“I get it,” Jennifer said, even though she didn’t. “Why don’t you record your voice reading a book out loud? Those two kids who gave up their baby for adoption on Teen Mom did that when they went to see their baby for her first birthday. It was kind of cool.”
“Maybe. I’ll have to talk to the adoptive parents about that. They might think that’s too pushy.”
A pleaser from birth, Grace was always worried that she might say or do the wrong thing and offend someone. Maybe if she’d been less worried about pleasing Nick … no point in wandering down that road again. It always led to the same place: the inn of self-loathing and depression, which always had a deluxe room for her.
“But it’s not their baby until you say so, so don’t you get to make the rules? They want your baby, so won’t they do whatever you want, as long as they get to take the baby home in the end?” Looking around at the little kids crawling all over the floor, way more interested in stacking the books like building blocks or wiping their boogers on the carpet than in actually reading, Jennifer wondered what all the fuss was about.
“I don’t care about having control. I care about doing the right thing for Molly. Nothing else matters.”
Grace’s certainty about protecting her baby sustained her. If she did everything right from here on out, maybe she could make up for all the things she’d done wrong before. It was an overly simplistic karmic equation: spreading your legs for a stupid boy you hardly knew canceled out by behaving irreproachably for the rest of your life.
“All right. Give me a job so we can get this done and get the hell out of here.” The bookstore, teeming with tiny bodies, looked like an ant farm, and Jennifer was starting to get itchy.
“Here’s your half of the list.” Grace tore the sheet of paper she was holding in two and gave one piece to Jennifer. “You get the baby books.”
Jennifer looked at the piece of paper in her hand. Goodnight Moon, Welcome to Busytown, D. W. the Picky Eater, Horton Hears a Who, Yertle the Turtle, Caps for Sale, Harvey’s Hideout, and I Love Me.
Leaving Jennifer to her assignment, Grace headed for the middle grade and young adult sections. Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, the entire Ramona series, the Little House on the Prairie series, The Twenty-One Balloons. Then on to books for teenage Molly. To Kill a Mockingbird; anthologies of short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald, J. D. Salinger, and O. Henry; Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca; The Time Traveler’s Wife; and The Namesake. That should get Molly through her eighteenth birthday.
Grace handed the clerk an American Express Platinum Card. “Do you think you could gift wrap them?”
“Of course. All together?” the saleswoman asked.
“No, each one separately, if it’s not too much trouble.”
“Since when do you have a platinum credit card?” Jennifer asked. Her own parents kept her on a tight budget. Cash and carry all the way.
“Mrs. T. gave it to me.” Living with Aunt Helen apparently had perqs beyond gourmet meals and fancy cars.
“Getting disowned by your parents doesn’t look so bad from over here. I’m always broke,” Jennifer said.
“Yeah, but your parents love you, talk to you, let you sleep in your own bed.” Grace would trade any amount of money to have her parents love her without reservation, without preconditions. “I’m willing to bet your father never called you a whore.” Almost more than anything else, Grace couldn’t get over her parents’ contempt for her. It almost felt like they’d been waiting for her to screw up so they could say what they’d really felt all along.
“I think I’d be okay with that if I could have a credit card without a spending limit,” Jennifer replied, covetously eyeing the gray plastic rectangle.
“As much as I appreciate everything Mrs. T. has done, and Charlie’s pretty amazing, I miss my parents.”
“You miss being screamed at and told you’re nothing but a no-good slut? I didn’t know you were a masochist.”
“Shhh. Keep your voice down. Remember where we are,” whispered Grace. At the word slut a woman with a toddler glowered in their direction.
“Sorry. Well?” Jennifer whispered loudly.
“I don’t miss the mean stuff, but I do miss how it used to be, before.”
“That ship sailed. You’ll never be able to go back there.” As she said it, Jennifer bit her tongue. She didn’t know for certain that Grace’s relationship with her parents was irreparable. Miracles happened every day.
“Here you are miss — um, ma’am,” said the sales clerk as she placed two large shopping bags filled with Molly’s books on the counter. Was a pregnant girl who looked fourteen but was using a platinum card a ‘miss’ or a ‘ma’am’?
CHAPTER 15
Snow floated silently past the windows, like feathers from some extraterrestrial pillow fight. Helen’s attic was a cozy refuge from the real world, and Grace and Charlie treated it like a secret clubhouse, sprawling at either end of an enormous and ancient leather sofa. They talked, read, and listened to music, their feet meeting under an antique, moth-eaten striped wool Pendleton blanket. It was heaven, and Grace wished they could stay up there forever. No one could hurt her in this cluttered fortress, and for an hour or so every evening, she could block out the daily torture being meted out by the suddenly high-minded, moralistic students at Silver Lake High School.
“You’re more than halfway there.” With each passing day, Grace seemed a little bit sadder, and Charlie was trying to think of ways to lift her spirits. Pointing out the light at the end of the tunnel couldn’t hurt, although nearly four months seemed like a long time, even to him.
“So what? I’m used. I’m damaged goods. Who’s going to want to get involved with a girl my age who’s already had a baby? I only did it once, but I’m screwed for life.” Grace was too depressed to recognize her own bad pun.
