by Marie Byers
That’s the third time she falls in love with him. Hard and fast. Wildly, unbridled love too eager to bury herself within him, and have him melt into her just the same.
He comes in her a second, third, fourth time over the course of an unending weekend, fills her with his seed. And she lets him and they’re both stupid and she doesn’t care because he’s hers.
By the final time they’re both crying out into each other’s mouths, sticky and wet, her hands scrabbling at his broad slick shoulders, his tangled in her hair.
* * * *
“I imagined it,” Michael whispers into her hair, lips brushing over her temple on each word. “How you’d feel underneath me. Granted, I might not have been envisioning these quite so big.”
Teasingly a hand drops down to one of her breasts, swollen and warm from his lips not fifteen minutes before sucking on them eagerly. He squeezes gently and it stings, she slaps his hand away.
Amber is too happy with him in her arms to sulk for long. “Is it okay?” She could smack herself when the words wobble free.
Michael leans up long enough to swallow her insecurities in a heady kiss, squeezing her even closer along his side. “Amber, you don’t understand how happy I am right now, or else you wouldn’t have to ask that. You’re gorgeous. Everything: your ass, your waist, your breasts, your mouth, you’re so fucking beautiful it’s ridiculous.”
It’s her turn to initiate the kiss.
When they finally release each other they’re panting slightly.
They lay there for a long time wrapped in each other’s arms.
“Why’d you say you couldn’t make it?” Amber asks low, eyelids heavy and the smell of their love heavy in her lungs.
He’s silent for so long she’s afraid he’s fallen asleep.
“I was scared to see you,” he finally admits.
“Scared of what?”
“That you’d be able to tell…how much I love you. And you’d not care.”
Amber snuggles in deep to his side. “Never, I’d never not care. I’ve loved you for four years.”
Chapter Four
They have two weeks together and they make love every night, wake up in each other’s arms every morning. Sometimes she rolls over and just holds him, runs her hands down his beautiful body and touches and revels in the fact that she can. Anytime she wants. Other times he’s the one reveling and she’s never known someone could make love with just the use of their fingers and their mouth, but Michael does and she rides the crest he brings and crashes back to ground in his arms over and over again.
The only part of Australia she sees after the first night is the part of it confined to his bed, or her bed.
They use condoms every time after because she’s not on the pill and they proved over and over that he was crap at pulling out.
When she broaches the topic he blushes guiltily deep red, she’s never seen him blush like that before, and admits that her contractions are really tight and surprise him into coming before he can stop himself. Some days it feels like Michael can make her come just by looking at her so she certainly can’t help him with that; condoms it is.
It’s sort of disappointing after those first moments of bare intimacy but neither one of them are ready to be parents, she’s scared to try spermicide with all the allergies she has, and there’s no way to get birth control pills without her doctor’s advice so what else can they do?
The day she boards the plane to go back home comes too soon. Michael drops her off at the airport and kisses her long and deep in front of everyone, who ‘ooo’ and squeal and catcall while his hands grip her ass and pull her bodily into him.
“I don’t want to lose this,” he says. “I have less than a year and then I’m out, I’ll get a job or go back to school or something but I wanna be where you are.”
Amber melts into him. “Yes, to everything. I want that too.”
* * * *
A month later, and it’s been the longest month of her life. Something’s wrong. With her, with the world, with life.
School is a week and a half from ending, and her family life is finally starting to settle back down. They’re in counseling now, Mom has a ‘sex addiction,’ Amber rolls her eyes every time she thinks about it.
Michael still writes and Amber is prompt with returning every letter. The weird thing is the tone of them don’t really change, he still tells her everything, except now that everything revolves around the life they’re both planning for themselves. He’s going to apply to a community college in Oregon and they’ll get an apartment together. She’s not sure how she’ll get out of paying for room and board at the University but she’ll figure it out when it’s time. She’s going on a partial academic scholarship and the rest her college savings her parents put away for both herself and her brother, who ultimately decided against college and is now, crazily, touring with his rock band. Who would have thought that would have worked out? So she’s got a little more money at her disposal than she might have otherwise.
For the first time in four years everything is going right. Except for the dizzy spells she’s been having, or the cramping that feels like a period starting without any sign of her actual period, and the way her breasts hurt if she just tugs on her bra too hard.
Amber isn’t stupid. She knows something is wrong the moment Monday morning rolls around and she gets violently nauseous over breakfast.
She knows something is wrong.
She doesn’t want to admit to herself what it is.
* * * *
Amber doesn’t bother with pregnancy tests, she goes straight to the doctor instead. She’s eighteen now so he can’t tell her parents unless she gives him permission which, hell no, she won’t be doing any time soon.
He’s got her knees up in these stirrup things that she’s used once before when they took her Pap. It’s just as embarrassing. The nurse is up by her head jotting something down on her clipboard and Amber secretly suspects that’s just her way of pretending they’re giving her privacy when really they’re not.
“Are you ready, Amber?” Dr. Walters asks. He’s been her pediatrician since they’ve moved here and has talked her through every embarrassing doctor-patient moment she can remember.
