Love to Love Her YAC (34 page)

I know he must be disappointed, but he does a
good job covering it up. He just looks at me, appearing almost
sympathetic as he squeezes my arms and lifts me off his lap. He
pulls me down next to him so we’re sitting side by side on the edge
of the mattress, then lays back against the bed, his legs dangling.
He puts one hand behind his head and lays the other against his
defined stomach and closes his eyes.

A mixture of equal parts shame and relief
washes over me. I turn to look back at Andy before lying on my side
next to him, careful to leave a few inches of space between us. I
can’t tell if he’s mad or indifferent or on the verge of falling
asleep, so I very lightly touch his arm and whisper, “Sorry, Andy.
I want to…but I can’t right now.”

His eyes flutter open, and he turns his head
to look at me. He lifts his hand from his stomach and draws his
fingers down the length of my arm. “Don’t be sorry,” he says. “I’m
sorry if I pushed you. I just…need a minute, okay?” I nod and turn
away, determined to give him the space he needs and keep from
leading him on anymore unnecessarily.

11:45 PM

T
en minutes later
we’re both fully dressed and ready to head back downstairs. I’m
suddenly inexpressibly exhausted, and truthfully I can’t wait to
find Ruthie, Corinne and Spencer so one of them can give me a lift
home.

Andy sits patiently with me in the living
room while I wait on them. Neither of us says anything, but he
holds my hand, using his thumb to tickle absently at my palm. After
a few minutes of silence he clears his throat and turns toward me
slightly.

“I had fun with you tonight,” he says. “I’m
sorry again if I…went too far.”

I smile, softening. “I had fun, too. Please
don’t apologize – you didn’t do anything wrong.
I’m
sorry if
I sent mixed messages. I’m not the best at being decisive when I’m
drunk.”

He grins. “Nah, not your fault. But maybe we
should hang out sometime when we haven’t had too much to
drink.”

“I’d like that,” I tell him, meaning it.

He leans over and removes his phone from his
back pocket. “What’s your number?”

I give it to him, and he taps it into his
phone just as Spence, Ruthie and Corinne walk up, all three looking
every bit as sluggish as I feel. They look at me expectantly, and I
look at Andy in turn as I rise to my feet, mentally preparing
myself for the awkwardness of saying goodbye – with an audience, no
less.

He stands as well and throws his arms around
me in a hug. Before he pulls away he surprises me by planting a
tender kiss right on my mouth, his fingers digging into my hips. I
feel pretty dizzy when I step away, but Andy only smiles. “I’ll
call you,” he says, and I nod before turning to follow my friends
out the front door.

Rhiannon – Friday, 8:00 PM

“R
hiannon? Anything
else you need?” I glance up from the magazine I’ve had my nose
buried in since Ruthie went off to pick out the vegetables she’ll
need to make stir fry tonight. We’re all too broke to go out, so
she very thoughtfully offered to cook the only thing she knows how
to make. I half-heartedly volunteered to go along to the grocery
store for ingredients.

“Umm…” I close the magazine and crouch down
to slide it back into the rack, but Ruthie catches my arm.

“What are you looking at anyway?” she asks,
reaching for it. “Must be riveting, whatever it is.” I chew on the
inside of my cheek as she flips the magazine over and her eyebrows
inch farther up her forehead. “
Maxim?
Are you kidding me
with this shit?
This
is what you’ve been fixated on since we
walked in here?”

I shrug. “They had an interesting feature
about sons and daughters of the Mafia. It caught my eye.”

She rolls her eyes as she stuffs it back into
the rack next to a bunch of knitting and cooking magazines. “What
the hell is your deal? I mean, not to seem unkind, but you’ve been
zoned out
all day
. And now you look like you could burst
into tears at any moment.”

I duck my head, afraid to look her in the
eye, because she’s right. Today in particular, for whatever reason,
has been awful. I
feel
like I could cry at any moment.

“Anyway,” she says. She seems to be making an
effort to sound more patient than she really feels. “Did you want
to get anything for dessert?”

“How about some ice cream?” I ask her
absently.