“It’s going to take some time, but you’ll get past this. I know it’s a huge trauma, but once you graduate, no one has to know about it unless you tell them. I’ll never tell anyone. You can go off to college and make a fresh start.”
Charlie was finding himself more attracted to Grace every day. He kept reminding himself that this girl was a walking nuclear disaster. She had a bowling ball under her sweater. And her parents had kicked her out. And she wasn’t Jewish. But he couldn’t help himself. The kiss that they had almost shared on Thanksgiving haunted him. All he could think about was how soft her lips must be, how sweet she must taste. It was sick and perverted to have those kinds of fantasies about someone who was pregnant, not even by him, and yet every time he looked at her, he imagined what she must look like naked — all perfect curves and glowing skin. He should gouge his eyes out for having such wicked thoughts. It had gotten so bad he could no longer wear his shirt tucked in when she was around. Like in middle school, when his body had a mind of its own, and the woman in the hairnet with the wart on her nose behind the counter in the cafeteria would say, “You wanna breast or a thigh?” and he would get a raging boner, even though she looked like a witch and was talking about fried chicken.
What was driving him? Was it Grace’s sweetness in the face of the shit blizzard that was her life that he found so incredibly appealing? Or was he just horny and desperate? Maybe — and he hoped this wasn’t the case — he was falling for a girl who had way more checks in the cons column than in the pros column. Whatever the reason, he wished he had better control over the part of his brain that controlled his sexual fantasies.
“I don’t just mean mentally. I’ve got stretch marks everywhere. It’s gross, take my word.” Grace held up her hands. “And my fingers look like those sausages that come in the little cans.”
Even her stretch marks and swelling sounded hot to him. Without thinking, Charlie grabbed her hand and lightly kissed each fingertip. “You don’t look disgusting. You’re incredibly beautiful, even with that tiny ball under your shirt. And in a few months, your body will be back to normal, and who cares if it’s not exactly like it was before?
Did you plan on joining a nudist colony or making a living as a stripper?”
Grace blushed, wondering if Charlie could actually think about her as something other than the guest of honor at a nine-month pity party. The Thanksgiving almost-kiss might have been an aberration — he had drunk nearly an entire bottle of wine. Realistically, what decent boy would want anything to do with her after what she’d done — she was an untouchable, and no purifying bath or magic word could change that. Doing it with Nick had ruined what should have been the most special part of her life. Sex would never be the intimate, transcendent experience she had read about in novels and seen in movies.
And after what had happened with Nick, Grace had been certain she would never feel that way again about a boy. Not only did she no longer trust boys in general, she didn’t trust her own feelings about them. Every kiss, every touch would take her back to Nick’s Grand Cherokee. Whatever her future held, it was hard to imagine falling in love with someone, ever actually making love to someone.
But Charlie was different. He didn’t avoid her eyes when she looked at him, and he didn’t seem horrified by what she had done, or that she looked like a monster truck in stretch denim. In fact, when they were together, she felt pretty much like her old pre-Nick self. At first Grace had assumed he was nice to her to please his aunt, and it was obvious he felt sorry for her. Over the last few months, they had spent so much time together, doing homework, taking long walks, and talking about everything under the sun. Sharing a house, sharing Helen, they had become extremely close. He really was like a second Jennifer, but without the sharp tongue, and it was impossible to forget how cute he was.
Now he had said she was beautiful, and such a compliment wasn’t something a guy said if he was just being polite. Or maybe well-mannered, private school boys did toss flattering remarks around, and she was reading too much into it. Maybe she was just desperate for a little validation after so many months of self-loathing, and he was just the kind of person who would see how needy she was and try to help her feel better. Teenage girls, even pregnant ones, spent a tremendous amount of time worrying about whether or not they were pretty. There were so many reasons for him to be nice to her that were more likely explanations than that he was actually attracted to her.
“You don’t have to say that. I know I’m a whale. But thank you for taking the trouble to lie. It means a lot.”
Since Thanksgiving, they hadn’t talked about their feelings. But the unresolved question still hung in the air, at least for Grace. Tired of spending every waking moment wondering if he truly had feelings for her, Grace needed to know, and she realized she cared about him enough to let him off the hook if he was just trying to be a good friend, trying to build her flagging self-esteem. If he said nothing now, there would be an awkward moment — perhaps a pregnant pause, she laughed to herself — but at least she would know where she stood, and then she could move on, as difficult as that might be.
“I’m not lying,” he murmured.
Placing his hand gently on the mound of her belly, Charlie leaned over and kissed her, his lips barely touching hers. He waited a few seconds. When she didn’t pull away, he pressed harder, caressing her lips with his tongue, coaxing them apart. She tasted even better than he had imagined. Feeling like the world’s biggest degenerate but unable to stop, he moved his hand upward, cupping her breast. He was definitely going straight to hell, but it was worth it. Grace moaned, and he pulled away in a panic. “Did I hurt you? Is the baby okay? I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry. I crossed the line, didn’t I?”
Grace didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Don’t apologize. You didn’t hurt me. Just the opposite. I haven’t felt anything like that, ever — not even with, um, you know. You just surprised me. That’s all.”
