[The Forever 01.0] Forever Innocent

by Deanna Roy

  As much as I wanted to storm the steps to the star party on the roof, I decided a kinder, gentler approach would serve me better. A few students milled around the base of the dorm where we held the labs. I took the elevator to the top floor, then crossed the hall to the stairs that led to the roof exit. A few other students were heading up, and I mixed in with them, hoping to stall the moment when Robert spotted me. I wanted to get Corabelle alone. To explain.

  I knew I was done for when Amy stood at the doorway, checking everyone off as they passed through. They had never done that before. Still, I was committed, so I headed up behind the others, thinking maybe I could somehow push by while Amy searched for names.

  My heart was hammering like I was about to head into a street fight, and this pissed me off. This was Corabelle, and a couple TAs. I could get past Amy.

  She looked right into my face. “Gavin, what are you doing?”

  “You’re here for me, aren’t you?”

  A couple of the other students turned around at my tone.

  “Robert has your assignment,” Amy said to them. “Go on out.”

  I pressed against the wall and let the others pass. Amy no longer made a show of checking them off.

  “I’m going out there,” I said.

  Amy stood in front of the door. “This is serious, Gavin. It’s stalking. We’re prepared to write you up to the dean.”

  Like I gave a shit about that. “Do what you have to do.”

  She held out her hand. “Gavin, you know I don’t want to do that. Can’t you two settle this outside of class? Not involve us?”

  “I’ve been trying that. She won’t listen to me.”

  Amy waited for a couple more students to cross between us and go out onto the roof. “She’s really upset. I don’t know what happened between you two but —”

  “A baby.”

  “What?” she sputtered, her eyes sparking.

  “We had a baby. We were going to get married. Then the baby — Finn — died. There’s way more here than I can explain in two minutes, but I have to see her. She’s naturally very reluctant, but I want that chance to help her through this.”

  I knew I was saying too much to Amy, to everybody. But I didn’t want to hide all of this anymore. If we didn’t talk about it, who would?

  Amy clutched her clipboard to her chest. “Five minutes, Gavin. And if I see her upset, I’m calling campus security.”

  “Works for me.” I shoved through the door. Robert stood in the cone of light, handing papers out to the students who had been before me. He never even glanced my way, probably not expecting me to get by Amy.

  Corabelle sat on the ledge where I’d been at the first party, gazing up at the moon. Lines of undergrads snaked from the two telescopes, and I cut through them to get to her. Jenny was peering through the eyepiece, so I didn’t have to worry about her trying to stop me for the moment. Everyone thought they were safe.

  Corabelle saw me and jumped up. “What are you doing here?”

  “I had to see you.”

  Corabelle grabbed my hand and pulled me around to the far corner in the dark. “They will write a disciplinary report if they see you!” she whispered.

  “Too late. I negotiated five minutes with you.”

  Corabelle dropped my hand. “You knew I didn’t want to see you. I have skipped class — twice! I haven’t gone home or answered your texts. I had to share my personal business with everyone just to keep you away.”

  I spread out my hands. “Why? Am I that horrible now?”

  She squeezed her eyes shut. “No.”

  “Is this about my phone?”

  She pinched the bridge of her nose and shook her head. “Yes. No. I don’t know. Seeing those pictures was just a dose of reality. I needed to clear my head. You were already planning our future together.”

  “I want to plan our future together.”

  “But I don’t know anything about you.”

  I reached for her hand and tugged it away from her face. “You do too know me. You’ve known me since I could say my first words.”

  “I didn’t know you had a taste for…” She trailed off.

  “Prostitutes. Yes. I’ve been with a few. But not now. Not anymore.”

  She turned away and headed for a ledge. I thought for a terrible second that she intended to jump the rail, but as I ran for her, she just sat down.

  I knelt in front of her. “Corabelle, I just had to stay away from normal girls. I had broken the heart of the only girl who mattered to me, and I didn’t want to be in a relationship, maybe never.”

  “Those girls are girls too.”

  “Yes, but they were pros. Company. Paid company. They were…” I didn’t know how to say it. I couldn’t say I was with them because of her. I didn’t know how to lay bare what they were to me.

  “What were they, Gavin? And God knows how well you protected yourself.”

  I swallowed. “I always wore protection. And I took tests every so often, just to be sure. I just didn’t want ties. Expectations. I didn’t want emotion in it.”

  “She said you tried to get her away from her pimp. That sounds like emotion.”

  Damn. She’d read a lot of the messages. I had to make her understand. “I hate pimps,” I said. “I didn’t like them beating up on these girls. It’s common decency, and I wanted them to get out.”

  She got quiet, and I hoped I’d made some headway.

  “What else do I not know?” she asked quietly.

  “Nothing!” I said, then cut myself off. Of course there wasn’t nothing. There was the big huge something. Once more, the moment had come to tell her. I tried to make myself say it. To just blurt it out. But she talked first.

  “I’m going to the doctor tomorrow,” she said. “The one on campus.”

  “You that worried I gave you something?”

  She glared at me a moment, then sighed. “Yes and no. Yes, I want that checked. But also, I have not been well.”

