Page 53 of The Cruelest Kind of Hate
I only realize my hands are shaking when Gage silences my nerves with his touch, rubbing his thumb over the back of my knuckles. “It’s okay if you don’t?—”
“One night,” I agree, nodding.
His previously sapped energy has backtracked and blasted into him, livening those sulking features and returning the glimmer of hope I was afraid I’d never see again to his emerald eyes. He immediately hugs me, nuzzling his nose into the crook of my collarbone, arms sandwiching me in a squeeze that tells me he isn’t planning on letting go any time soon.
Please don’t let this be a mistake.
The night before Halloween,and all through the house, not a creature was stirring…except about three hundred bodies.
I spent the entire day at Gage’s place, but I wasn’t expecting the party to already be in full swing by the time we got downstairs. The mansion is fully decked out in tacky Halloween decorations, red cups infiltrate everywhere I turn, and half-naked bodies rave to the energized tempo of house music. Multiple foldable tables have been constructed for drinking games, and a few familiar faces mill about in hockey-related costumes, greeting newcomers with a raucous howl and more booze to shove down their gullets.
I lose Gage when he gets stopped by three different people, and I have to maneuver past a tipsy throng of girls all belting out the wrong lyrics to a Shakira song. It’s like crossing a goddamn battlefield to make it to the keg in the kitchen, and with this amount of people, I’m going to need to catch up on a few drinks before my social battery’s at a cool yellow. Grasping my drink, I take a hefty swig and wince when the lukewarm beer tumblesinto my gut. It’s grainy and tastes like piss, but I’m not going to search for anything harder.
I nearly get trampled exiting the kitchen. This place is dangerous. And definitely breaking fire code laws. The lack of oxygen in this place seems to finally be getting to me because I walk straight into someone and clench the ever-living life out of my cup to keep it from spilling.
A girl dolled up in a green bodycon dress turns toward me, and I heave out a string of apologies after steeling myself.
“Oh, God. I’m so sorry. I?—”
But my mind buffers when my gaze absentmindedly slides to her slightly engorged belly—which is accentuated by the tightest dress I’ve ever seen—and the hand she has placed over it.
“Are you okay?” I blurt out, glancing at the protective way she cradles her midsection, like maybe I inadvertently knocked into her stomach somehow.
“Oh, I’m fine. Are you okay?” she replies, a smile adorning her lips instead of the judgmental frown I was expecting.
“Yeah. Sorry. I should’ve been watching where I was going.”
I didn’t think my gawking was that obvious, but she follows my line of sight to the hand still resting over her belly, and she chuffs out a laugh once she connects the dots. “Don’t worry. You didn’t elbow me in the gut. I know my baby’s just the size of a raspberry, but I guess I’m already a little overprotective.”
Baby? She’s pregnant? What’s a pregnant woman doing at a party? Her baby bump is almost nonexistent. If I wouldn’t have known any better, I would’ve thought it was just a bit of alcohol bloat. And she looks young, like around my age. Her costume also starts to make more sense, as her stomach’s covered in this brown fabric to signify what I think is supposed to be an avocado pit.
“You’re pregnant?” I comment in shock.
She rubs the area on her lower belly, crinkling the skin-tight fabric of her dress. “Two months now.”
I blink a few times. “That’s—wow. Congratulations.”
She waves her hand nonchalantly. “It was an accident.”
Great. Now I’m speechless too. My brain’s the consistency of pulp, and my throat’s dry despite the beer I’ve been nursing. It’s also like a hundred degrees in this Easy Bake Oven, the stench of body odor and marijuana undercoating the precious air.
After what feels like a full minute of us just staring at each other, I force myself to open my cotton mouth. “I’m sorry if this is forward, but, uh, should you be at a party right now?” I ask, perusing the sea of bobbing heads for the person I’m hoping accompanied her.
“I’d honestly love to be in bed right now, but I’m here visiting my boyfriend,” she tells me, sounding far more enthusiastic than I would be if I were two months pregnant and yanked to the equivalent of a frat party.
“Your boyfriend?”
As if on cue, the tallest man I’ve ever seen saunters over to us, bending down to peck a chaste kiss to her belly. His tan, light-brown skin complements the inked lacework of tattoos spiraling up his arm, and his beefy chest stretches the T-shirt he’s wearing, which includes a cartoon image of a piece of toast right in the middle.
“I brought you some ginger ale for the nausea,” he says, handing her a small metal can, his lips giving way to a smile that so obviously proclaims the love he has for her. The crinkles under his eyes are a dead giveaway, same with the fact that he stares at her longingly like she’s the most beautiful girl in the entire world.
I feel like I’ve seen that stare before.
“Ugh, thank you,” she whispers, taking it from his hands and sipping it in graduated increments.
Suddenly feeling like a third wheel, every awkward molecule in my body seems to seize the lapse in conversation and respond with a verbal word vomit. “You know, my aunt was pregnant once. Said it almost tore her vagina when she pushed out her eight-pound baby. Her husband was significantly shorter than, uh, than your boyfriend, though, so maybe you’ll have like a nine-pound baby? Is that physically possible? I mean, I’m sure your vagina won’t rip in half or anything. Ha…that would be, that would be bad. But they can stitch you up! You just don’t really have control over your bowels anymore.”
Oh my God! Stop talking, Cali! You’re embarrassing yourself.