She still flushes when his latex covered hands press inside. It’s cold and embarrassing and hurts a little as well. And nothing at all like making love to Michael, thank God. She’d feared, once upon a time before Michael had wiped all those crazy thoughts away, that having sex would be kind of like getting a check-up. Prodding, invasive, huge pointy things stretching and poking at her most sensitive parts.
The plastic snap of Dr. Walters’ gloves being removed brings her back to reality.
“All right, you can put your legs down, everything seems okay in there.” He tosses the gloves in the trash and washes his hands in the sink.
Amber’s cold and sticky from that slimy stuff he used down there to ease the way. She’s terrified and embarrassed and she wants to take a bath.
Which is of course the time her blood test comes back and Dr. Walters confirms, “Congratulations. You’re having a baby.”
* * * *
The rest of the trip is a blur. Amber’s not sure how she gets home, or gets dressed, or keeps breathing for that matter. She’s pregnant. With Michael’s child.
She’s going to be a mother. How the hell is she going to be someone’s mother?
She still feels sick but it’s with the heavy knowledge that she’s not ready for this, none of it, and not just the general nausea she’s been feeling as of late because she’s…
She’s pregnant.
The first thing she does is find the number to Michael’s base. He doesn’t like her to call there because the only time he gets calls is when it’s an emergency and it terrifies him to hear the summons that he’s needed on the phone. But, Christ, if this isn’t an emergency she doesn’t know what is.
She blurs through asking for him, lips numb and uncooperative, hand return
ing time and again to her stomach. There’s a child in there. A baby inside. Michael’s and hers and she’s not ready for this shit, dear God why didn’t they use a condom. She will every single time from now on if someone just takes it away!
His voice comes on the line and it’s wrecked, terrified, “Amber? What is it? What’s wrong?”
And she nearly tosses the phone then and there, along with the little bit of breakfast she’d managed to force down and all the bitter acids in her stomach floating around.
Floating in her stomach along with a baby.
“I’m pregnant,” she blurts, tears are thick in her voice but they haven’t fallen yet.
And there’s a long silence.
And then softly, he asks, “Is it mine?”
She does throw the phone then. And she does cry. She sobs and she heaves for breath and when she’s done she does throw up.
Both Mom and Dad find her there on the kitchen floor, surrounded by her own mess, falling apart with the dial tone heavy and screeching loud in the air.
* * * *
“You have some options,” Mom says. They haven’t gotten along in almost five years, since the moment Dad broke down in tears in their living room moaning, “Why, Patricia? Why? Why? Why?” while Amber and Jeremy stood on the stairs, frozen in panic. Neither of them had ever seen their father cry before then.
Amber needs her now though. Dad doesn’t understand, he’d just as soon “beat that little punk’s ass” as figure out what she’s going to do now. Actually, he’d probably prefer the latter. His face has stayed a steady shade of angered red since Amber has managed to hiccup out her confession.
“You can have the baby,” Mom says calmly, her hands envelop Amber’s own trembling uncoordinated ones. “Or you can have an abortion.”
Amber flinches away at that one and Mom grabs on tight to keep her from fleeing. She doesn’t want to talk about any of this. She wants Michael’s arms around her holding her tight and all this to just be a dream. One long, terrible nightmare.
“If you have the baby you can either keep it or we can find an agency and find a family who desperately wants one and will love it like their own.”
Amber’s eyes flood with tears again and there are little shudders still running through her body.
“Either way, baby, we’ll support you through this. Okay? Dad and I both, it’s going to be okay.”
Amber succumbs to sobs again and Mom pulls her down into her lap, her cool hands pressed against Amber’s face and wiping the tears as they fall.
* * * *
When Amber wakes up she’s in her own bed. Dad must’ve carried her there. She feels sore and fevered and she misses Michael so fiercely even though she’s angry at him the most.
She rolls onto her back and stares at the ceiling. She feels empty inside, hollow, but she knows it’s not true. There’s life in her stomach and she’s not ready for it.
Amber tries thinking without all the terror and anguish, tries to push that away and just think it out like she would a school problem. Or a debate round. Pros: Mom and Dad said they’d support her either way. Cons: Mom and Dad can’t support themselves most days. Jeremy got out of the house as fast as he could and Amber is right on his heels except for the fact that now she’s got a child of her own baking in her belly and how the hell is she supposed to do school like that?
She can’t. She’ll have to un-enroll, or apply to somewhere local and stay at home and then what? She’ll be raising a kid in the same household that nearly broke her. With the silence, with the screaming, with the promises that always get broken. With their constant fights that grind mind-numbingly from one day into the next.
And if she moves out? Then what? What kind of job can she have as a high-school graduate? She’s not going to ask Michael for money, even though she’s sure he’d give it to her, even after that terrible question she can’t believe he doesn’t love her and won’t try his best.
But she won’t because all he has is what the Navy gives him and that’s not terribly a lot, he’d planned on using it to pay for school himself, and…she doesn’t want to be the girl that decides on keeping a baby but then turns around and makes it the father’s problem. She’s seen that girl, that’s not her.
