by Ella Fields
I backed the car out, being careful not to touch the cream leather too much. Once done, I grabbed the towel I’d sat on and yanked it out before shutting the door and taking the keys to the office.
I jerked my head. “Judy.”
On the phone, she smiled and took the keys from me.
I grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, then headed back outside, and almost sprayed it all over Daphne’s face when she rounded the office, catching me off guard.
Wearing a long, flowing red skirt and a black tank, she had her hair over one shoulder, and her face was clear and bare. “Hi.”
I slammed a fist on my chest, coughing out, “Hi.”
“What time do you finish?”
I looked back into the garage but couldn’t see the clock on the wall behind the Chevy on the hoist, so I plucked my phone from my jeans. “About forty minutes.” I slipped it away. “I can try to leave now …” I’d leave even if it got me fired if she said that was what she needed.
“No,” she said, backing away. “Meet me at the pier in an hour?”
That gave me just enough time to ride home and change. “Okay.” There were so many things I wanted to say, that I wanted to do, but I could do nothing as she gave me a careful, close-lipped smile, then turned for her car at the curb.
The water glimmered between two rising cliffs, the wind a whistle in my ears as I wove through parked cars and hopped the curb, coming to a stop when I saw Daphne sitting at the edge of the pier with her legs hanging over the lip.
I jumped off and wheeled my bike the remaining small distance, hoping like hell the quick shower I’d taken was enough to make me smell half-decent.
She’d barely looked at me since I’d cornered her in the hall last week at school, and whenever I thought I felt her eyes on me, I’d find them directed elsewhere every time. So this … this gave me a seed of hope. Hope I was praying she wouldn’t crush.
Setting my bike down on the wooden planks, I lowered to sit beside her.
“Have you spoken to Annika?” Her first words.
“I didn’t come here to talk about her.” After days, weeks of wanting only her, the last thing I wanted to do was talk about Annika.
Daphne huffed, staring out at a lone boat. “She’s carrying your baby, Lars.”
She didn’t need to remind me. No one did. I was reminded every waking second. I thought I’d known fear, but I hadn’t ever truly stared it in the face before. Not quite like this.
Wiping a hand over my cheek, I chose my words carefully. “I plan to. It’s just …”
“Hard. Scary. Unbelievable. Life-changing.”
I stared at her profile, knowing she knew I was, and withheld the temptation to reach out and touch her. “It’s all those things and more.”
A seagull cried out overhead, the late-afternoon sun highlighting faint, long faded freckles on Daphne’s cheeks. “I’m not trying to make things more difficult for you or upset you, but the truth is, I just don’t fit into this equation, Lars.”
I scowled at that, giving in to the urge and taking her hand. “You’re wrong. You fit with me.”
She smiled at our hands, turning hers up to lay flat over mine. “I want to. I do.”
“But?” I asked.
So much hesitance, fear, and sorrow filled her green eyes, and I could hardly stand it. “But I can’t help but feel like it’ll end up being one giant mistake.”
Gently, I cupped her face and prayed she’d hear me over the volume of her doubt. “If I could go back, I’d change so many things. I promise. For the longest fucking time, you’ve been all I wanted. It kills me because even though I never wanted this with anyone yet, I had hoped when the day came, it’d be with you.”
A tear slipped from her eye, and I swiped it away, feeling the moisture soak into my skin the way she’d soaked into the rest of me. “That’s your baby. You can’t regret that. I’d be a liar if I said those words didn’t make me happy, but it’s still not okay.”
She was right. I was a bastard, and I wasn’t dealing with anything, let alone watching my words. “I can’t help it,” I admitted.
She nodded, her hand coming to rest over mine on her face as her eyes closed. “I know. But you’ll see.”
I pressed my forehead to hers. “I need you. I know that makes me selfish, but I fucking need you.”
“You’re processing a lot right now,” she whispered.