  My belly flipped. “What do you mean, not well?” I remembered her in the stairwell, almost fainting, and again, when I first went to her apartment, how she’d been so weak and shaky. If something happened to her, I couldn’t stand it.

  “I’ve been sick. I can’t eat.”

  “You’re going through a lot.”

  She nodded. “That’s probably all it is. But it’s how it started last time.”

  “How what started?”

  She hesitated. “With Finn.”

  My face burned like a bomb had exploded. Corabelle thought she was pregnant. She couldn’t possibly be. I had to tell her. I had to calm that fear in her, the one that blazed in her eyes.

  “Did you take a test?”

  “Several, all negative. But still. I just feel off. So I’m going.” She stood up. “I’ll let you know how that goes.”

  I jumped in front of her. “Let me go with you.”

  She shook her head. “No. I don’t want you there. I need to talk to him myself.”

  “Will you tell me what time?”

  “No, you’ll just camp out there. I’m asking you to please let me be.” She pushed on my chest. “And please don’t come to my work anymore, or drive by my apartment.”

  “You knew about that?”

  “I know you.”

  I couldn’t let her go so easily. “On one condition.”

  She turned her face up to me, pale in the moonlight, ashen, and I could see why she thought she was sick. “What condition?”

  I leaned in and kissed her, gently, just grazing her lips. I couldn’t let her forget what we were, what drove us together, what made us work. When she didn’t pull away, I touched her face, my thumb on her cheek, and parted her lips with my tongue.

  She stayed with me, so I drove the kiss harder, deeper, pulling her tight against me. When she found out she wasn’t pregnant, and hadn’t been exposed to anything, I wanted her to remember this, and to want it back, and to seek me out. I had to put everything I felt into the kis
s.

  Corabelle made a sound, a terrible sad sound deep in her throat, and I knew she got my message. She pulled away and pressed her forehead against my chest. “Let me go, Gavin.”

  I gripped her even tighter. “I can’t do that.”

  “You have to.”

  “Tell me when I can talk to you about the doctor.”

  “Tomorrow night.”

  “Can I come over?”

  “No. I will text you.”

  “Then can I come over?”

  She looked up at me, anguished in ways I didn’t understand, maybe ways I’d never understood. “I have to go now.” She pulled away and I released her this time. I turned to watch her go around to the other side of the roof, back to the light and the class, and disappear from view.

  The moon glowed from its resting place in the sky, almost but not quite full. It looked forlorn, a piece of it shaved off, and I knew that as each day passed, it would get smaller and smaller, until it disappeared into the black.

  Chapter 39: Corabelle

  The walkway to the Student Health Center wasn’t any different from all the other concrete paths that crisscrossed campus, but this one felt like a bridge to hell. My leaden feet dragged as I approached the glass door, and when my sweaty hand slipped on the metal handle, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know anything after all.

  The receptionist gave me a form to fill out, and I sat in a brown-cushioned chair against the wall. A few other students waited in the small room. A sniffling freshman looked to be wearing her pajamas. A couple impatient guys in rugby outfits looked around, tapping their legs and shifting constantly. A panicked woman in her late twenties picked at the bottom of her marine-blue sweater, creating a pile of fuzz.

  I brought a book to study, but instead I pulled out my phone and scrolled through all the messages Gavin had sent me since I ran from his apartment almost a week ago. He wrote me throughout each day, short encouraging lines like “I hope your lit class keeps you awake today,” or “Don’t let the morning coffee rush get to you.” He wished me good night every evening. In between, he sometimes asked if he could see me, or said he missed me. I hadn’t responded to any, even the one this morning that said, “I’m thinking of you as you see the doctor.”

  I felt like holding him at arm’s length was the best course for the moment. It gave me the ability to function, when otherwise I could easily succumb to embarrassing crying jags or fits of fury that we’d come to this dysfunctional part of our lives.

  Today would probably be the last astronomy class I could skip. I’d taken my two free days, and I purposefully scheduled this appointment during class so I would have a doctor’s note. Robert and Amy seemed on my side, but I knew the professor himself could step in. Then I would have screwed up my grade over Gavin after all.

  Jenny’s notes were pretty abysmal, but I could get by with her random bursts of typing that at least helped me peg what part of the book to study. I wasn’t worried about my grade. The class was one of the easiest courses I’d ever taken.

  I am fine, I told myself for the hundredth time since I’d started skipping. I just wanted this appointment over, to know I hadn’t made any huge mistakes, and then I could start fresh again. Whether or not Gavin played a role in my future wasn’t something I had to decide right this minute.

  Unless, of course, I was pregnant.

  I placed my hand on my belly, wishing I could tell. The stick test that morning had been negative again, and since the last unprotected encounter was a week ago, I was close to being out of the woods. I was no more ready for the consequences of my actions than I had been at eighteen.

  A nurse opened the side door. “Corabelle?”

  I shoved the phone in my backpack and stood up. The woman in pink scrubs smiled, her hair an intricate weave of thick braids that instantly made me think of Angilee from the NICU. Same wide friendly eyes, dark skin, and powerful frame, the sort of person that made you think of a warrior princess.

