by Deanna Roy
I stepped gingerly to the bathroom, and checked again for blood, a compulsion I was sure would plague me for a while. Still clear. I sighed in relief and leaned my head against the wall.
I felt too naked, too vulnerable, so I wrapped myself in a big towel and headed back out to the room.
Chance stood up when I appeared. “Feeling okay?” he asked.
“Mostly. I could eat a pizza, though. The whole thing.” It wasn’t true, but it broke the tension.
He laughed. “Kid is definitely mine, then.”
I sank onto the bed. If he could joke about it, then maybe things would be all right.
He rubbed his eyes for a minute like he was tired. “So were you not on the pill after all?”
Blame. I could see it coming like a freight train. “I was. I just…hadn’t been with anyone in a long time. And I guess…I missed a few.”
I gripped the towel with an iron fist. If he wanted to get mad at me, I’d take it. I deserved whatever he could dish out about this. I had messed up and dragged him right into my disaster.
“I don’t reckon there’s any point in worrying about what’s past,” he said. “Just figure out where to go from here.”
I loosened my death grip on the towel. “Last night you acted like you might be interested in going back to California. Is that still true?” My pulse hammered in my throat.
“My biggest concern is getting a job at this point,” he said. “The kid’ll need health insurance and some stability.”
So things had changed. I swallowed around the giant lump in my throat. “Are you going to stay here in Tennessee, then?”
He moved closer, to the other corner of the bed. But not next to me. “What were you planning on doing?” he asked.
“I may have a job. I’m going in to talk to them next week.”
“Are they going to be all right with you being pregnant?”
I shrugged. “Not planning to tell them. I don’t have to. My mom is going to help with the baby.”
“So you’ve got a few pieces figured out.”
“Not really. It’s only been a few days. I’m making it up as I go along.”
“This is a hell of a thing,” he said.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to happen.” My eyes burned, and now that I knew the grain of sand was okay, I told it to lay off the waterworks, please.
“When are you going back?” Chance asked.
“Classes start again Monday,” I said. “I’ll fly back Sunday unless I need to be here.”
“So we have a few days.”
“We do.”
He stood up. “Well, let’s get you fed, although I’m not sure we can rustle up a pizza at 9 a.m.”
I managed a smile at that. I stood up and headed to my suitcase. “Toast and juice are fine.”
I snatched up another set of jeans and a shirt. He hadn’t run off, and he hadn’t gotten mad. I had to hope that things were going to work out all right.
~*´`*~
Chance and I headed for breakfast at a little diner up the street, walking along the sunny street with flowers blooming in the open circles around every tree.
“Chattanooga really is beautiful,” I said.
“Yeah, I actually started realizing that on my way back yesterday,” Chance said. “I’ve seen a lot of places now. I did like LA, though. The beach there was different than the one in Virginia.”
“I haven’t been to the Atlantic,” I said. “I’ve been a West Coast girl all my life.”
“The air smells different,” Chance said. “It wasn’t the same.”
His face darkened when he said it, and I wondered what had happened on the beach in Virginia.
“I liked your mom,” I said. “She seemed real old-fashioned.”
He laughed. “Well, she’s definitely not a modern woman. She does look after people, though. She did all right by me and Hannah after my dad left.”
I reached out to squeeze his hand. “Your mother mentioned that.”
“We did okay, me and Mom and Hannah.” But his face darkened again, and I knew he was thinking about his sister.
“I met her, you know,” I said quietly. “Hannah.”
“Charlie told me you got dragged to her room.”
“It was all right. She’s a very pretty girl.”
His jaw twitched. “She’s never going to wake up. My mother keeps her on life support.”
“The doctors said that?”
“Long time ago. I never thought it would go on this long. When I left—”
He stopped talking abruptly and dropped my hand. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
“It’s okay,” I said quickly. “We don’t have to.”
We continued along the sidewalk in silence until we came up to a hole-in-the-wall diner with a glass front. “This is the place,” he said.
“Looks fine,” I said, although just the thought of bacon grease and fried eggs made me queasy.
When he opened the door, the smell turned my stomach upside down. I refused to let it get to me, though, and ducked beneath his arm to go inside.
Booths filled the windows and a row of stools lined a long counter.
“Seat yourself!” a lady with a puff of cotton candy gray hair told us, a coffeepot in one hand and a plate in the other. The waitresses here all wore pink-striped uniforms. The youngest couldn’t have been a day under sixty.
We slid into opposite sides of a booth. “A place like this would be super trendy in LA,” I said. “You’d probably find the most high-dollar actors in it.”
“Actually, I went to one while I was there, the morning after the party. With Dylan Wolf.”
“Seriously? Dylan Wolf?” I couldn’t hold back my surprise.
“Yeah, apparently he’s the one who got the Sonic Kings that gig. I guess I owe him one.”
I guessed we both did.
One of the waitresses dropped two coffee cups on the table and filled them without asking a single question. I looked at the mug, frowning.
“What, no coffee for the kid?” he asked, a lazy smile breaking across his face.
“I honestly have no idea,” I said. “But I have a feeling it’s out.”