She could use the money her parents saved for college ‘cause if she moves out she’s not going to college anytime soon. That’s a few thousand, it’d take her through the first couple of years at least.
But then…
Amber huffs a sigh and rubs her head, it’s pounding and sore as the rest of her.
Then, there’s the real problem. She’s not ready to be anyone’s mother. She doesn’t want to be, she can’t be. She wouldn’t be good at it even if she tried, not now. Not with her life bright and mapped out in front of her and a baby solidly not any kind of part of that plan. Not with her own childhood shredded behind her and the memories of it still ringing in her ears. Not with Michael and those soft, hesitant words still between them “is it mine?” like she could love anyone else, like she could offer herself up to anyone else.
She’s not ready to be a mom and he’s not ready to be a dad, and she just can’t.
Amber rolls into her pillow and sobs again.
* * * *
The summer is ending and fall is hovering on the horizon of every day. She’s supposed to be going to college soon. Really soon. But she doesn’t know if she will.
Fall is her favorite season. The air is crisp and cool around her and the pretty leaves dance as they float to the ground. Amber ties her hair back and throws her head back and takes a deep breath.
If Michael were here he'd say she was turning native again, a country girl at heart rhapsodizing about the benefits of a fall morning. What did he know, he was California bred through and through his favorite part of the day was deciding what gadget to turn on and keep with him. She missed how he was so technologically savvy even when it annoyed her beyond all end.
She places a hand over her abdomen and wonders if their child will take after her or him in that way. Would it want to relish the coming fall and lay stretched out in a field of grass while butterflies flutter away or would it be more at home surrounded by bucket loads of gadgets, everything having its own place and a place for everything, a clap to turn shit on and a blink to lose your way. She misses him. She misses him so much and it is killing her in every single way.
Michael calls her the next day. And the next day. And the next. She doesn’t answer. She finds out he’s been calling almost non-stop since she hung up on him.
It makes her feel a little better but she’s not ready to talk to him. A letter comes in the mail three days later and Mom holds it out to her like it’s a cobra that will attack at any moment.
“You don’t have to read it if you don’t want to. I can read it for you? Or we can just toss it away.”
Amber shakes her head even though the thought does sound appealing. “No, I better just get it over with.”
She takes it to her room because she can’t do this with her mom’s eyes staring at her. She’s broken down enough times in front of them over the last few days that she’s pretty sure her entire quota for falling apart has been used up for the next year at least.
Her hands are shaking as she opens it up.
“Amber,” it reads. “I’ve been so scared. You won’t pick up the phone and when your Dad does he won’t let me speak to you. I need to speak to you, baby, please. Please please please let me talk to you. I’m sorry I asked you that question, you just sounded so scared, I don’t know, the only thing I could think of was ‘she’s gonna say it’s not yours and that she’s found someone else’ and I know it’s dumb, so fucking dumb, I’m dumb. Amber I love you so much, please just talk to me. I’m so sorry, I’m sorry for everything. I’m not ready to be a father I’m not—”
And there she stops. Hands shaking she folds it back up. Puts it back in the envelope and puts the whole thing away. And then trembling still, she takes it back out again and
crumbles it into a wad and dumps it into the trash. Because that’s what it is. Garbage.
She doesn’t know why she’d thought she’d feel better after hearing from him. Amber climbs back into bed fully clothed and pulls the covers up to her chin.
She doesn’t know why it hurts so much to read those words. She’s not ready to be a mother either.
The next day she has her mom make an appointment for her. If she does it now it’s not a child yet, just the possibility of one that she can’t let grow into a reality. She’s not ready and he’s not ready and what’s the sense of making someone else pay for their mistakes? Because if she kept it, that’s what she’d be doing, making their baby pay for them. And if she gave it up for adoption? What then…
She can’t do that either though. Can’t carry it around for nine months, eat for it, breathe for it, live for it, and then let it go.
It’s practically killing her just letting Michael go and she wasn’t attached to him body and soul, not literally anyway.
She’s going to have an abortion and they’re going to put this whole thing away.
* * * *
She can’t go to her regular doctor, she won’t. There are few things in the world that she’s more terrified of at the moment, Dr. Walters’ judging, pitying eyes, as she tells him she needs him to take out the child that he's just congratulated her on? That is one of those things.
Mom thinks it’s funny, in a sad sort of way, and Amber can read the relief when she makes the call. She hears the unspoken, “you’re not ready for this” both her parents bite back constantly.
Instead she ends up at a clinic clear across town.
Or hospital rather, because it’s huge and sterile and bright white inside. She walks in, and even with tons of people around feels more alone then she’s ever been.
Mom had had to check to see if there’d been any protests before they came and only allowed Amber to go after she’d circled around a couple of times first.
And that’s scary too, thinking that this terrible huge decision isn’t enough to focus on she has to be worried that someone out there will try and make the issue that much harder for her to have to choose. That much more dangerous. The sky was gray, heavy with the promise of rain, and that was pretty freakin’ perfect if anyone asked her.
