Page 83 of Backslide
She does not. Nor does she care. She says nothing.
“What’s up, Nell?” he asks, exhaling.
She steels herself. And then, in a burst, she tells him. And there is silence on the other end of the line.
“Fuck,” he says finally.
“Fuck,” she agrees.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” she says, like it’s an apology. “I’m sure.”
“Fuck.” Again. “What now?”
And she is annoyed by the way he expects her to have the answers. It’s her body, yes. But why should she know more than he does about what to do?
“I don’t know,” she breathes. “I guess maybe I need to go to the doctor… and then make an appointment and…” She breaks off, losing her voice in the enormity of the thing, and starts crying as recognition of her situation descends again.
Will she tell her parents?
She has so much on her plate right now. How will she even make time for this—an enormous error? Her breath turns shallow again. She’s panicking.
“Okay,” he says. “It’s okay. Do you want me to come to you?”
He is asking. He is not insisting. And she realizes in that moment what a tremendous chasm there is between those two things.
He’s not jumping in the nearest cab to race to be with her, to face this problem that they have, in fairness, created together. He is asking her—do I have to leave the party? Do I have to deal with this right now?
Is it her or does his tone soundinconvenienced? Put out by the fact that he might have to leave thissickapartment to be by her side?
“Yeah,” she says, even though asking for his help in this moment—when she already feels like a burden to him—is the last thing she wants to do. But she’s out of options. She’s in this with him. For better or worse. “That would be good, Noah.”
There is tension in her voice.
He sighs. With frustration? Irritation? Resignation? “Okay. Fine. I can probably leave here in twenty.”
She hangs up the phone. And sitting on her bed, hugging her knees to her chest, she waits. And waits. And waits. And waits.
And he never comes.
He calls her not the next day, but two days later. And what he has done is so egregious, so shameful, that she can’t bring herself to admit any of it to anyone.
If she tells the people who love her, they will no doubt hate him.
Is she ready for that?
In that time, thankfully, she has awoken to her period. She has never been so happy for the ache of cramps.
If it was a real pregnancy, it has not stuck.
But what has happened is enough to change her path.
She is willing to allow that Noah’s injury, the loss of his baseball scholarship and accompanying dreams, has transformed him into someone else entirely—at least temporarily.
That this pregnancy scare—yet another vision of a possible hitch in his future—may have been enough to render him unable to function.
Maybe he’ll even return from the farthest reaches of asshole-dom in time for them to work it out.