“No,” I said, emphatically. “I need you forever, Daphne Morris. You were my forever girl, and this doesn’t change that.”
She wiggled closer, and her head fell to my shoulder. For long minutes, I held her there as silent tears ran down her face, hating myself for so many reasons, but most of all, for the way I’d unintentionally hurt her.
“Forever’s a long time,” she finally said, the sun an orange smear dripping low into the water.
My heart pounded. “Not nearly long enough.”
When the stars came out, we grabbed corn dogs and walked along the pier as I told her about Denham, how Mom had been doing, and how I’d been catching up on a fuck ton of missed or half-assed schoolwork.
“You’re still hoping for Ivy League?” she asked once we’d reached the end.
I lit a smoke, then pocketed my pack and lighter. “Yeah.” I sniffed, nodding. “This doesn’t change anything, remember?”
The way she stared at me said a thousand things she didn’t need to. Directing that pensive stare to the water, she said none of them. “One day at a time?”
I thought I was about to keel over from the relief flooding me like a tsunami. “Yeah, Cotton.” I nodded. “I can do one day at a time.”
Daphne
Lars’s hand crawled between my thighs, and I laughed, popcorn tipping from the box in my hand and onto my lap as I tried to push him away.
“Why must thou deny me?” He nipped at my chin, his hands now everywhere.
The movie theater only held a handful of other patrons, but that was a handful more than I was comfortable with.
One of them looked back at us, annoyance stamped on his illuminated face while a bomb went off on the screen.
“Because thou got to fuck me just last night, so he can wait.”
Lars grunted and made to move away, then snuck back in and grabbed my face, his lips prying mine apart.
I laughed, then moaned as his tongue licked at mine, and his whispered words dampened my panties. “If you really didn’t want me inside you, right here, right now, you wouldn’t have said fuck.” He sucked at my bottom lip. “You know what happens to me when you go and do that.”
“Stop it,” I whispered, my heart galloping.
“Never,” he whispered back, then hauled me onto his lap where he grabbed my ass and grinded me over his hardness while his tongue fucked my mouth.
Right before I came, a torch light shone on us, and then we were laughing as we were escorted outside of the cinema.
“In the car then,” Lars said once we hit the sidewalk.
It took my eyes a minute to adjust to the sudden brightness, and I blinked up at him. “Quit. We need to be back at your place in the next hour anyway.”
We were meeting with Annika, finally. Though I hadn’t wanted to be there, and I was dreading it, Lars insisted he wanted me to be.
As each week had come and gone since that afternoon at the pier, I’d let myself fall deeper into this love that seemed intent on destroying me. I had hope that it wouldn’t, or else I wouldn’t be here, walking hand in hand down the sidewalk with Lars. Perhaps it was wrong to think it could last, but I was left with little choice. The heart didn’t care about choices. However, my brain remained locked and loaded, prepared for it to go hellishly wrong.
Yet with each day forward, Lars seemed more and more himself, and I was growing more comfortable with the decision to keep seeing how this might all pan out.
“You haven’t spoken to her since the message?” I asked once we climbed inside my car with Lars in the driver’s seat.
“Aside from the calls that first week, she never really tries, Daph.”
I refrained from rolling my eyes, hoping this baby’s parents would get their shit together, and fast. “Hopefully everything is okay, then.”
Lars hummed, turning up the radio. A not so subtle signal that he did not wish to talk about his impending fatherhood right now.
He didn’t always shy away from the subject when I’d bring it up, but he was still very much in a state of adjustment. The idea of it wasn’t one that soured his expression any longer but, rather, would even coax a rare smile when we’d talk about names and what his kid might look like.
Glenda was at Mr. Denham’s house, wanting to give us some space, and Annika was already there sitting inside her car on her phone when we pulled in after grabbing some lunch.
I got out and looked over the roof of my car, noticing she was making no move to do the same. “Lars, maybe I should …”
“Don’t finish that sentence.”
