Page 31 of Riot Reunion
“I’m saying do better. You love Chase, don’t you?”
He folds the sugar packet even more aggressively. From the way his nostrils flare, it causes him physical discomfort to admit this to me, but he nods his head. “Yeah. I love her.”
“Then figure out your shit and do it fast. These next few hours are crucial. If you stew on this for too long and let Presley, think you believe this is the worst thing that has ever happened to you, that’ll change things between the two of you irrevocably. Think about how this will feel six months from now. What kind of man are you gonna be? Are you going to be the kind of man that stands by the girl he loves? Who supports her and his newborn child, or are you going to be the kind of guy who bails and runs at the first sign of a pothole in the road?”
Pax’s twists the sugar packet so viciously that it splits open, granules of sugar exploding over the table. “I'm not fucking running,” he snarls. “I wouldneverdo that to her. I would never do that to my kid!”
“I know that. I know the kind of guy you are. But what do you figure Chase is thinking at the moment? You thinkyou'rescared? Imagine what she's feeling. Pax Davis just found out that he's going to be a father, and the first thing he did was bail. You've got a small window of time to fix this, and that window is closing by the second. I suggest you do so real fucking quick if you—”’
Suddenly, Pax is up out of his seat. Coffee forgotten. Burger forgotten. He’s charging for the door.
I take another long swig out of my coffee cup and set it down on the table, slowly grabbing my discarded jacket along with Pax’s. “That’s better,” I mutter to myself, as I head toward the exit after him. “That’smore fucking like it.”
11
PAX
Jacobi tries to follow me,but I give him the slip two blocks from the café. Without my jacket, the night air knifes at me, the cold biting at my lungs, but I feel nothing. I walk for an hour, and soon the air begins to shiver with snow. The streets are deserted. The world is silent, everything muffled and still. I come across a twenty-four-hour pharmacy after a while and stumble inside, throwing things into a basket without a thought in my head.
When I reach the register, the cashier eyes me warily, scanning the items I’ve just dumped onto the conveyor belt. She doesnotlook impressed. “Other people shop here, y’know,” she says.
I do a one-eighty, quirking an eyebrow at the other shoppers waiting in line behind me to pay. “Evidently.”
“Right.”
“And your point?”
“You’ve bought every single pregnancy test we have. D’you really need to buyallof them?”
“I don’t know, Linda. What do you think? Do I look like a guy who would buy fifteen pregnancy tests for the fucking fun of it?”
She rolls her eyes. “Honestly, no. You don’t.”
“Then one might conclude that I threw all of these fucking things in my basket out of necessity. Wouldn’t you think?Linda?”
She scowls. “You only need one test to figure out if someone’s pregnant. Two to confirm, maybe.”
Let her keep hassling me. Justlether keep fucking doing it. I’m one hundred percent primed for a screaming match with a stranger. “Sure. I agree.”
“Then why are you hoardingthirteenof them?”
“Why do you think? I fucked so many women this month, I gotta do the rounds and make sure none of them are knocked-up. I actually need five more but looks like you’re all out.”
Disgust? No, the word isn’t strong enough. Disgust doesn’t come close to describing the cashier’s expression. She wrinkles her nose, grimacing as she scans the tests through one by one. “Far be it from me to offer out medical advice, but it sounds like you’d probably better grab a couple of those STI kits, too.”
“Shut your fucking mouth, Linda.”
“Well, allrightthen.”
Outside, the dark sky is a shroud of heavy clouds, blotting out the stars. The snow falls purposefully now, covering everything. I walk, and I walk, and I walk. After another hour or so, I hurl the plastic pharmacy bag containing all of the pregnancy tests into a dented trash can on a street corner, unsure of why I even bought them in the first place. Chase is one hundred percent pregnant. Forcing her to piss on a million tests isn’t going to change that. This walk was supposed to clear my head, but I’m not thinking any straighter. My thoughts are a jumbled mess—snippets of self-reproval punctuated by cursing. My mother’s cool voice makes an appearance, just to make thingsreallyfun.
Stupid child. You were out of the house for five seconds and look where you’ve gotten yourself. Tied to a penniless, uneducated nobody with no name for herself. Her people are common.Sheis common. Now, you’re going to be landed with a common child. I swear to god, you’ll be paying for the whelp for the rest of your life. Way to go, Pax. I always knew you were stupid, but this is beyond the pale, even for you. If you ask me, I’d take the girl to the first clinic you can find and get ri—
“Ididn’tfucking ask you, though, did I.” I spit the words out, creating puffs of fog on my breath as I charge across the street, heading back in the direction of the Fairbanks University campus. I get halfway when I have to stop and take a seat on a bus stop bench in order to catch my breath. My chest is so tight, it feels like a twelve-ton elephant is crushing my ribcage.
This is fucking insane.
I need a drink.
