Because of You

by Sam Mariano

  On reflection, I didn't think about a lot of things when I decided to show up at Burger King; I pretty much just saw and reacted.

  When Derek didn't even look up, I felt some of my anger start to grow, and I had to warn myself that whether he had done wrong or not, we were about to get into a fight unless I cooled my jets.

  I made myself breathe as I approached the counter, and Derek finally looked up at me. Kayla hadn't looked up, but she must have noticed by his expression that it wasn't a customer that walked in, because she looked over at me right after he did.

  I wasn't sure what my expression looked like, and I hadn't spoken yet, but when Derek's eyes met mine I had to look away so he didn't see accusation in my eyes before I even figured out the situation.

  It was strange, but none of us actually said anything. No greetings, however forced; no smiles, however fake. There was nothing, just silence and glances.

  A full minute passed before Derek held up an ultrasound picture for me to see.

  Realization struck me just like that, and I felt like the biggest jerk in the world.

  I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out, so I closed it and walked a little closer. "First ultrasound picture?" I asked lightly.

  Derek nodded, not saying anything at all.

  He didn't really have to say anything. As soon as he dropped the ultrasound picture down on the counter, still not looking away from me, I figured he knew exactly why I had decided to stop in, and he wasn't very happy about it.

  I didn't make matters any better, because I couldn't seem to stop looking guilty.

  I cleared my throat, offering a little smile. "I was... hungry, and I thought I'd stop in and say hi," I explained.

  He didn't argue or agree, he merely nodded.

  "So, can I see?" I asked, offering a bright smile.

  "You eat here often, Nikki?" Kayla asked, giving me a sly little smile. "I mean, you must, since it's the first place that came to mind when you were hungry."

  I didn't respond, not willing to admit anything to her and give her the satisfaction. Since my head was back on my shoulders, I found myself wishing I wouldn't have pulled into that stupid parking lot.

  "Or maybe you were driving by," she offered. "Just saw something you wanted to check out."

  I stepped up to the cash register where Mike was standing, which absolutely killed me, and said, "Uh, can I get the chicken tenders with ranch?"

  He nodded. "For here or to go?"

  "To go," I replied, thinking I wouldn't stay there if someone offered me a million dollars.

  "Well, I guess I should be going, too," Kayla said, retrieving the ultrasound picture from the counter and shoving it into her purse. She tossed a smile at Derek. "I'll see you tomorrow, right?"

  At that, I allowed my head to tilt to the side and my eyebrows to shoot up, my chagrin beginning to fade.

  Derek didn't speak, but he nodded curtly.

  She gave me an annoyingly cute little smile, accompanied by a wrinkle of her nose. "Toodles."

  Once she was out the door, I frowned slightly at Derek and said, "She'll see you tomorrow? There's no school tomorrow, why would she see you tomorrow?"

  "Her grandparents want to meet me," he stated.

  I didn't mean to, but I half laughed. "Her—" I managed to cut myself off, pressing my lips together firmly to keep any unwanted noises from slipping out. When I was confident I could manage a calm, civil tone, I replied, "Her grandparents?"

  He nodded.

  "You're going to meet her grandparents?" I repeated, trying not to raise my voice. "I thought you had to work tomorrow. When I asked if we could reschedule our date for tomorrow, that's definitely what you told me."

  "I only work until 2:30," he told me. "I have enough time to change before dinner."

  "Dinner?" I repeated dumbly.

  "We're going out to dinner."

  I felt the need to clear my throat again, and knowing that no good would come from anything else being said, I nodded, pulling my wallet out and handing Mike a dollar. He already had my food ready, so he handed me the bag and cashed out my order.

  "Thank you," I murmured to Mike automatically, forgetting who he was.

  "Go ahead, you want to say something," Derek said quietly.

  "No," I replied, picking up my bag and shaking my head. "There's definitely nothing I want to say to you right now, because I'm sure if I do, I'll want to take some of it back later."