In his chinos and crisp button-down shirts, Charlie looked like someone who spent all his free time reading the Wall Street Journal and polishing his penny loafers. Apparently not. Gentle but assertive, respectful but passionate, he was everything that Nick was not.
Trying to slow his breathing and erase the sensation of her lips on his, Charlie said, “I really wasn’t planning on doing that. It just kind of happened.”
“Don’t apologize. It just wasn’t what I expected.”
“Was it that bad?” Having grown up overseas and made out with girls of many nationalities, he considered himself an above-average kisser. Apparently all those girls had only been exceptionally polite, or American girls had an entirely different set of standards.
“No, it was amazing. But boys like you aren’t supposed to kiss like that.” Grace’s heart was still thundering. Could this be bad for the baby? she worried.
“Boys like me?” What did she mean? Was this a Jewish thing? He hoped not.
“Yeah, polite, preppy, smart. You look so clean, but you kiss so, um, so dirty. You know what I mean?” Totally tongue-tied after what had just happened, Grace knew her attempts to explain herself were beyond clumsy, and she blushed mightily.
“I’m not sure, but if dirty is good, then I’ll take it.” This girl was insane, but she was also funny and sexy as hell.
“Dirty is definitely good. But I’m afraid. Kissing leads to touching and that leads to …” she said, pointing at Exhibit A, which seemed to have grown even bigger in the last hour.
“There’s no law that says you have to get naked with every boy you kiss. Nick was your first, but he wasn’t your first kiss, was he?” Charlie asked. Grace shook her head. “You obviously have self-control, even if it briefly went AWOL. You’ll never forget again.”
Charlie was in a tough spot. Though he knew she had every reason to be gun-shy, he hoped that she wasn’t going to run away from him, from any possibility of a relationship, because she had been so badly burned her first time out. And starting a relationship with her in the middle of her second trimester smacked of poor judgment — not to mention what his parents would say if they ever got wind of this. Hopefully Aunt Helen was either unaware of his feelings or good at keeping secrets.
“I know. It’s just that I can’t stop thinking about everything. And I feel like a, well, like a slut. Pregnant with one guy’s baby and kissing someone else.” Grace desperately wanted Charlie to understand that she didn’t want to push him away. It was just that she didn’t know what to do, didn’t want him to think she was that kind of girl, didn’t want to have a baby on board when she fell in love with Charlie, which she could easily see happening.
“Are you in love with him?”
It hadn’t occurred to him before, but if Grace was in love with that slimeball, Nick, then Charlie had seriously misjudged her. Anyone who could care about someone who had used and discarded her was majorly fucked up, and as attracted as he was to Grace, Charlie was no masochist. That he was sure of.
“No, of course I don’t love him. I hate him. I hate him for tricking me, for luring me in with his voice and his looks, for not considering anyone’s feelings but his own.”
“Guys are assholes. I won’t deny it.”
Nick was a bastard, but that overwhelming urge to see a girl without her clothes and touch her all over was a feeling every guy could relate to. The difference was that nice guys had self-control and empathy, and they actually thought of girls as more than just tits on a stick. As much as part of him wanted to push her back onto the ancient Chesterfield sofa and run his hands over her tantalizing curves, make her moan again, he liked her too much to do that. Both of them had to be ready; otherwise they would be over before they got started.
“Not all of them,” Grace said softly, tapping Charlie’s shoulder. “And it’s not just that I hate Nick. I hate myself for being shallow and shortsighted, because I didn’t think that’s who I was. I’m afraid of what I’ve become, and whether I’ll ever be able to go back.” Something about Charlie’s face made her want to tell him her deepest, most frightening thoughts, knowing that he would understand exactly what she meant.
“You’re going to be fine. Unde
rneath, you’re still you. The last thing I want to do is make things more difficult for you.” Charlie was sad but sincere. This clearly was a mistake, at least for now. “But you’re going to have a life after you give birth. You can’t torture yourself forever.” Or me. Unconsciously, he licked his lips. For him, there was no going back, but he kept that to himself for fear of spooking her. She was even more brittle than he had thought. If he handled her the wrong way, she would surely break in two.
“Stop apologizing. That kiss was the most amazing thing you could have done. You made me feel almost normal again, and I can’t tell you how much that means to me. But ….”
Charlie grimaced. The big but. “But you’re not ready. I get it. I promise to control my less than honorable thoughts. You tell me if … and when. I’m not going anywhere.” It felt good to be candid with her, and to hear her being honest with him.
“Thank you for understanding. Promise me you won’t forget those thoughts. I like you, so much, and I don’t want to ruin it by starting a new chapter before I finish this one. Does that make sense?” She held her breath, hoping Charlie had a lot of time and patience. Talking openly and honestly to a boy after such an earth-moving kiss was incredibly weird, but also really exciting. This was how it was supposed to be.
“Very good sense. Until you give birth, I promise to keep it completely platonic, as far as you know.” Smiling, he reached over and kissed Grace lightly on the forehead. “In my mind, that was lower.” The baby was due on April third, and not that he wished for it to be born prematurely, but he didn’t know how he was going to wait that long.
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