The hard look in his eyes and the granite set to his jaw had me swallowing and moving to the front door.
Annika followed a minute later, knocking and walking inside when Lars said to come in.
We all took our seats in the living room, Lars beside me on the loveseat while Annika took the recliner.
Silence settled, loud and uncomfortable.
I cleared my throat. “How are you?”
Annika gave me a smile that said she knew I didn’t much care, and that I only wanted to rid the silence. She could think whatever she liked. No, I didn’t care for her. She’d always been a little too much on the cunning side for my liking, but I’d tolerated her for years as Kayla’s ex-best friend, so I could do so now.
I swallowed, realizing with a sinking weight that I’d be doing so for an insurmountable length of time if I chose to keep doing this. Possibly forever.
Yet I had to, and as I looked at Lars, whose eyes were firm on me, I knew he wouldn’t give me much of a choice. For as long as his devotion to me overpowered anything else he felt, he would continue to wear me down until thoughts of any other life for myself were nothing but specks of dust.
Regardless, I wasn’t so selfish in my desires, in my heartache as I glanced at her stomach behind a bohemian maxi dress, that I didn’t care about the well-being of this baby.
“I’m well, thanks.” Annika reached inside her black purse and pulled out a piece of paper.
Not paper. A sonogram picture.
Her hand trembled slightly as she held it out, unsure if Lars would take it.
I nudged him, and his eyes left me and settled on the picture.
He rose and took it, falling back onto the couch as his gaze widened and a loud exhale left him. “Holy shit.” He looked up at Annika. “It looks like a real baby now.”
Annika smiled, and in it I saw the love she already harbored for he or she in the picture. Though I noticed her hand didn’t move to her stomach, and I wondered if she’d told her parents that she’d decided to keep it yet.
I didn’t know much about her parents, only that they didn’t live here all year, and instead, spent five to six months of every year in Europe for their business. Perhaps they weren’t even home anymore.
“Four and a half months now. They wanted to check some things. I haven’t been gaining enough weight.”
Lars dragged his gaze away from the photo. “Is something wrong?” Concern creased his brow, and that tiny sign that he cared both snuffed and lit a flame of relief inside me.
Looking at Annika’s lowering shoulders, I surmised it did the same for her. “No, he or she is fine. I just need to eat more.” She scratched at the side of her pert nose, laughing a nervous laugh. “Which should be easier now that the morning sickness has faded.”
I could tell, watching Lars’s face fall, that he was feeling remorseful over the fact he hadn’t known. He hadn’t known much of anything about this child since he’d found out about it a month ago. Partly because he’d needed time, and partly because he couldn’t handle it then.
That was then, hopefully.
“Do you need anything?” he asked, clearing his throat and handing the picture back. “Money? Or um”—he glanced at me, and I widened my eyes—“something to eat?”
I shook my head, curbing a smile at his display of awkward concern. “Want a water? Or a tea?”
Annika declined, then said, “Actually, a glass of milk would be great.”
“Milk?” Lars asked.
She rolled her lips, her cheeks pinking a little. “It seems to be the only thing I can stomach until after three in the afternoon.”
“Odd,” I commented.
“Right?” She laughed.
Lars got up and went to the kitchen, and I peeked over my shoulder before scooting to where he’d been sitting, closer to Annika. “Have you told your parents?”
Annika’s eyes narrowed. “That’s not …” She stopped, sighing. “No.”
“Then you need to tell Lars what’s happening with them and what they think you did.”
She swallowed, tucking the picture back inside her purse. “I can’t do that.”
I sat back, shocked and kind of annoyed. “Why?”
Her amber eyes fell on me, hard and vulnerable at the same time. “Because he’s finally agreed to be a part of this, to see and talk to me, and I don’t want to ruin it already.”
I could understand her worry, but I also knew he’d want to know. “He needs to know, Annika.”
“No,” Annika said bluntly, “he doesn’t, Daphne.”