  "Please, I was tried and convicted as soon as you saw Kayla's car in the parking lot," he stated.

  "Right, but now you're going to a family dinner with her when you don’t have time to hang out with me, so clearly I had nothing to worry about," I said sarcastically.

  "If you thought you did, you're fucking stupid," he stated, giving me one last glare before stalking to the back.

  "Obviously!" I called back, even though I doubted he heard me.

  Feeling annoyed and a little bit sad, I turned and stormed out of the building.

  Chapter Fourteen-

  Derek didn't call me when he got home from work, and I was being entirely too stubborn to call him. Actually, I didn't know if I wanted to talk to him anyway.

  But the next day when three o'clock rolled around and I still hadn't heard from him, I wasn't quite as pleased. By that time, I started to think it was a better idea to talk to him before Kayla's stupid family dinner, that way when he went we were on good terms.

  When I picked up the phone to call him, I changed my mind. If we had a relationship of substance then he shouldn't have to talk to me to remember that he was my boyfriend. I could still hold anything stupid that he did against him—but he wouldn't do anything stupid.

  I told myself to put the phone down again, refusing to babysit him. I had to take some stands, and that had to be one of them. It was somewhat understandable that he was mad that I had been suspicious, but since apparently Kayla was up to something and he was stupidly falling right into it, I did have cause for concern. He had to give me that.

  Since I knew he was going to be at dinner with Kayla, I figured I should probably busy myself with doing productive things to keep my mind off of it, otherwise I would spend the whole day staring at the clock and waiting for him to get home.

  By five o'clock I had done some research on schools, submitted two essays for scholarships, and Wendy's had called me in to work.

  I didn't get off until 11, and when I did I was slightly relieved to see that I had two missed calls, one from Derek, and he left a voicemail.

  "Hey, it's Derek," he said in that quiet tone. "I just got home and I thought I'd give you a call. I know you're mad at me, so... just call me whenever you want to. Later."

  Well, it wasn't much, but at least he had called.

  I debated whether I wanted to talk to him or not on the way home, but I decided I may as well. After all, it would do our relationship no good if we didn't discuss our issues, and I definitely had issues with what he had spent his Saturday doing.

  "I called you earlier," he said, when I called back.

  "Yeah, I got your message," I told him. "I was at work, that's why I'm just now calling you back."

  "Oh. I didn't know you worked today."

  "Yeah, well, I thought we didn't tell each other things like that anymore," I returned sarcastically.

  He sighed on the other end, and I pressed my lips together, a little aggravated that I had let that slip.

  I also sighed, saying, "I wasn't calling to bust you on that, it just slipped."

  "It's okay, that's actually part of why I called you. I was thinking about that today. I shouldn't have just made those plans without bothering to tell you about it."

  "No, definitely not," I agreed.

  "I didn't mean to," he said. "And I was going to tell you, I just didn't get a chance."

  "Why did you even go?" I asked, pouting just a little.

  "Her grandparents wanted to meet me. I thought they wanted to meet me because of the baby,
but she told me on the way to the restaurant they didn't even know she was pregnant, that she didn't want them to know yet. She said she just wanted them to meet me first to kind of smooth the way for breaking the news."

  I felt my anger flare, more at Kayla than Derek. "Oh, so she just wanted to introduce you. I suppose she didn't introduce you as her ex-boyfriend?"

  He hesitated for just a second before admitting, "No."

  "I really, really don't like her," I told him.

  "I know," he said.

  "So her whole family thinks you're her boyfriend?"

  "As far as I can tell."

  I nodded, forgetting he couldn't see me. "This is going to be a bigger problem than I wanted to admit, isn't it?"

  "I don't know, Nikki," he said tiredly.

  I had to admit, in that moment, I wasn't feeling as blindly optimistic about our relationship. Kayla wasn't going to let it be easy, not by a long shot. For some ungodly reason, she decided she absolutely was not going to move out of my way, and Derek wasn’t holding up his end of our partnership.

