Page 47 of A Match Made In Evan
At least Doctor Rogers seems a little more relaxed by my presence now. She nods, then offers Mia a softer expression. “So, what brings you here today?”
Mia squeezes my hand tightly and pulls the plastic bag of tests from her cross-body handbag. “I took these earlier and I still don’t know…”
Great. Neither of us can say it out loud, apparently.
Without a hint of judgment, the doctor takes the tests and examines them through the bag. She sets the bag down on her desk and then turns back to Mia. “Alright, well, a blood test is going to be the most effective way to determine whether you’re pregnant or not. But, first, let’s run through the reasons why you think you might be, okay?”
Mia nods. I feel like an intruder as she answers the questions, which are pretty standard. When was her last period, did she miss any pills, has she had any symptoms, when did she have sex, and: “Did you use a condom?”
I close my eyes and try very hard not to react when Mia winces and shakes her head.
That, I think,James will be pissed about.
He’ll probably also go apeshit over her having sex at all, but to not use a condom? Ignoring the risk of pregnancy, what about the risk of STIs?
“Iknow,” Mia says, and it takes me a second to realise that she’s talking to me. I glance at her to find her looking at her feet,scuffing the toes of her school shoes over the speckled linoleum floor. “I know how dumb that was. But…but he didn’t have any and Ireallyliked him and—”
“I remember being sixteen,” I surprise myself with how calm I sound, even if my voice is a little strangled. “I did some stupid shit, too. You know it wasn’t the best choice; I’m not going to yell at you for it. That won’t change anything.”
Your dad, on the other hand…
Mia launches over the armrests of our respective chairs, hugging me as she starts to cry all over again, and I catch the doctor’s eye over her shoulder. The look on the woman’s face is one of approval, and I find that oddly reassuring.
This step-parenting thing iswayharder than I thought it would be.
Chapter Fifteen
James
The first sign I get that something is rotten in the state of Denmark is the absolute lack of contact from my boyfriend all day on Thursday. The second sign is the almost distracted‘U 2’I receive when I finally give in and text him to say I’m on my way back and I miss him. But the third, and final, sign is the tension I can feel when I let myself into my own home.
It’s silent, but not in a comfortable ‘everyone is asleep’ way. I don’t know how I can tell the difference, but I can. Call it a parent’s intuition, or something. I drop my keys and wallet in the bowl on the sidetable in the entryway, and then just about leap out of my skin when I walk into the living room to find Evan hunched over on the couch in the dark.
“Jesus Christ,” I hiss at him, “what the fuck, Ev?”
With his elbows braced on his thighs, and his hands clasped together in an approximation of prayer or begging, he raises his forehead from where it was resting on his hands and looks up at me with a similar serious expression to the one he used when he told me that he had feelings for me.
“You’re going to want to sit,” he says, and he doesn’t even sound like himself.
I plant my feet and demand, “What’s going on?”
“Jay,” even the way he says my name is eerily calm and foreboding, “sit down.”
Dropping my overnight bag on the floor, I do as I’m told, taking the spot beside him. He swivels sideways and reaches for my hand, holding it tightly. In the dim light from the outside streetlight, I watch as his eyes line with concern and hesitation behind his sexy glasses frames.
“What’s wrong?” I ask. The anxiety which has been slowly churning in my gut since I realised he wasn’t texting me today is now turning to dread. “Ev?”
“Fuck, I’ve had hours to think about how to drop this on you and I just don’t…”
“Evan,” tugging gently at his hand, I try to soothe his nerves even while mine are all sitting on knifepoint.
I have the strangest feeling that he’s going to break up with me. Tell me that he was wrong: that he can’t imagine being in a relationship with a man —with me— for the long-haul. That he misses women, or that he wants…something else. He’s had time away from me to realise that he was just infatuated with the novel experience, or whatever.
Even though it hurts to think, I’d rather he get it out now, while we have a chance of salvaging our friendship, than if he continues to drag things out.
“Just…say it,” I prompt.
He takes a deep breath. I brace myself. “Mia might be pregnant.” He winces as he delivers the news.