After a beat or two of silence, during which
Ruthie only frowns at me as if I’ve had a psychotic break, she
says, “You hate ice cream.”

“
Sometimes
it sounds good,” I argue.
“I feel like strawberry. Or maybe cookie dough.”

She shakes her head in confusion, then
chuckles as she swings the cart back around toward the frozen food
aisle. “Okay,
preggo
,” she teases. “Let’s get one of
each.”

As we walk, I can feel the hairs standing up
on my arms. Partly it’s because the air temperature is cooler here
with all the freezers. The other part of it, though, is Ruthie’s
offhanded comment.
Preggo…
Pregnant…
I turn the words
over in my head again and again, and my chest feels tighter the
more I think about it.

Oh God, what if she’s right?
I’m
having weird cravings (weird for me at least), and I’ve been
excessively emotional. Briefly I flash back to that day at the
student health center when I picked up my prescription for my birth
control pills. The pharmacist had mentioned something about using a
“backup method” for two weeks while waiting for the pills to take
effect. If I’m not mistaken, though, it had been the
very next
day
that I’d had unprotected sex with Blake.

“Earth to Rhiannon.” I jump at the sound of
Ruthie’s voice. She’s holding up two cartons of the store brand.
“What do you think?” she asks, choosing to let my weird behavior
pass without comment. “One of each?”

“Yes. Sure.” My voice sounds as if it’s
coming from a thousand miles away.

We pay for the groceries and load the bags in
the back of Ruthie’s car. As soon as we’re buckled in the front,
Ruthie looks at me and says, “Seriously, babe. What gives? Did I
piss you off with that ‘preggo’ comment or something? I swear I was
only joking.”

“No, it’s fine. You didn’t offend me.” I
clear my throat as I shift uncomfortably in my seat. “Just, um…
Ruthie?”

“Yeah?” She glances from the road down to her
iPod as she scrolls through her playlists before settling on one
and replacing it in the cup holder.

“The last time Blake and I…had sex? We
didn’t, uh, use a condom.” Her head snaps to look at me so quickly
her entire body leans with it, causing us to swerve. “Jesus,” I
mutter, sinking down lower in my seat.

“You’re on the pill,” she spits out. Her tone
sounds almost accusatory.

“Right, well I had just started it, like, the
day before.”

Ruthie stares straight ahead, deep in
thought, so I do the same. A moment later she says, “You can’t be
pregnant. I mean, odds are extremely, extremely
low
.”

“But I wanted ice cream tonight. And I
do
hate ice cream.”

“Well, I hate Mexican food, but Goddammit,
sometimes I just
really
want a chimichanga. And you don’t
see me with any babies.”

“But I’ve been so emotional. I feel like I
wanna cry
all the time
.”

“Well
yeah
, you just broke up with
your…whatever he was…six days ago! You’re heartbroken!”

“How come you were asking me what my deal
was, then?” I ask, eyeing her suspiciously.

She shrugs. “Because I’m a bitch. And I have
a very low tolerance for self-pity.”

I sigh as I roll my head back against the
headrest. I can’t even be mad at her for her inappropriately brutal
straight shooting, because I’m too tired to be upset about anything
else.

Less than ten minutes later we carry the food
into the apartment Ruthie and Corinne share. “It’s about time,”
bellows Corinne. “I was about to make my own dinner plans.”

“Sorry, we had some drama,” says Ruthie as
she slings a jug of milk onto the counter. “Rhiannon thinks she’s
pregnant.” I swear to God, if I could filet her with my glare
alone, I would show no mercy.

“Oh my God, what if you are?!” exclaims
Corinne, hopping onto one of the bar stools to watch us while I put
away the groceries and Ruthie gets out a cutting board. “You would
have the most breathtakingly gorgeous babies, Rhiannon.”

I try to smile, but I can’t. Suddenly the
color drains from Corinne’s face. “Wait, are you being serious? I
thought you were kidding! Did you miss your period? How do you
know?”

I grimace from the full force of her
questions hitting me in the face. “No, I haven’t missed my period,”
I reply. “I just have this weird feeling, that’s all.”