  "It's only going to get worse, you know," I remarked. "This isn't going to get easier. It was a nice sentiment, a sweet dream, but this is going to get harder, not easier."

  "I know," he said quietly.

  For the first time since our reconciliation, I forced myself to look at our situation without rose-colored glasses, without my driven devotion, and I realized that there was a very good chance that we just weren't going to last. We might have, if Kayla hadn't ended up pregnant, but we would have had more freedom to get to know each other better, no limitations whatsoever. Kayla wasn't going to let that happen.

  We both sat there on the phone, not saying a word. The silence lasted several minutes before he cleared his throat.

  "You still there?" he asked.

  "Yeah," I said quietly. "I was just thinking."

  "You sound sad."

  "I am," I told him.

  "We're going to make this work, Nikki," he assured me, reading my thoughts.

  I smiled a little sadly. "Maybe."

  "We will," he said more forcefully.

  "They didn't," I said simply.

  He faltered for a second, probably seeing the truth in my words. "We're not our parents," he finally said.

  "No, but we certainly are following in their footsteps, aren't we?" I replied, not even trying to deny it.

  "No," he said, as if disagreeing would make it true. "We're... we're not going to do what they did."

  "They tried too, Derek," I told him. "Why do you think she was so tortured? She held on for months after it should have ended. As soon as Sarah told him she was pregnant they really should have ended, because it was over from that moment. Maybe this is just a completely hopeless situation. Maybe there's no way—"

  "You know that isn't true," he interrupted. "There would have been a way. If he would have just made up his mind to be with her, to... go to any lengths—"

  "Including walking away from your kid?" I returned. "Can you do that, Derek? If it comes down to that, can you honestly tell me you're going to pick me over your own child?"

  He sighed irritably. "Why do you have to bring this up? It hasn't happened yet, and there's a good chance it won't. Let's just deal with the complications as they come, okay?"

  "What, you don't think they're already coming?" I asked. "Kayla's hauling you to family dinners now. What's going to come next? Maybe her sister's wedding or her cousin's birthday party?"

  "This was a one-time thing, Nikki. I'm not going to make a habit of being Kayla's poodle. I'm not her boyfriend anymore, and she's going to have to accept that."

  "Yeah, eventually, but she can make you pay for that decision for the next 18 years."

  "Maybe, but I've already made that decision. I have already picked you, Nikki, so I don't know what you're worried about."

  I laughed mirthlessly. "Everything, Derek."

  "Well don't," he replied. "There's no point in even trying to preserve our relationship if you've already made up your mind that it isn't going to work. Don't do that, Nikki. I want us to work, so don't do that."

  "I want us to work, too, but we can't just ignore what we don't like, can we?"

  "I don't want to talk about this anymore," he said, letting me know by his tone that he was finished with the topic for the night.

  "Fine," I allowed, but didn't try to bring up any new topics.

  After a few more seconds he said, "So, what did you do today?"

  "Not much," I responded vaguely, not up to sharing my new plans about college with him.

  "You said you worked?"

  "Yeah, I got called in. But hey, I'm about to pull into my driveway, so I'm gonna let you go. Call me tomorrow?"

  "Yeah," he said unenthusiastically.

  Fantastic. We weren't even graduated from high school and we were already acting like we had been married for 20 years.

  But unexpected pregnancies did tend to age relationships. I remembered, on reflection, that even my mom and Mike got less formal as soon as Sarah got pregnant. Dealing with something like that just doesn't allow for formality. If you don't know each other well enough to dispose of formalities, you don't know each other well enough to fight that kind of situation for your relationship.

  Derek and I did talk the next day, but nothing had changed. He still didn’t want to acknowledge our problems and I still wasn’t willing to turn a blind eye. If we were doomed to fail, I wanted to know as soon as possible, because the longer we held on, the more it was going to hurt when it finally did end.

