Page 55 of You & Me: Part One

“I’m gonna let you two talk. I’ll stay in here and listen for Ireland and you guys go out front where you can talk in private.”

I still haven’t turned to look at Emily, but I feel her as she gets closer and then walks past me and to the front door. She opens the door, walks out and leaves the door open behind her.

Cami gives me a push and says, “Go. She’s worth it. They both are, Jonathan.”

And with that Cami leaves me standing alone in the living room. I stand there for a beat because I’m just not sure I’m ready to hear what Emily has to tell me. I finally nut up and make myself go outside.

When I get to the front porch I see Emily sitting out in the middle of the big grassy front yard. She’s just sitting there cross-legged, staring into the star filled sky and playing with the dragonfly on her necklace like she always does when she gets nervous.

I walk out to join her but I just can’t sit right now. I have too many questions and too many emotions raging through me and I have to keep moving so that I don’t explode.

“I see you met Ireland?”

“She’s four, Emily.”

“She is.”

“Fuck, Emily! Is she mine?”

Emily jumps up in an instant and is on her feet and standing right in front of me. Well, she’s trying to but I won’t stop pacing so she finally grabs me by the arms and stops me. I feel the connection as always but push it away. I’m too pissed at the moment to enjoy the feeling.

“Jonathan, no. She’s not yours. I am so sorry that you thought that. You must be so freaked out right now. She’s not yours but every day I wish she was.”

I bend over and put my hands on my knees and hang my head as I try to fill my lungs with air again. Oh, thank fuck! If she had kept my own child away from me, I could never forgive her.

“I would never do that! I may have messed up plenty with us, Jonathan but I would never do that!” she practically screeches.

Shit! I said that out loud. I need to pull myself together.

“I am so confused, Em. Am I that bad at math?”

“No, you aren’t. Let me explain, can we sit?”

I don’t speak but I do sit my ass on the ground and she sits directly across from me. We’re sitting in the dark, in the middle of Mick’s front yard, but I can still see her face from the street lights. She’s scared to death and I give her the minute she needs to gather herself enough to tell her story. I think I need the minute just as much as she does if I am telling the truth.

And then she begins . . .

“The week before I met you I had found out that I was pregnant. I hadn’t even realized that I had missed a period yet but I had to go in for my drug test for the new job I was starting and when they called to say it was all good to go they congratulated me on my pregnancy. I was shocked. I couldn’t believe it was true so that night Cami and I went and bought two packages of pregnancy tests. There are two in each box and Jonathan, I took all four tests because I had worked too hard to get where I was and I only had one year of school left. Then I was going to get my masters,” she says as she hugs her knees to her chest.

“Jonathan, every one of those tests came back positive. I wanted to die. How could I have been so stupid? It wasn’t like I slept around, in fact it was quite the opposite. I was so busy studying I didn’t really have time for guys but there was one guy that I did see from time to time. Harrison Flowers, you may have heard of him? He was a professional surfer and gone a lot. He would call when he was in town and we would hang out.”

“I get it. I don’t need details, Em. Keep going . . .” I say just in case she was going to go into any broken condom stories that I really don’t want to picture.

“Sorry, I just don’t want to leave anything out. I need it all out there. So, I found out on a Thursday and he called to hang out on Friday. When I met up with him I told him that I was five weeks pregnant and he said there was no way it was his because he had been on the road. It had only been two weeks since I had seen him last and about three weeks before that. Well, that’s five weeks.

He lost it on me, Jonathan. We were at a party but had gone to a room to talk and he started calling me a whore and a slut and said that I was probably screwing every guy on campus when I wasn’t with him, and there was no way it was his. Then he stormed out of the room and just left me there dazed and confused. I was so hurt and embarrassed. I was scared to death and I had no idea what I was going to do.

Cami and I left the party and I figured I would give him a day to cool off and try to talk to him again. I called and texted but he didn’t reply the next day. I knew he would be leaving again in a few days, and we knew they were always throwing parties when they were home, so we showed up without an invitation and you know what he did? He pretended he didn’t know me. Like I was some stranger. Even his friends, who knew we hung out, were confused and didn’t know why he was being such an idiot. But I knew why. It was okay to ruin my life but his was too important for an unplanned pregnancy or at least that’s how I looked at it then.”

“What an asshole,” is all I can get out at the moment. The thought that some dickhead could treat somebody like Emily like that infuriates me. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t know when we were in California because I may have paid him a little visit.

“That’s a nice way to describe him. He made it pretty clear that he didn’t want anything to do with me or Ireland. I tried again when she was born and he came to the hospital and saw her. But he wouldn’t hold her and said he didn’t want his name on the birth certificate.”

She releases her legs from her chest, crosses them in front of her again and makes sure my eyes are on hers when she says, “Jonathan, I swear to you I wasn’t sleeping around. There wasn’t anybody but Harrison. I knew he wasn’t the one and he was only around from time to time, so it was perfect for my busy schedule of school and work. I didn’t love him. Hell, I don’t even know if I liked him. I don’t know how it happened, we always used protection but it happened.

I met you exactly one week later. At that point I didn’t know if I was going to keep the baby or not. I was so confused and scared and had so many decisions to make that I didn’t know which way was up. That’s why I told you I didn’t date or do relationships. Between Harrison and my dad, I hadn’t had the best of luck and really couldn’t take any more rejection. I was some chick you met on vacation, and you were going away for nine months. Well, you would have come home and I could have very well had a baby. That wasn’t fair to you, Jonathon. What was I supposed to say . . . I know we just met, and we’ve known each other a week, but want to be a dad to some other guy’s baby? I would say that would be a little more than you bargained for.”

“You should have given me that choice, Emily,” I say coldly.

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