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That was when I knew for sure I was right. Jake had wanted to be the father. His heart was broken. And there was nothing I could do to unbreak it.
jake
I found my mother and father sitting in the kitchen with HGTV on the mini flat-screen, eating Thai takeout. My legs felt stiff as I walked in and tossed my keys onto the counter. My fingertips tingled. Everything looked dull, from the marble counters to the wooden cabinets to the glare of the lights reflected in the sliding glass doors.
I was not the father. It was over. I was free.
“Jake.” My dad drew my name out slowly, his fork suspended over his noodles. He looked at me like he thought I might crack. “You’re home early.”
“Everything okay?” my mother asked.
I pressed my fingertips into the top of the island. Pressed down as hard as I could. Gritted my teeth. My eyes felt like they were about to pop. I actually thought I might cry.
My mother and father exchanged a concerned look. She got up and came over to me. Her hand was on my hand.
“Jake, honey? What’s wrong?”
I just stared. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. What was wrong with me? This was not what freedom was supposed to feel like. In my pocket, my phone vibrated for the hundredth time since I’d left the party.
“I’m not the father,” I said. My eyes flicked to hers. I watched them flood with hope, and I wanted to hit something.
“What?” my father said, standing.
My mother’s hands fluttered to cover her mouth.
“I’m not the father,” I said again, the words like sour milk in my mouth. I backed up from the island. “I’m not the father. Some other guy is.”
“Oh my God! Jake! Thank God!” my mother exclaimed.
“I knew it. I knew we should have forced that paternity test,” my father said, standing next to her now. “We could have known this so much sooner.”
Suddenly he was what I wanted to hit. Didn’t he get it? Didn’t he get that none of that mattered? I was not the father. The baby was not mine. That was all that mattered. I turned around and started out the door of the kitchen.
“Jake? What’s wrong? This is fantastic news!” my mother shouted after me.
I had a zillion comebacks on the tip of my tongue. Of course they thought it was good news. Of course they did. They never understood why I cared. Why I wanted to go to the doctor with her. Why it mattered. They never got it. They never fucking got it.
I tore up the stairs and into my room, slamming my door as hard as I could. Staring at me from the center of my classic sports car calendar was the date of Chloe’s next doctor’s appointment. I ripped the calendar down from the wall and hurled it across the room. I whipped my coat off and threw that, too. What I wanted to do more than anything was go back to A
I covered my face with both hands and tried to think. I tried to see this how my parents saw it. I tried to focus on what was supposed to be positive.
The baby wasn’t mine. So what? It was never going to be mine anyway. It wasn’t like I’d been pla
And now … now I wasn’t even going to have to be there. I wouldn’t have to be at the hospital, I wouldn’t have to hold Chloe’s hand, I wouldn’t have to see her cry. I was off the hook. That was Will Halloran’s problem now. That baby in the sonograms, the one I’d seen roll over that day, the one I’d wondered about being a soccer player like me …
It wasn’t going to be. Because it had nothing to do with me.
My phone vibrated again. I took it out of my pocket and threw that across the room too. Then I flung myself down on my bed face-first, covered my head with my pillow, and tried to breathe.
Tried as hard as I could not to be the pussy who cried at being let off the hook.
ally
On Sunday afternoon, Chloe was curled up in her bed, half under the covers with graham cracker crumbs scattered across her chest, watching The Vampire Diaries on DVD with the drapes closed. She looked over at me and squinted as I opened the door.
“Can you please close that?” she said, her voice whiny. “It’s too bright.”
This was very not good.
I closed the door behind me. She lifted a remote from the bed, paused the picture on a highly flattering half-naked shot of Damon Salvatore, and let her hand drop again. Crumbs bounced off her pink flowered comforter and onto the hardwood floor.
“So are you in training to be a vampire?” I joked lamely.
Chloe sighed and brushed more crumbs off her belly. “I think I shouldn’t go to parties anymore. Parties and me don’t mesh well.” Pressing her hands down at her sides, she shimmied her way up into a sort of half-seated position.
I swallowed hard, my guilt trying to choke off my air supply. “It’s my fault, Chloe. I told Will.”
“I know. He told me,” she said, averting her eyes.
“I’m so sorry—” we both said at the same time.
I stopped talking. She laughed ruefully. “Me first?” she suggested, raising her eyebrows.
“Okay.”
I sat down at the end of her bed. A small amount of light peeked in from a crack between two curtains and emanated from the TV screen behind me. I felt tense. Like I shouldn’t get comfortable. I was so shocked she had let me in that it was like I was afraid to make any sudden movements—like I might startle her into recalling that I was the enemy. So I just sat there, half-turned toward her, my legs dangling awkwardly toward the floor.
“I’m sorry for what I did to Jake … and to you,” she began, picking up a crumb and crushing it between her thumb and forefinger. She kept her eyes on the bedspread. “It was wrong. I know it was. I just … didn’t know what else to do. Will and I had broken up already when I found out about the baby, and Jake … he’s a good guy. He’s a friend. He’s … I don’t know … safe? It felt safer than … the alternative.”
The alternative being the truth.
But I didn’t want to get angry again. I was tired of being angry. I wanted to give her a chance to explain. I did. Because I wanted a chance too.
“And then, all of a sudden, the whole thing was out of control,” Chloe continued, her eyes filling rapidly. “And everyone was talking about me. Everyone had an opinion. Everyone had something to say—most of it horrible. And meanwhile my back hurts and my ass is, like, huge, and I’ve got gas all the time, and my boobs? My boobs started leaking last week! Right in the middle of French class!”
My jaw dropped. Leaking boobs? What the hell was that about?
“I know!” Chloe said off my expression. “This whole thing is disgusting and I just want it to be over.” She covered her eyes and sniffled. “But at the same time, I keep catching myself talking to it—to the baby—like it’s in the room with me. And sometimes I think … I can’t wait to meet him or her. And then I realize I can’t. Because everyone says if I do, I’ll want to keep it and I can’t … I can’t … keep it.”
Chloe hiccupped and then started crying in earnest. My heart felt like it was tearing to pieces, and not in some neat, ordered way. More like some animal was going at it with its claws.
“It was so much … I just couldn’t deal,” she said through her tears. “I couldn’t deal with Jake and Will and the truth. I just couldn’t.”
“God, Chloe, I had no idea,” I said. “I mean, I knew it had to be hard, but I had no idea how bad it was.”
She started to say something but couldn’t get it out past the crying. Her nose was swollen and her eyes were like slits, but I found myself staring at her belly. That big mound where her flat abs used to be. It must have weighed a ton, or at least felt like it did. As guilty as I’d felt when I walked into the room, that feeling was suddenly compounded eighty times over. I had never considered how Chloe was feeling. I’d had fleeting thoughts about it, sure, but most of my focus had been on Jake. How unfair this was to him, how it was affecting his life. But clearly it was affecting Chloe’s a hell of a lot more. Just because she couldn’t resist a hot guy one summer night.