Because of You

by Sam Mariano

  "Why should I get along with you?" she replied.

  "Well, because you're going to be in Derek's life because of the baby and I'm also going to be a part of Derek's life, so I think it would be in the best interest of the baby—"

  "It would be in the best interest of the baby if you weren't such a homewrecking whore."

  I bit my tongue, stifling the urge to tell her I hadn't wrecked a home, I had just ended a brief and meaningless relationship that had been doomed from the start anyway.

  "Whether you like me or not, you're going to have to coexist with me," I stated.

  "No, I plan to push your skanky ass out of the way before long," she returned.

  Her blunt reply caused my eyebrows to rise. "Well, good luck with that. At any rate, I just thought I would express some interest. I was talking to Derek the other day, just asking him questions, and I realized you haven't told him much of anything."

  "Why should I?" she replied, shrugging carelessly.

  "Because he's the father," I offered.

  "He left me," she stated simply.

  "Well, I know that, but he is busting his ass right now so he can help you support a baby that you won't tell him anything about. I don't think it's that much to ask just to let him know when the due date is."

  "I don't know the exact date," she stated.

  "I know, but you have to have a general idea. If you don't, I found a website that can help you figure it out. If you just enter in—"

  "Look, I have better things to do than talk to you," Kayla told me.

  "How many weeks are you?" I asked her.

  "None of your business," she said.

  I rolled my eyes. "What's the big secret, Kayla? You don't think he deserves to even know the little details? I mean, it doesn't even make sense that you're so reluctant," I told her. "You're dangling your pregnancy over his head, so you'd think it would be right up your alley to shove ultrasound pictures and due dates in my face."

  She stopped, turning to give me a dirty look. "Look, Nicole, at the moment my stomach is upset, probably because of the baby, and I need to get to class. I'm sure you do, too. So stop grilling me and leave me alone."

  With that, she walked away.

  Chapter Thirteen-

  Wednesday was my day off, but Derek had to go straight to work from school, so we made plans for him to come over to my house when he got off to do our homework and spend some time together, since it seemed our schedules rarely allowed it.

  He was supposed to get off at eight, but Derek called me at 8:05 and told me he had to stay until 11, so he wouldn't be over until probably 11:30 or so.

  I wasn't very happy about that, because I had finished all but my math homework and I decided to glance through his and see what he needed to do. There was an English paper that we had known about since Friday, due the next day, and all he had compiled were some notes. He hadn't even started a rough draft that we were supposed to turn in Tuesday. What had he turned in? He didn't even have enough notes to write the whole report. On top of that paper, he also had homework in two other subjects, and he wasn't even going to get to my house until close to midnight?

  I told myself that things would get better.

  It might seem hard, but once we graduated and Kayla had the baby, hopefully we would settle into a routine. I told myself that the only reason Derek had to run himself ragged was because he was still getting the hang of things, that once everything settled down and we all figured out how to deal, it would get easier.

  But would it? I had doubts, and then I felt guilty that it was mostly because of me that he was working so hard.

  I stopped thoughts like that, reasoning that it wasn't my fault, it was Kayla's fault. After all, while Derek was killing himself to help out, she was still happily going to the mall and working one day a week at the local grocery store. Obviously she wasn't concerned about the costs of a child, and once I got Derek to jump off his big white horse, maybe he would chill and start making her share the responsibility.

  But would I be able to get Derek off that damn horse? Because it didn't seem like it was going to be an easy task.

  Even if I couldn't, I knew I still wanted to be with the big idiot. Even if he ended up dropping college altogether and working full-time at Burger King for the rest of his life, I would still be there by his side, as long as he didn't have a problem with me bringing home at least three times as much money as he did.

  For as long as we were together, of course.

  But I was willing to take on him and a baby, so obviously I wasn't looking for short-term.

  Thinking about that made me all antsy, so I stopped thinking about my future, Derek's future, or the possibility of them being tied together, and instead spent the time looking over his notes for his English paper.

  I tried to stay awake, I truly did. I even made a couple trips out to the kitchen to drink one of Alex's energy drinks, but I couldn't finish it because it was nasty. I gave it to Alex and headed back to my room, asking him to let me know if Derek got there and I didn't hear him. Alex raised an eyebrow and asked, "Why, all of a sudden, are we inviting the antichrist into the house?"

  I flashed him a smile, informing him, "Oh, we like Derek again."

  "Why?" he called after me, but I shut my door, not answering.

  The last thing I remember was curling up in bed with Sense and Sensibility, planning on reading a few chapters while I waited for Derek, and the next thing I knew I was waking up to a pair of arms wrapped around me, and someone kissing my ear.

  I smiled sleepily, rolling over. "Hey you," I greeted.

  He returned a small smile. "You fell asleep on me."

  "I'm sorry," I said, yawning.

  "It's okay," he said. "Alex let me in."

  "I meant to wait up. I tried to wait up, but apparently I woke up too early this morning."

  He glanced down at the books lying open on my bed. "Or Jane Austen just wasn't interesting enough," he suggested.

  "Bite your tongue, mister."

  "I'd rather bite yours," he murmured, leaning in to kiss me.