  “So tell me what’s going on,” the nurse said as we walked down the hall.

  “I’m here for a VD screening and a pregnancy test.”

  The woman nodded. “Let’s get your weight and blood pressure.” She led me into a small room that held only a scale and a seat with a cuff.

  When we finished there, she pointed to a bathroom. “Urine sample. Write your name on the cup and leave it on the little ledge by the window.”

  I knew the drill and left the cup in front of a frosted window that didn’t lead outside, but to another room. As I opened the door to the hall, someone on the other side slid the window open and collected my cup with a latex-gloved hand.

  The nurse caught up with me and brought me to an exam room, and the sight of stirrups made my heart palpitate. I sucked in a breath and steadied myself with a hand on the end of the cushioned table.

  “You all right, Corabelle?” The nurse set down her clipboard and took my arm. “Let’s get you lying down.”

  She helped me up on the table. “You’ll have to undress from the waist down and cover yourself with this paper sheet,” she said. “But don’t do it until you’re sure you’re doing all right. Do doctor offices always make you this anxious?”

  I shook my head. She turned back to the forms I’d filled out. “Okay, so I see you have been pregnant before.” She paused. “So your baby is how old now, four?”

  My throat closed up completely.

  “Corabelle, you okay?”

  Tears escaped from the corners of my eyes and slid down to the paper pillow. “He died.”

  “Bless your heart, child. When did that happen?”

  “When he was seven days old.”

  Her warm hand squeezed my arm. “I’ll check your test myself. Do you know the date of your last menstrual period?”

  “I’m on the shot. It’s been a while.”

  “When did you get your last shot?”

  “Two months ago.”

  “Did you do it here?”

  “No, I wasn’t a student yet.”

  “The doctor will take a look.” She gave me one more squeeze and headed for the door. “Take your time getting up and changing. He’s slow as molasses anyway.”

  I stared at the ceiling when she left, reading a breast self-exam poster that had been taped there. One corner was peeling, and a patient was bound to get a surprise when it finally fell. Maybe I’d point it out when the nurse came back. Imagining the paper floating down, drifting side to side, helped distract me. I wiped my face and sat up, easing off the table to undress.

  I’d gotten this far. I would make it the rest of the way. At least the walls weren’t lined with pictures of babies, like at my old ob/gyn back in New Mexico. When I went for my postpartum checkup, just a week after Finn died, I couldn’t bear to look at the collages of smiling mothers and red-faced infants. My mom had come with me, and she tried to block my view, but both of us sobbed pretty continuously until the exam was over. I think I was supposed to go back again later, but I never did, switching to Planned Parenthood for my shots since they didn’t have all the trappings of happy motherhood anywhere in their office space.

  A rapid knock at the door made me startle. I jumped back on the table, snatching up the paper sheet.

  “Everybody indecent?” the man asked.

  I arranged the crinkly sheet around me. “Yes, I’m pretty indecent.”

  He entered the room, followed by the Angilee lookalike. “I’m Dr. Alpern. I’ll be making you uncomfortable today.”

  I managed a smile. I’d imagined someone stern and disapproving, lecturing me about unprotected sex.

  “I’m very sorry to hear about your baby,” he said. “Was there a problem during labor?”

  “He was eight weeks early. He had a heart defect.” I sucked in air, trying to make sure I breathed, but the next words still came out as a gasp. “They didn’t operate.”

  The doctor nodded. “Well, your urine test was negative, but we’ll do a blood test to be sure. How long since you ha
d unprotected sex?”

  “A week.”

  “So it could still come up. You can keep testing at home, but let’s take a look. Lie back for me and scoot to the edge.”

  I fell back on the pillow and wriggled down to the end. The doctor aimed a light between my legs, and the nurse handed him something in a plastic wrapper. I focused again on the illustrated hand cupping the wide-nippled breast on the poster.

  “Going in. Take a deep breath,” the doctor said.

  I tried to relax. Still, the metal against my skin made me tense again.

  “Just a little swab,” he said. “And another little bit of pressure.”

  I felt something bump me inside, then he withdrew the speculum. I exhaled, not sure if I’d breathed even once while he was in there.

  “I don’t see anything that worries me,” he said, pulling off his gloves. “No redness. No bumps. And no discoloration of the cervix that might indicate a pregnancy.” He reached for my hand and I grasped it so he could pull me to a sitting position.

  He perched on the stool. “You can come back in a week for a follow-up blood test if you still feel concern, but the home tests are pretty accurate. Did you have a reason to think you might be pregnant?”

  “I was on the shot last time I got pregnant.”

  “You want to try something else? There’s the patch, IUDs, and diaphragms.”

  “I hadn’t had sex for four years, so I hadn’t worried about it.”

  He nodded, and I figured he was thinking — you picked a real winner to break your fast if you need VD screening.

  “The shot is pretty good normally, but if it failed once, then there’s reason for doubt. You want to try an IUD?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “We did add condoms.”

  “Condoms aren’t a bad idea.” He nodded at the nurse, who promptly left the room. “So, Missy said you were pretty distraught when you came in. You want to talk about it?”