I huffed out a dry laugh, moving back to my side of the couch. “You better tell him soon because I won’t keep a secret like that from him.”
She stared daggers at me for a prolonged beat until Lars returned and set her glass of milk down on the coffee table.
She drank it while filling Lars in on when her next appointment would be, and what she planned to do about college. “I’m hoping I can attend locally, at the very least, so there’s childcare.”
Lars nodded.
“What about you?” she pressed, her voice gentle.
“I haven’t decided yet.”
I shot a look at him, knowing he damn well had. He’d applied to two of the three schools I’d applied for, all big and all nowhere near the cove. “Lars,” I urged.
Our eyes met, and he blinked once, then stood and walked Annika out to her car.
I didn’t bother to get up and look. I didn’t want to.
Annika’s half-finished milk stared back at me from the coffee table, smudged white coating the inside of the glass.
He’d had his whole life planned, and though I knew this would change it, it didn’t have to squash his dreams and all the things he’d worked so hard for. If only he would talk to her about them, perhaps he could create some new ones or make plans that would fit with both of their dreams.
Annika was starting to show.
It wasn’t overly obvious, but when the wind caught her school blouse and pressed it against her stomach, there was definitely a bulge.
For the most part, people had stopped gawking at her and Lars by now, though I doubted they’d stop talking about them, and therefore probably me, until the baby was born.
Kayla waggled her fingers at me, her and her posse gliding by our table with Annika bringing up the rear as if none of them really wanted to be seen with her. I was guessing her parents were definitely away, and I hoped they didn’t find out, or I had a feeling they’d be on the first flight home.
“Is she still cheerleading?” Peggy asked.
“Probably,” I said, tearing a chunk out of my apple.
“You would think it’s not really safe for the baby,” she said.
I shrugged. “They can always stick her on the end if they don’t want to get slapped with discrimination.” In fact, I’d bet that was what they were doing unless Annika had left the squad.
Doubtful.
“Freckles, what in the fresh name of fuck?” D
ash dropped into the seat next to her, his face scrunched with outrage.
Peggy glanced up from her mac and cheese. “Huh?”
That only made it worse. He looked at me. “Can you believe this chick?”
I rolled my eyes, immune to their sweet and sickening ways by now.
“What’s the problem?” Peggy asked, shoving more cheesy pasta into her mouth.
Dash took the pasta and her fork, eating some while he continued to glare at her.
“Dash, speak for god’s sake.”
“I’m waiting to see if you’ll save this budding romance of ours from barreling toward certain death.”
Peggy’s eyes flared. “What the hell?”
Dash shoved her food back toward her. “It’s our anniversary.”
Peggy groaned. “We had one just last week.”
“Yeah,” Dash said, nodding once. “Our fifth week anniversary.”
I snorted. “Happy six weeks, guys.”
Peggy’s face fell when she saw Dash was legitimately upset, and she reached for him.
He pouted and turned away, which resulted in her throwing her arms around him from behind and whispering something in his ear.
“Really?” he asked.
She said something else.
“Promise?”
Peggy laughed, and said, “Promise.”
That settled it, and he got up to grab some lunch.
Peggy sighed. “It’s like he’s the female in this relationship, I swear.” Yet she was still smiling.
“You guys are gross,” I said as Lars entered the cafeteria and crossed the room.
He sat down beside me and held out his hand. In his palm were three squares of licorice.
I went to take one, and he folded his fingers over them. “You’re forgetting something.”
I scowled but gave him what he wanted, quickly smacking his lips with mine before a teacher could see.
He didn’t release me, though. His hand snuck behind my head, fingers threading into my hair as his mouth traced every edge of mine.
“Who’s gross now?” Peggy muttered, then laughed when I pulled away and glared at her.
I took two squares of licorice for my trouble and set them on my tray to finish my apple. “Where’ve you been?” I asked Lars.