Chance waved the waitress back over. “We got a pregnant lady over here,” he said, and grinned when the woman looked me over with a motherly gesture. “Bring her something good for the baby.”
“You still feeling sick, honey?” she asked. “You don’t look like you have an extra ounce on you.”
“Pretty much,” I said. “Just the smell of bacon is making me never want to eat again.”
“Poor little mite,” she said, and patted my shoulder. “I’ll bring you some plain toast and jelly, a soft-scrambled egg, and some juice.”
She took off without even asking Chance what he wanted.
“I see where I stand in the picture,” he said.
I relaxed again. This roller coaster was making me crazy, but I would hold on to the good moments with both hands.
“So tell me about your family,” Chance said. “Sounds like your mother is close by.”
I nodded. “I was born in San Diego, and she still lives there. My dad moved to Florida. They divorced when I was fairly young.” I, too, hesitated on the hard part. “After my little brother died.”
Chance’s eyes snapped to meet mine. “What happened?”
“He had seizures all his life. They couldn’t control them. It was pretty scary as a kid, watching him have them all the time. Then when he was eight, he had a big one, a bad one. They got him breathing and all again, but his brain was shot. Mom and Dad had to take him off life support. I think that’s what got to them. It’s not an easy thing to recover from.”
Chance pulled one of the mugs of coffee close to him and stared into the steam. “How old were you?”
“About ten.” I took in a deep breath. “I don’t really talk about this; not even my friends know about Bryan. It’s not easy for me to talk about.”
“Were you close to hi
m?”
“When we were little. Then I got scared a lot. It wasn’t easy to see him struggle.” I picked up the napkin rolled around the silverware and fiddled with the paper band.
“Must have been hard.”
“It was. And I have a lot of regrets. So I don’t talk about him.”
Chance looked up again then and met my gaze. “Why would you have any regrets?”
“My parents wanted me to be there when they…when they turned off the machines. They thought it would be good for me to say good-bye when it was time. For closure. But I wouldn’t do it. I threw a tantrum. I refused.”
“You were just a kid.”
“I know.” I plucked the paper ribbon off the silverware, no longer able to hold Chance’s intense gaze. “But I should have been there. I should have been more brave.”
The waitress returned and slid a plate in front of me. “Take it slow,” she said. “Let me know if you need anything else.” She took off again, still not taking Chance’s order.
We both gave a nervous laugh. “I can spare a triangle of toast,” I said.
“Stealing food from my own baby,” he said. “Now what kind of man would I be?”
I picked up a piece, simultaneously starving and queasy, and took a timid bite. When it seemed okay, I added a sip of juice.
“I guess I could bring her back and order a full breakfast and just turn it over to you,” I said.
He shrugged. “She’ll figure it out.” Then his face got serious. He looked out the window, watching people walk by.
My heart squeezed. Something was going on with him. I wasn’t sure if it was about the baby, or my brother, or his sister.
His voice was scratchy when he spoke again. “I think maybe I left town so that I wouldn’t have to be here when it happened.”
My appetite fled. I knew he meant Hannah. I reached across the table for his hand. “It’s okay. I get it.”
He shook his head. “It’s not okay. I’m a grown man. I should be able to deal with this.”
I squeezed his fingers. “What do you think is getting you about it? Letting her go?”
He looked up at me, and his face was so haunted that my sympathy surged, and I couldn’t stand it, but slid out of my side of the booth and moved over to his. I laid my head on his shoulder and wrapped my arms around his waist. “Tell me, Chance. I’ll get it. I’ll know exactly what you mean.”
He hesitated. And I knew this was our moment. It was time to do all the things couples do way before they ended up where we were. Time to learn about each other.
Chapter 45: Chance
I didn’t imagine ever telling this story to a soul. The only people who needed to know it had been there, and I hadn’t really intended on having them in my life ever again.
But here I was, in a diner with this girl I barely knew but who already carried my kid. And I was going to tell her.
Her hair tickled my neck. She had a death grip on me, like she alone could hold me up. Maybe she could. She’d already found out about a baby all on her own, and gone on a wild-hair trip to find the man who’d done it, with no idea what she’d find on the other end. She had spunk.
“It was six months ago,” I said. “And everybody was doing their typical stupid redneck shit, drinking beer and having pissing contests over every subject imaginable.”
We had all sat on the dropped-down tailgates of our trucks. It rained a lot that week, and the fields behind the old stadium were a mud pit.
Me and Redmond and about six others were all out there. My then-girlfriend Barbie was with us, and a couple other girls. Carl was cutting donuts and whooping it up. He’d already clipped the lowered tailgate of Redmond’s pickup and they’d come to blows over it.
Charlie had stopped by and yelled at us for being reckless and stupid. When she left, everybody laughed at the old lady, even though she was barely thirty to our mid-twenties. But she felt older, and certainly acted older. It was harmless fun, mostly.
Things took a turn when somebody showed up with two bottles of Canadian whiskey. We passed cups around and soon nobody was really sober enough to even get their key in the ignition.
“We’re gonna have to sleep out here,” Carl had said, falling back in the bed of his pickup. “I can’t find my own dick.”
