Page 80 of Memories By the Shore
I sit next to him, shoving my hands between my legs. “Um.” I pause, sucking in a weighted breath.
“What’s wrong?” He extends an arm behind me and leans in close.
I refocus my eyes away from his, capturing the small pineapple lamp on the dresser. “I don’t know how to tell you this,” I begin.Silence.“Jasper …”
“You’re scaring the shit out of me.” He tries to force eye contact, but I keep looking away. “What’s wrong, Avery?”
“I’m pregnant,” I blurt out, throwing my hands over my face.Fuck, that was hard to say.
Jasper removes his arm from behind me and sits up straighter.
Unsure of what to say, I remain quiet, letting him recover from the bomb I dropped.
Without a word, he bends forward, resting his chin in his hands. “How do you know?”
“I took a test,” I whisper.
He nervously runs his fingers through his tossed hair. “When?”
“A few hours ago.”
“Only one?”
I shake my head. “Helen had me take three altogether.”
Jasper audibly sighs and falls onto his back on my bed. “How far along do you think you are?”
Still fearful of a change in his reaction, my limbs remain locked. “I’m not sure, but I think only five and a half weeks.”
“Oh fuck,” he grunts.
The panic I hear in his voice causes my eyes to fill. “I’m so sorry.”
He abruptly sits up. Before I realize it, he wrapped his arms around me.. “Why are you sorry?”
“Because I told you I was on the pill.” I sniff, feeling the weight of my lapse in judgment.
“Look at me,” he gently demands, cupping my face. My teary eyes find his. “I love you, Avery.Wemade this choice, and now it’s a choice we have to live with.”
“I forgot that I hadn’t refilled my prescription. I’d never had to worry about getting pregnant before, so it wasn’t something I thought about all the time.”
“I know—” he begins, but I interject.
“We have options—” Jasper vehemently shakes his head, interrupting me.
“No. I would never want you to do that.”
A surprising sense of relief washes over me.Do I want this baby? But how can we care for a baby together if I’m in Arizona? How am I going to go to college?
Tears leak from my eyes. “How are we going to do this? We’re so young.”
Jasper presses a sweet kiss on my forehead and then on my lips. “My life is here in Coconut Grove. I just bought a house. I’m running a very successful business with my dad,” he explains, tipping his head up to meet my eyes. Boring into them, I feel his love and security. “You have a substantial inheritance from your parents, and we have my dad and your aunt Helen,” he continues. “It’s going to be alright.”
I hear his words, but my thoughts keep circling back to independence and going to college. It’s important to me to go to school and make something of myself outside what my parents have done. I’m not sure if it was being raised all alone that has made me the way I am or the fact that they’ve always made me feel like a burden. I never want to feel like that again if it takes me the rest of my life to prove I’m enough.
“But what about college?” My voice comes out weak and unrecognizable to my own ears.
Jasper smiles, brushing away the sticky hair from my face. He’s beaming with palpable love. “You can go whenever you want. We have great schools here.”
