by A. J. Pine
“Fine, but I want you back in bed with me for five more minutes before I consider officially waking up.”
I roll my eyes and blush at the same time, grabbing fresh clothes and heading toward the bathroom.
“Five minutes, vampire boy. Then we need to visit reality for a few hours.”
I let the word hang on my tongue—reality—and hold on to the hope he wants me, no matter what.
***
The hot water rinses my frosted skin, and the memory of his fingers tracing their way up my torso wipes away my lingering doubt. I don’t think I’ve ever smiled through an entire shower before, and I half wish he followed me in here despite my protest. But neither of us would get anything done today if he did.
The goofy grin stays plastered on my face as I dry off, throwing on a T-shirt and jeans. Tiny streams ripple from my hair down my back, and I shiver and giggle, tiptoeing back to my room. Adam sits on the side of the bed, his feet on the floor. He looks up when he sees me, but all I see is the bottle in his hand.
My heart beats loud in my ears, a metronome of reminders. He’ll pity you, feel sorry for you, hate you for making him want you when you could never truly give him what he wants.
There’s worry in his eyes but something else too. Mistrust.
“Is everything okay, Jess?”
In one swift movement I’m in front of him, swiping the bottle from his hand.
“I’m fine,” I say, but the voice isn’t mine. It’s a feral and protective thing, and I feel myself retreat back into the shell.
“Jess.” He reaches for my empty hand, and I’m not quick enough to snatch it away. His hold is firm and gentle all at once. “Jess, I don’t care if you’re on medication, but it’s an expired bottle. And when I looked inside . . .”
I wrench my hand free.
“Why are you going through my stuff?” My words trail off as I try to justify the anger that isn’t for him but for what this all means. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. I would tell him on my terms, not when I can already see the pity in his eyes.
“Jesus, Jess!” He’s standing now, his hands on my shoulders, forcing me to look in his eyes. “I wasn’t checking up on you. I was looking for something for my knee. I didn’t expect to find an expired bottle of antidepressants. I got curious.”
I can hear the shame in this last sentence. He knows he’s crossed a line. I try to look away, but he grabs my chin.
“Jess.” His voice is cautious, gentle, and it makes me weak. “I’m not judging you if you’re on medication, but I’m not stupid. I know what those red tablets are. I take enough to recognize ibuprofen when I see it. Why the hell are you keeping them in that bottle? What are you holding on to?”
His hand loosens on my face, and I turn my head and back away, not able to endure the way he looks at me now.
“Jess, please. Talk to me.”
He doesn’t really want what he pleads for.
The neck of my shirt is soaked. I’m unsure if it’s from my still wet hair or the tears dripping off my chin.
A savage laugh erupts from my chest, and my arm swipes across my face.
“It’s been over a year since I cried about this, since I cried about anything, and one night with you turns me into a fucking basket case.”
I burrow into the small corner of space between my dresser and the door’s frame, my hands fisting the hem of my shirt. Despite the torrent of tears, my voice is even, but hollow.
“I can’t have kids.” Just like that, four words I’ve tucked away change everything. Four words took away my youth and changed a future I never knew I wanted as badly as I did until it wasn’t mine to want anymore.
It’s the first time I’ve said it to someone who didn’t already know. He doesn’t move, doesn’t react at first, so I give him plenty to react to.
“The guy at the game and who we saw outside Yu’s? That was Bryan. Not just my ex. He was my first. My only. And we were always careful, but I got pregnant anyway.”
My stomach tightens, and my arms wrap around my torso in a feeble attempt at comfort.
“School was out for the summer by the time we knew, but there was barely a chance to process our choices because I miscarried.”
I’m choking on the words now, reliving each terrifying moment.
“There was so much blood, too much, but I waited to tell my mom what I thought was happening because she didn’t know I was pregnant. I was scared, so fucking scared, so I waited.”