  "Freak," I said against his mouth, smiling.

  "You like it," he retorted, pulling himself above me and letting his hand wander down to my pajama bottoms.

  "I do. But we don't have time for that right now," I said, pushing him away and sitting up, remembering to take charge.

  He groaned. "You're going into teacher mode, aren't you?"

  "I have to start by saying that I do not approve of you putting school on the backburner, and I definitely do not approve of cheating, copying or any other form of plagiarism. That being said, we have to go to school in, like, seven hours, and you still haven't slept. You did finish your chemistry homework, although I have no idea when, but you still had English, math and government to do. Your English paper is due tomorrow, and we've known about it for a week, but all you had were a few notes. I took the liberty of going over your notes, trying to go off of them, and although I may have ended up straying a bit, I finished your paper; it's in your folder, double spaced and everything. I also did your government homework, but you need to write it in your own handwriting, that way the teacher doesn't know and that way you're at least taking something away from the assignment. I'm a firm believer that when you cheat, you're only cheating yourself, but I also don't want you to flunk out, so..."

  He smiled at me. "You did my homework?"

  "Half of it," I said. "You did chemistry and the math homework is all yours, because I hate math and I had to do the even numbers, but you have to do the odd numbers."

  He chuckled. "You don't love me that much, huh?"

  Even though he said it in an off-hand sort of way, I sort of felt like I had swallowed an ice cube.

  He must have realized what he said, because he glanced up at me and said, "Don't panic, I didn't mean it literally."

  Deciding not to deal with that particular awkward moment, I bent over my bed and picked up the folder with his English paper. "Now
, you took a completely different view than I took, and I didn't want the papers to be similar, because I don't want the teacher to think anything seems fishy."

  "What genre did you defend?" he asked conversationally, taking his paper.

  "Chick-lit," I responded.

  He looked up at me, eyebrows raised. "Seriously?"

  I nodded. "It was more controversial, it was more fun to defend. Chick-lit writers are not stupid, and they deserve as much respect as any other writer."

  "Well, I'll take your word for it," he told me, covering his mouth to silence his yawn.

  "You're tired," I stated inanely. "Do you want to do your math homework tonight or in the morning?"

  "I'll start it tonight, see if I can finish it. If not, I will in the morning." He glanced back up at me, and saw me trying to stifle a yawn that time. "You go to sleep," he said.

  "I feel bad though," I said, stifling the urge to yawn again. "We never get to see each other anymore."

  "I know," he said, reaching over and brushing my hair behind my ears. "This is going to get easier," he told me.

  "Are you sure?" I asked, glancing up at him.

  He nodded. "It has to."

  "It could get harder," I told him sensibly. "As much as I'm hoping it will get easier, a baby could also just make everything harder."

  After a moment he nodded again. "You could be right. We're going to do this anyway, though."

  "Even college?" I asked.

  He nodded. "At least part-time. Maybe if I do go part-time, you could, too. It would be cheaper to go part-time, and if you could find something you wanted to do that only requires an associate's degree..."

  I thought about telling him that I had been considering going to school full-time with him, but I decided not to. Instead I just nodded a little and said, "Yeah, maybe..."

  "Well, get some sleep. I'm going to finish up my homework, and then I'll join you. Alex isn't going to mind me staying the night, is he?"

  I smiled. "Just make sure you bang on the wall and make some loud noises, make him really happy."

  "No, I'd like to live to see morning. Thanks anyway."

  "Anytime," I said, closing Sense and Sensibility, placing it on the floor next to my bed and snuggling down into my blankets as Derek opened up his math book.

  The following day I might have been able to spend an hour with Derek, but I had to work and by the time I got off he would be working. After closing up, he would have to go home and do his homework, then it would be time for bed, so there was no point in trying to see each other.

  By the time I got home from work, Alex was home.

  "Hey, stranger," he greeted, opening up the fridge.

  "Hey," I said, taking the smelly Wendy's hat off my head.

  "Pizza will be here in a few minutes. You might want to change clothes though." He wrinkled up his nose. "You smell like..." He sniffed.

  "Processed meat? Oil? Sweat? French fries?" I supplied.

  He nodded, opening a can of beer. "Some kind of combination, yeah. Why do you still work there?" he asked, grinning lazily.

  "Ugh, I don't know. I was going to leave, but I couldn't because I didn't have transportation. Now that I have my car back though, I really should try to get a job somewhere else."

  "Well, before you do that you might want to make sure you're still going to have the transportation," he advised.

  We had never formally discussed Derek and me splitting up or getting back together. All Alex really knew was one day Derek wasn't allowed to step foot on property within 50 feet of me, and the next day I was bringing him into my room. He hadn't questioned me, so I figured he probably shrugged it off as young love.

  "Well, Derek and I are back together, so I do have my car now," I said vaguely.

  "Yeah, this week," he allowed. "But what about next week when you guys get into a fight again and he takes the car back?"

  "That's not how it happened," I told him. "Derek wanted me to keep the car from the beginning, but I didn't want to keep it if I wasn't with him, because I didn't feel right about it. We're not planning on breaking up again, but I figure if push comes to shove, I can always be mercenary and just keep the car," I said, flashing him a smile as I grabbed a pop out of the fridge and opened it up.

