong and pushed everything deeper. “It’s okay; I just
finished my paper and took a shower. How was your dinner?”

“Hmmmm, well…” he was thinking.

“Was it bad?” I couldn’t tell
from his hedging.

“No, it’s just…well. Are you
sure you want to talk about this? It’s sort of that topic that we took off the
table until our weekend,” he said carefully. I loved him for how much he
respected me and my stupid worries. But suddenly, his entering the draft was
the least of my worries. Never mind the fact that the news I was holding onto
could ruin everything. For tonight, I wanted to pretend. And so I did.