My words mix with hitching sobs because I know the part of the story that comes next—my mom, terrified but trying to hold it together as she calls 911; the bright lights of the ER where they had to hollow me out and then cauterize my insides to stanch the flow of blood; the doctor’s apologies for the scar tissue he was sure would form, that did form, and would make it impossible for me to carry a child. I tell Adam everything, and I don’t know at what point it happens, but he’s holding me, pressing my head to his chest, stroking my hair, and saying over and over, “I’m sorry, Jess. I’m sorry.”
My arms wrap around him too, and we stand there until the tears no longer come, until my breathing calms, slow and deep, matching the rise and fall of his chest. He lifts my chin and kisses me. I let myself taste him one more time, my fingers tracing the contours of his face, coming away wet as they brush across his lashes. I hold tight for three more long breaths, memorizing the shape of him wrapped around me, and then I push myself free.
I turn away and walk toward the window.
“Jess, don’t shut me out again.” He steps closer, and I can hear it, feel it, which means I have to face him.
“You don’t have to do this, Adam. You don’t have to play the part of the good guy just so I can make it through this moment. Because it’s not a moment. It’s the rest of my fucking life. And I know you’ll tell me there are options, which there are, but god. You’re only twenty-one, and you have everything ahead of you. I know you aren’t thinking about this shit now. You shouldn’t have to, but I am. I don’t have a choice.” He lifts a hand, maybe to cup my cheek, but I don’t give him the chance before I shake my head. “You were the first person to make me believe I was worth more.”
“You are worth more.”
“Please let me finish.” He nods slowly. “I thought it would be easier when I told you, but everything’s different already.”
“No,” he interrupts. “You could have told me this in the beginning. You could have trusted me.”
My eyes fill with tears again, and I’m actually grateful as my vision blurs, distorting the way he looks at me now.
“Adam.” A hiccupping sob swallows his name. “You don’t want this.”
He grips the corner of the dresser, and I watch the veins in his forearm grow taut.
“Jess, you need to stop making decisions for me. I never said I wanted or didn’t want anything. Can you give me a minute here? I mean, kids? Jesus, Jess. We’re not even together. Your choice, by the way. And you’re thinking about kids?”
His eyes are the blackest night, no evidence of where pupil ends and iris begins. Another sob escapes before I can speak. “Like I said . . . I don’t have a choice,” I tell him. “When you lose something you never had a chance to want, you think about it all the time. Yes. I think about kids. That I can’t have them. That I lost my first love and my best friend along with the only baby I’ll ever conceive. I live with the guilt every fucking day of being nineteen and not even wanting a baby yet, and now that word—yet—I can just strike that from my vocabulary. You don’t need a minute, Adam. You’ve already made your decision.”
He steps toward me anyway, but my control splinters into dust. I push him hard on the chest.
“It’s my fault, okay? I shouldn’t have let this go on for so long. It was never fair to do to you.”
One more step, and God yes I want those arms around me, but everything’s already too far from where it was before I left the room.
“Go, Adam. Please.” I p
ush him again. “Just go!”
I stand my ground, heaving, seething, waiting. He’s right. We aren’t even together, and this is already breaking me.
“I’m not Jake . . . or any other guy who never gets asked back twice. This is me, Jess. It’s me. It’s me.”
His hand reaches for my face, but I swat it away, hysterical laughter bubbling up from my chest. “Go to hell, Adam. You’re no different than him if you can say that to me.”
“That’s not what I meant. Jess, please. Don’t let me fall for you just so you can push me away.” This time his hands make it to my cheeks before I can protest. His thumbs swipe at my tears, and I have to fight the urge to cover his hands with mine, to keep us connected.
“I hate what happened to you, and I’m not going to pretend to know how to handle this. Not yet. Why can’t we just be us for now? Why can’t we see where this goes before worrying about the future?”
I shake my head, my vision blurred through the mask of tears. His hands drop to his sides, and I can see it, the devastation on his face, his pity for me.