  He half smiled, nodding at me as I took a seat across from him. "I see he spent the night again last night. Should I get him a change of address form or something?"

  I rolled my eyes. "He doesn't spend the night that often."

  "Often enough," he retorted. "You still have what I gave you, right?"

  "Ugh, please. We barely see each other, we certainly don't time to have sex."

  "I was your age once," he said in a tone that told me he couldn't be less convinced. "There's always time to have sex. You're too young to be getting pregnant, Nicole, so make sure you use them."

  "Trust me, I'm not the one we have to worry about getting pregnant," I muttered. "I do have what you gave me, but as I said, there's no time anyway. Derek's working two jobs and I'm trying to keep us both up on our homework, so... it's just not a priority right now."

  "At your age sex is always a priority."

  "Not for us," I responded, taking a sip.

  "And how does Derek feel about these... priorities?"

  "He doesn't seem to have a problem with it at all," I said a bit impressively. "In fact, he's the one who told me to go to sleep last night."

  One black eyebrow shot up. "Really?" he said suspiciously.

  "Really," I verified.

  He frowned slightly. "Be careful, Nikki."

  That caused me to frown. "Be careful about what?"

  "I know how guys think. I know you don't, you're very much like your mother in that way. Just because you don't think that way you don't realize... but men do cheat, Nicole, quite often. What they can't get from one woman, they can get from the next."

  I almost laughed. "That is completely ridiculous. Derek is not cheating on me."

  "I didn't say he was," he told me. "I'm just telling you to be careful. Your mother was completely oblivious, too trusting, and it ended up hurting her. The wool was so easily pulled over her eyes, and I don't want to see—"

  "She wasn't oblivious, Alex," I said, feeling defensive. "My mother knew what you were like. She may not have told you, but she knew—"

  "I'm not talking about me, Nicole."

  I felt myself frowning. "You mean...?"

  "Mike?" he supplied, offering a nod. "I'm sure you know Sarah got pregnant after he started seeing your mom."

  I decided that would be a perfect time to stand up and head toward my room to change clothes. "Derek isn't like his father," I told Alex.

  "She loved him, and when you love someone they can easily blind you."

  I didn't want to hear that, so I shook my head. "Stop it. It's too weird. How can you just talk about her feelings for him like that when she had me with you?"

  He smiled inanely. "Considering her lack of feelings for me, it really isn't so strange. She was too thoroughly in love with him to even see anyone else. I knew Jamie before and after Mike, and he changed her; she was never the same after him. She would have never allowed herself to love someone like that again, either. Your mother never loved me at all, actually, so why pretend—"

  "You never loved her either," I fired back, feeling the need to defend her.

  His smile disappeared, replaced by a less defined look. "All you know is what you read in those damn journals, Nicole. You don't know how I felt about her."

  That sentence hung in the air for a moment, and I was about to ask him to expand on that, but we both heard a knock at the door.

  Visibly releasing the somewhat heated moment, Alex slowly stood up, saying needlessly, "That'll be the pizza."

  I waited until his back was turned, then quickly made my way to my room to change clothes, feeling vaguely irritated by our conversation.

  I tried to ignore most of what Alex said to me, and since we rarely talked, it worked ou
t well. The stuff about Derek cheating on me was just dumb, because Derek didn't have time to cheat on me even if he wanted to.

  Still, when Derek cancelled our prearranged Friday date night–I was already dressed and ready to go to the movie when he called—with the excuse that someone had called off at Burger King, I played the understanding girlfriend and said it was okay, I didn't really want to see the movie that much anyway.

  But a couple hours later I found myself deciding I needed gas, and I also found myself going to the gas station that I had to drive by Burger King to get to.

  Of course, when I saw his car parked where the employees parked, I felt pretty stupid, but also immensely relieved. I was annoyed with myself after that for doubting Derek –however briefly—because of something Alex said.

  Just because Alex was a faithless whore he thought everyone was. How could I even think my boyfriend would cancel on me to cheat?

  However, on the way home from the gas station when I looked affectionately at Burger King, where my poor boyfriend was slaving away, I noticed Kayla's car was also parked at Burger King in the customer parking area. I had to do a double take, but when I saw the Playboy Bunny dice dangling from the rearview mirror, I knew it was her car.

  I whipped my wheel to the left, causing the person I cut off to blare their horn at me, but I just rolled my eyes at them and parked at the side of the building where no one would see me.

  What the hell was going on?

  Of course my imagination was working overtime, but I forced myself to be sensible. The conclusion to jump to would obviously be that Kayla was there to see Derek. But the only reason he would lie to me about it would be if he was actually cheating on me with her, which would be completely insane seeing as he could've saved himself a lot of trouble by just staying with her in the first place.

  Honestly, in my wild state of mind, it didn't even occur to me that Mike worked at Burger King until I walked in the doors and he looked up at me.

  My steps slowed a bit, noticeably, but then I spotted Kayla leaning across the counter toward Derek, her pretty dark hair shielding her face from my view.