Page 47 of The Lover
“It was probably a good thing. Gave me a chance to process it before I had to tell you.” Another small smile.
“Yeah.”
“I’ll call.”
“Okay.” I squeezed her hand in mine. “We’ve got this? Right?”
She squeezed it back. “Yeah, Jake. We’ll be fine.”
I let her go and she made her way out of the kitchen and I heard the front door close.
That didn’t go well. In my gut, I knew that didn’t go well, but I… what the fuck? You don’t get news that your girlfriend is pregnant and just know what to do. What to say. I said the most important thing. The thing that mattered.
We would be married. Period. The end.
Then the kid would come, and like everything else in our lives Ellie and I would handle it together.
Yes, I told myself. We had this.
Then why was I suddenly so afraid?
Thirteen
Ellie
Bee du beep.
I heard the sound of the text and cringed. Cringed. I was cringing when Jake was texting me. That was so not right.
Don’t ask me how I knew it was Jake, I just did. As if I could discern a Chrissy vs. Maryanne vs. Denny text. I didn’t have different sounds loaded for them, I just knew.
It was late. I was lying in bed. Everything felt unsettled, and when I heard thebee du beep, I just knew. And I cringed.
I rolled over and picked up the phone from the nightstand. It wasn’t too late. Just after ten, but when I saw his name I knew it meant he was having a hard time sleeping.
Hey. Checking in.
Because that’s what Jake did. I sighed and texted back.
All good.
…
…
…
Oh no,I thought. The dots with Jake meant he was struggling.
I feel like I didn’t say the right thing today.
He didn’t. He was supposed to get down on his knees and profess his undying love for me. In a perfect world, he was supposed to do that before I told him about the baby, but I would have accepted it after as well. But there was nothing I could share with him.
I struggled with what to text back. I was in this weird place with no outs. Before, when I knew how he felt, being trapped in the marriage, it had motivated me to find a way out. For both of us. There was no way out of this. This was a baby. So I was going to have to find a way to get over this horrible melancholy. (Please note, anytime I thought or said this word I did it the same way Will Ferrell did it in the movieMegamind.)
I landed on the following:
There is no right thing to say. It was big news. U did ok.
