Page 105 of The Way I Am Now
“Huh?” she mutters.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” she breathes, and touches my face gently. “I was just thinking.”
“What about?”
“Nothing, nothing. It’ll be okay.”
“What will?” I ask. “What’s wrong?”
She licks her lips before she speaks, like they’d dried out while she was lying lifeless for who knows how long. “It’s just—I missed some days, I think, with my birth control.”
A cold wave of panic passes over me. “Wait, you think or you know?”
“I ran out the other day and I didn’t have a chance to pick up the refill.”
Now I’m sitting up, looking down at her. I don’t know what face I’m making, but she frowns slightly at me.
“Well, for how long?”
“I don’t know, just a few days, maybe.”
“Shit.” A few days is all it takes—I definitely did my homework on all of this months ago, when we decided to stop using condoms. I mean, it felt logical at the time. If the pill’s more effective, anyway, why do both? But that only makes sense as long as she’s taking it every day, which she swore she would.
“A week, maybe, at most.”
“Shit!” I repeat. “Are you serious?”
She pushes up on her elbows so she’s half sitting, too calm. “Yeah, well, it didn’t feel like a priority since we haven’t been all that . . . active lately.”
“Oh my God,” I sigh into my hands. “What, and you just realized this now?”
She opens her mouth but doesn’t say anything.
“You realized this just now, right?”
“I mean, it’s fine,” she says, not answering the question. “I can get the morning-after pill. It’s easy.”
“Okay,” I say. At least we have a plan. But there’s this feeling in my chest like a screw tightening. “Wait, did you let me . . . when you knew?”
“I—”
“You did.” I realize as I watch her face. “That’s what you were gonna say to me. When you said ‘I love you.’ Jesus Christ, Eden! What were you thinking?”
“Don’t yell at me,” she says, her voice extra quiet. “Please.”
“Why didn’t you stop me?” I yell anyway.
She reaches for me. “I’m sorry, I—”
I can’t help but back away from her. “Can you not touch me right now?”
She turns very still as she watches me climb out of bed; I start getting dressed, grabbing random clothes as I find them scattered on the floor.
“Josh, what are you doing?”
“I need some air,” I tell her. She moves to get up out of bed too. “Don’t follow me.”