“There’s reasons for that,” Barbie had said, all serious, and I’d snapped to attention, even as drunk as I was.
“How’d you know that, darlin’?” I asked her, still thinking we were joking.
Instead of dissolving in a fit of giggles, the way she would have if she was ribbing, she shrugged and took a long drink, looking pissed.
My blood boiled, realizing she’d slept with that asshole. Carl was newish in town, so it hadn’t been that long ago.
I jumped down into the mud and stumbled my way over to Carl, aiming to punch his goddamn lights out. But Pete had gotten between us, saying we ought to settle this like civilized folks and have a race in the mud.
“Let’s see who can hold on to the wheel long enough in a 360,” he said.
So Carl and I got in our trucks and trundled farther out in the field.
I didn’t even notice my sister, Hannah, had showed up in her little yellow Beetle as I rolled down the window and listened for the shout from Pete to get started.
The world spun even harder as I revved the engine and hauled ass across the ground, building up enough speed to start spinning.
As I moved into the first turn, the world slowed down. The wheel was solid beneath my hands. The truck made a perfect circle, dragging through the wet dirt smoothly, like the way my mother used to stir frosting in a bowl.
Both our engines were roaring. I could vaguely hear the shouting of our friends across the field. I couldn’t see much of anything with the mud slinging across the windshields. I could only see out the driver’s side, since that one was down. I hoped Carl had thought to keep his open, or else we’d slam into each other if he was totally blind.
A cold slice of fear almost made me take my foot off the accelerator. I was slamming the gas and the brake simultaneously to keep the hard turn in the spin, jerking the wheel based on experience and feel, since I couldn’t see anything but the occasional flash of headlights from the cluster of cars up near the road, where our friends waited. The glimpse through the open window was brief, and enough mud was slinging across me that I had to resist the urge to roll it up.
During one of the spins, I saw a bright spot of yellow as my headlights crossed it. My mind didn’t register what it was until much too late.
I heard screams and a sickening crunch. I thought maybe I’d hit Carl after all, but my truck didn’t stop, didn’t change position. I kept my spin going, thinking maybe it was some sort of ploy, but then it happened again, a terrible crash and the sound of glass breaking. Somebody was hitting somebody else. Had Carl spun into one of the buildings?
I let off the gas and eased the brake, letting the truck roll to a stop. I turned on my wipers, but they just smeared everything. I didn’t want to get out if Carl was still spinning. He could run my ass right over.
I was facing the wrong way to see anything, my driver-side window looking out on the bank of trees at the far end of the lot. There was a lot of screaming and shouting, though, so I unbuckled and hoisted myself up to sit on the ledge of the open window.
And I saw it.
My sister’s little yellow car, battered on both sides. Carl’s truck, smashed in from front tire to back bumper.
People were running, slipping, falling in the mud. Redmond was on his cell phone, shouting.
Carl was still in his truck, holding his face, but moving.
I couldn’t see my sister in her car.
My head cleared instantly, and I slid through the window and out into the mud. I slid and stumbled, almost crawling through the deep trenches we’d made in our spins.
The driver-side door of Hannah’s car wouldn’t open. I kicked at it, but it was crumpled and locked into place. I scrambl
ed to the other side, and when it wouldn’t open either, I started kicking the window. It was already cracked.
It was too dark to see into the car and the webbing in the glass blocked my view, but Hannah had to be in there. And she wasn’t coming out. My ears roared with the slamming of my heart.
“I’ve got a crowbar,” Redmond yelled at me and pushed me out of the way. About that time, somebody managed to drive their car close up and shine headlights on the scene. I wanted to peer in, but backed away as Redmond lifted the crowbar over the rear window.
The first blow cracked the glass into a brilliant web. The second made a hole, and he knocked the rest out.
“Careful going in,” somebody said as he crawled in the back.
“Jesus,” I heard him say, and I was about to follow him in when I heard the locks pop. I jerked open the passenger door.
Hannah lay crumpled against her door, sagging like a rag doll. I turned her head to me, but her eyes were closed. She didn’t move at all. Blood trickled out her ears.
“Wake up, Hannah! Talk to me!” I shouted just inches from her face.
“I’ve called for an ambulance,” Redmond said. He was kneeling in the backseat.
I frantically felt her throat for a pulse, but couldn’t feel anything. I leaned down, pressing my head against her chest.
I straight-out cried when I felt the slow steady drum of her heart. “She’s alive,” I choked out.
Her hand was limp and cool when I took it in mine. “You’ll be all right, baby sister. You’ll be fine.”
“Don’t move her,” Redmond said. “Let them figure out how to get her out the best way.”
I nodded, clutching her hand. A couple bits of glass were stuck in her hair and I picked them out. Everything around us was shattered, all the windows webbed with cracks, a few chinks out and scattered on the dash.
“Did Carl hit her?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Redmond said. “She drove straight out there for some reason. I guess he couldn’t see her. He slammed right into her, knocked her sideways, then hit her again on the turn.”
The airbag was deployed and hanging limp. “Only works once,” I said.
