Page 12 of Pregnancy Scandal
People always ripped into me about my relationship with her. Always. I’d admired Tristan for so long that I said I was just like him. My girl was my best friend. The thing was, I didn’t think he was as obsessive and protective as I was.
I also didn’t think he’d had the thoughts I had either. On occasion, I had to admit I got lost in her beauty.
In the whole time that Abby and I had been friends, there were two distinct moments when someone had said something that made me wonder if I could consider us being more. This moment right here and now was one of those times.
Something snapped inside me as I actually considered me doing this craziness for her.
We’d have sex, lots of sex—the mere technicality, the route to getting what she wanted. Then she’d get pregnant with my baby and we’d have this child, but we wouldn’t be in a relationship.
I actually considered it maybe because in the fucking back of my mind I could admit that I did wonder what it would be like to be with her that way. It could have been the same part of my mind that thought it was a good idea to get her name tattooed on my chest.
I’d never been able to say no to her. That was probably why she was here making this request of me.
I couldn’t say no to her on a normal basis. Today though would be the first because that thing that snapped inside me told me I couldn’t just have sex with her and have it mean nothing emotionally.
I wouldn’t be able to brush it under the rug and have this baby with her.
I stood up and she glared at me.
“No,” I told her. There, the words had come out of my mouth. “No.” I said it again, and the weight pulled on my heart because she looked hurt and disappointed.
I left before she could say anything more, or before I felt worse.
I was supposed to be heading to the stadium for training, but I went home instead. I went home and spent the day thinking.
I was thinking about the first time I thought of being more than friends with Abby.
It was over ten years ago and very significant because she’d almost died.
I was eighteen. My family went on vacation to Italy and while I was there, I got a phone call letting me know Abby had collapsed in the park and was rushed to hospital. I flew straight back.
It was her appendix. The little tummy ache she’d complained of prior to me leaving and told me it must have been her indulgence on candy floss turned out to be a full-blown appendicitis.
And because everything with her had to be extravagant because she didn’t pay attention to serious things like that, of course her appendix burst, and she nearly died. It was one of those situations where having one little thing sorted out in time could have made a significant difference. Abby had been complaining of the stomach cramps for a little over a week before it all happened, and when I told her to go to the doctor, she fended me off with that shit about the candy.
By the time she was taken to the hospital, it meant surgery straightaway. Usually, they did some sort of treatment first to make sure there was no infection, but not for her. She had to have surgery and then stay in hospital for just over a month. The day after her surgery, I was sitting by her bedside when she flatlined. Her heart actually stopped beating and she flatlined. To this day, that was the scariest thing that had ever happened to me in my life.
I was sitting there watching her attached to all these tubes, looking frail and weak, when the monitor went crazy.
Doctors rushed in. Her mom and Mia were there, both crying, and I could do nothing but watch. Helpless. I watched the doctors revive her. It took a while though. It seemed like forever to me, and I would never forget that sharp sound of the monitor coming back on. It sounded as loud as a horn to me, piercing through the horror of the scene. Announcing that we could still hope and she wasn’t gone.
It was one of those moments many wished for and never got. The relief that washed over me was indescribable. But I was the kind of person who imagined the worst. What if the worst had happened? What if she hadn’t come back? What if I left her side and got that phone call most dreaded and heard she’d died and I wasn’t there?
After that time, it worried me whenever she was sick, and it didn’t take much for me to rush to her. It didn’t matter what it was. She could have had a cold and I would be there, because I’d always be wondering and worrying that maybe it wasn’t just a cold. Like when it wasn’t just a tummy ache.
That whole hospital experience scared the shit out of me and made me obsessive. In my mind she was mine. It was like she belonged to me.
People noticed, and it was my grandfather who took me aside and had a good long talk with me about Abby. He told me that it was very clear to him that I loved her, and not the way a mere friend did. He told me to do something about it, but I brushed it off, thinking he was wrong.
Until the day Abby and I almost kissed.
It was an almost kiss that happened on one of our walks in the park. It was a few months after the appendix incident and she was still recovering.
She was ranting about gaining weight, and I told her she was beautiful. It threw her that I would say that, and at that moment, the question popped into my head. It popped into my head along with everything Grandfather had said.
I remembered it now because suddenly, like some kind of magnetic force, something had compelled me to her lips, and she’d moved toward me too. My lips had just brushed over hers when a little boy and his dog ran out of the bushes and made us jump apart.
That was what happened, and all that had happened. A brush of my lips on hers.