  Not that I wanted it to end, but I also knew that loving somebody shouldn’t be that hard so soon. Yes, couples had problems, but after only a couple months? That was like signing up for marriage counseling before leaving for your honeymoon.

  Looking at it sensibly, I was still glad that I had been involved with Derek. Even if we did end, even if our time was about up, he had still been an important person in my life. After all, even though he didn't know it, he had pretty much been the person to make me realize I had to go to college.

  It depressed me to realize I was already thinking of us as past tense, and I truly didn't want it to be over, but I didn't want to get my hopes up just to be let down. It wouldn't do either one of us any good.

  I felt myself beginning to pull away from Derek, maybe not intentionally, but as an unconscious attempt to protect myself. It was surprisingly easy since I rarely got to see him.

  There had been a moment Monday at school when Derek and I saw each other, and we just kind of looked at each other for a second, then he gave me that smile that still made my heart skip and started toward me, causing me to smile a little as I started walking toward him.

  But he only made it halfway before Kayla rushed to his side, holding open a little book and stealing his attention.

  My smile faded and I stopped walking, instead watching as she pointed out something in what was unmistakably a baby name book.

  Before Derek had a chance to look back up at me, I was gone.

  We didn't get a chance to talk in class, and we didn't see each other again until lunch. After I got my food I went to his table to sit with him, but even the peck on the lips I got left me feeling a little disappointed.

  I wasn't paying much attention to the conversation at the table and I was in a pensive mood that day, so I merely observed as Derek interacted with his friends, feeling a little sad every time he would flash that smile or laugh—God, I loved his smile.

  "Hey," Derek said, knocking me out of my thoughts.

  "Hm?" I murmured, glancing up at him.

  He took my hand under the table and placed a kiss on my forehead, causing me to smile a little. "Don't look so depressed, I'm starting to think you don't like me."

  "Of course I like you," I said, squeezing his hand a little. "I was just thinking."

  "Well, stop thinking," he advised, his eyes twinkling a little.

  "I just wish things were different," I told him qui
etly.

  "Me too," he agreed, nodding a little. "But it'll be okay. You'll see. It may be complicated, but we can work through the complications if we really want to."

  I half smiled. "I feel like I've heard that advice before."

  "You have," he said. "The letter your mom wrote..."

  Oh, that's right. She had told Mike that they could work through any complications if he wanted to.

  "Just stop worrying about it," he said.

  "It's hard," I told him.

  "Well, nobody ever said it would be easy, Nikki. Relationships seldom are."

  "Relationships involving situations like ours?"

  "Even harder," he said with a slight nod. "But that doesn't mean it can't be done."

  "What are you two talking about over there?" asked one of his friends. "I'm feeling left out."

  Derek gave me a little smile and squeezed my hand under the table, returning to whatever inane conversation his friends were having.

  I dreamed of my mom again that night, and when I woke up the next morning I was again filled with that peaceful feeling that everything would somehow be all right. I wasn't sure how, but it just would.

  I tried to gear myself up that morning, to tell myself Derek was right. It might not be easy, but he was worth it, and I was not going to roll over and admit defeat to Kayla.

  I had plans, dammit, and Derek was in them.

  That day at school I made sure to find Derek before class, and then I walked to class on his arm, as his girlfriend should. He seemed relieved at my change in attitude, and that made me happy, too.

  "Did you finally stop thinking?" he asked me on the way to class.

  "No," I replied. "I just started thinking differently. I'm a Harmon, Derek; we don't go away without a fight."

  He smiled. "No, I don't suppose you do."

  At lunch, instead of letting his friends monopolize him, I took his attention for myself.

  "So, we never get to see each other outside of school anymore, but I've been making plans and they involve you, so I want to talk to you about them."

  Derek nodded. "Okay. Fill me in."

  "I haven't really been talking to you about this since... well, since everything happened with Kayla."