“There is no just for now for me. Don’t you get it? I always have to look ahead, to the future I don’t get to have. Please, Adam.” My voice trembles through clenched teeth. “Go.”
His hands clasp behind his neck while his eyes stay locked on mine. So I break the connection, turning my gaze to the wall behind my bed. And he finally gives up, like he has to—like I always knew he would.
Adam doesn’t argue anymore as he backs out of the room.
My eyes squeeze shut, and I clench my teeth, telling myself to breathe. Just breathe. Breathe, and it will be over. Don’t let me fall for you just so you can push me away.
But that’s exactly what I did. I fooled myself into thinking what I was doing was best for us, that we’d both somehow come out of this unscathed.
When I hear the door slam shut, I collapse into a heap on the floor. I’m a no-show at Regan’s party. Every time my phone buzzes with a text, I ignore it. I don’t move from this spot, don’t realize that time passes, that sleep has pulled me back under, until Zoe finds me in the morning.
***
Why is Zoe home? The question asks itself in my head, but I don’t have it in me to put it to words.
She mumbles as she scrolls through my phone, and I strain through my exhaustion to hear the conversation.
“Mrs. Elliott? My name is Zoe.”
It doesn’t matter what she says after that because I know the outcome. My parents are probably already in the car. They’re coming to take me home.
20
Research says antidepressants can start having an effect on the patient in as little as two weeks. This doesn’t stop my mom from starting every morning with, “How do you feel today, honey?” Well, that’s not entirely true. Once they picked me up at school and found I was not in any physical danger, there may have been some yelling—the concerned kind. Why didn’t you call us? Why didn’t we know things were getting bad again? Why did you stop taking your meds?
They’re worried. They’re frustrated. I get it. But if we’re going to base this on age and nothing else, I am an adult. I may be on my parents’ health insurance plan, but I can make my own medical decisions. This past summer I made the decision to discontinue my medication. It’s not like I thought I was better off than a year prior. Quite the opposite. No pill and no therapy session changed what happened, so I had to change. I stopped hoping for reconciliation with Bryan or Ashley. Stopped hoping for some doctor to say they’d made a mistake, that the ultrasounds and tissue samples were wrong.
They weren’t wrong.
I was.
So I made some changes, lifestyle changes. And if Adam Carson never walked into the PT lab, I’d be fine. I’d be safe. I wouldn’t need him.
This is what I tell myself now, what I’ve been telling myself each morning for two weeks, lying in my childhood bedroom, rereading texts I never answered, texts that stopped after my first week home.
My mom knocks on the door, an eight a.m. frenzied knock. On any other day she’d leave me alone until at least ten. But it’s Thanksgiving, my mom’s favorite and least favorite holiday. She’ll tell you how much she loves hosting, and truth be told, so would any family member joining us for the festivities. But up until three p.m. when the Elliott clan starts filing through the door, she’s possessed with the Thanksgiving demon, not to be exorcised until the potatoes are mashed, the stuffing baked, and the turkey emerges from the backyard grill. The chardonnay, however, often starts flowing well before three.
“Come in, Mom.”
She opens the door enough to poke her head through.
“Did I wake you?”
Her tentative tone hangs in the air, but I was up. I’m almost always up, a pleasant little side effect of the little pill that’s supposed to make me okay with being twenty-one and sterile. Now I get to add insomnia to the list. The plus side? I don’t really get an opportunity to dream.
“Nope. Just lying here avoiding touching a raw dead bird.”
It’s not that I don’t love my mom’s turkey. Because I do. What I don’t love is seeing it all naked and headless hours before I’m going to eat it. Hypocritical carnivore? Guilty as charged.
She opens the door wide and steps in. She’s maybe an inch taller than me, but other than that, the resemblance is hard to miss, despite the thirty-five years between us. Even I get a little freaked out by it sometimes.
Our hair is the same brown, but she wears it shorter, closer to her chin. Lean and muscular, she looks younger than her fifty-six years. She’s a Pilates instructor, in Pilates gear right now, which means the woman has already worked out.