“A
feeling
?” Ruthie stops what she’s
doing to stare at me, mouth open. “You didn’t say anything about a
feeling.
”

I groan as I slump against the counter and
lower my head to its cool surface. “Okay, I don’t
know
, all
right? I’m just saying
what if
—I mean, that would be the
worst thing that could possibly happen right now.”

Ruthie sets down the knife she was using to
cut up a zucchini and comes to put her arms around me; I
straighten, and Corinne hops down from her stool and runs around
the bar to join in the group hug. “Okay, first of all,” says
Ruthie, “I highly doubt you’re pregnant. And second of all, even if
you
were
, it would
not
be the worst thing ever. You
have great friends and a great family, and I promise you it would
turn out one hundred percent okay.”

Corinne nods her head in agreement. “And I
hate to be the one to bring up
you know who
, but you
have
to know if something like that ever happened, Blake
would be here in a second. I mean, I don’t care what he did—there’s
no way he’d just take off on you.”

Her words make me feel the strangest mixture
of joy and despair and hope. I smile weakly as she plants a kiss on
my forehead and both girls release me.

Saturday, 4:30 PM

I
walk out of the
drug store with my head down, tightly clutching the plastic bag
with the two pregnancy tests in it. My period isn’t supposed to
start for another week, but now that Ruthie has planted the seed of
doubt, there’s no way I can survive that long without
knowing
. I’m so lost in thought during the drive back to my
apartment, I accidentally run a red light and almost mow down a
bicyclist, who’s justifiably pretty angry and not afraid to show
it.

On the one hand, I’m petrified. I’ve thought
of how I would tell my parents they’re about to become
grandparents, and how my conversation with Tawny would go when I
sit down to tell her that her big sister is an irresponsible
delinquent. I’ve thought of dropping out of school and moving back
to Winnemucca, making my old room into a nursery, and I’ve thought
of watching the entirety of the future I’ve had planned for myself
as it swirls away into the ether.

And I’ve also spent an unhealthy amount of
time dwelling on how I’d break the news to Blake, the mere thought
of which unfailingly gets my heart racing. Would he think I set him
up like some crazed, co-dependent conniver? Would he desert me in
my time of need? Or, perhaps even worse, would he stick around out
of some lofty sense of obligation and end up resenting me for
spoiling what’s left of his youth? Would he want to know our
child?

Our child…

God, what a grotesquely hopeless romantic I
am. Just the thought of those two words is enough to send chills up
my spine—because then my brain flashes from visions of my baby
growing up with abandonment issues, to images of Blake holding our
son or daughter, his face illuminated with the light of a thousand
suns. I picture all of it: the doctor’s appointments, the tummy
rubs, the ultrasounds—and then the swaddling, the lullabies, and
the birthday parties. Once I’m home, by the time I rip open the
package and hold the wand beneath me as I pee, I’m almost
hoping
it’ll be positive.
How insane is that?

I refuse to look at it while it’s processing.
I set the timer on my watch for three minutes, then leave the room.
It’s amazing how long three minutes is. I wash my hands at the
kitchen sink, pour myself a glass of milk, drink the whole thing,
rinse my glass, and flip through my calendar…and
still
have
45 seconds left to kill before the timer starts beeping.

The test is perched on the edge of the
counter where I left it. I hold my breath as I lean over and let it
out slowly when I see the little minus sign in the window.
Not
pregnant.

What. A. Relief.

So then why I do I feel so disappointed?

Blake – Wednesday, 5:00 PM

I
worked overtime
today, just like I have every day for the past week and a half.
Herb, who has the social acumen of a primate, has continually
lauded my efforts to get our grant application in on time,
apparently oblivious to my lack of good humor these days. I’m sure
he just thinks I’m very focused, nose to the grindstone and all
that horseshit.

Class starts in thirty minutes, but I’ve
already decided by the time I walk out to my truck I’m not going.
Instead I drive to King’s Beach on the north shore of the lake,
someplace I haven’t been with Rhiannon. I park and get out of the
truck—it’s hard for me to sit in it without dwelling on the night
we spent at her parents’ house. Whenever I think about it I can
feel her hands on me like I imagine an amputee feels a phantom
limb.