“How do you feel today, honey?”
And there it is. I try to hide my eye roll, but it’s not my best effort.
“I know it’s not quite two weeks yet, and I know two weeks may come and go with no change, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop asking. It doesn’t mean I’m going to stop worrying about my girl.”
Our relationship was so relaxed before any of this happened. Now any conversation ultimately leads to a discussion of how I am. Fine is never a good enough answer.
“I’m twenty-one, Mom.”
“And I’ve been worrying about you for twenty-one years. I’ll worry about you for twenty-one more. And then some more after that.”
I swallow hard, not wanting to take my frustration out on her.
“I’m okay, Mom. No big change. It’s not like a switch just flips and I’m suddenly cool with everything. It all still kind of sucks, but I’m no longer catatonic about it, so that’s progress, right?”
She sighs. “Well, I guess that’s a step in the right direction. Why don’t you put on some clothes and head down to the kitchen. You’re on potato duty.”
This is nothing new. I gave the potatoes a whirl for the first time at sixteen, and I’m not ashamed to admit I kicked ass. So, that’s been my Thanksgiving duty for the past five years. It’s actually the one thing today I’ve been looking forward to. Kitchen labor should keep my mind occupied enough not to wander into dangerous territory.
“You’re not working alone, though.”
This gets my attention. Not enough for me to sit up or anything, but I maintain eye contact and keep the duvet pulled to my chin.
My mom steps beside the doorway to make room for the person who I’m assuming has been lurking behind her for the big reveal.
I gasp loud enough that the neighbors probably think I won one of Oprah’s favorite things.
“Zoe, what the fuck?” God, I’ve missed those piercings.
“Jessica!”
“Sorry, Mom. You are the one who pulled the talk-show-host stunt on me, though.”
Now it’s my mom’s turn to roll her eyes. I make a mental note to do this more often because if I look like she does, then my eye rolls are pretty damn aggravating, and isn’t that the goal?
Zoe steps into the space between my mom and my bed, and it’s
the first time I’ve ever seen her nervous . . . and quiet.
“Don’t get mad, Jess, but I’ve kind of been talking to your mom since you’ve been home.”
Okay. Now I’m sitting up.
“What?” I’m not angry. Definitely confused, but not angry. “I return your texts. We talk almost daily. Why do you need to talk to my mom?”
Images of strange boys with to-go cups cloud my vision. She wouldn’t be telling my mom about them. That’s not Zoe’s style.
“Because I’m worried about you.” Her hands fidget at her sides, fists opening and closing. Zoe looks to my mom, who nods, and I realize how much of a conspiracy this must be.
“I found you in your room, and I stayed there until your parents showed up.”
“She was worried about you, honey,” my mom says. “So I thought she should know everything. You seem to have this shame about what happened to you. But Jess, it happened to you. Let others in, like Zoe—like your dad and me.”
I let this sink in for a few seconds. I kept promising Zoe I’d tell her everything. I wanted her to know. I just didn’t want to have to say it out loud, to see her look at me the way Adam did.
“Oh,” I say.
“And your mom is worried too,” Zoe adds. “So we talk. Sometimes it’s not about you. It’s like a small club, and while you can’t join, you are the focus, so you have a very important role.”
I bite my lip, contemplating how to react. Zoe and her levity.
“So are you like Rosencrantz-and-Guildensterning me? Here to figure me out and report back to the queen?”
Zoe raises her eyebrows, and a relieved smile takes over her features.
“What? I’ve taken an English class or two. And isn’t it a rule of being human to have read Hamlet at some point in your life?”
“Hmmmm . . .” Zoe muses with mock sincerity. “I suppose it should be.”
She walks over to the side of the bed and sits on the edge.
“So we’re okay?” she asks.
I nod. “You’re kidding, right? After all I’ve put you through? I’m just grateful you haven’t written me off.”
She knocks my shoulder with hers.
