Page 41 of Riot Reunion
A child.
His child.
And no way in hell for the situation to work, no matter how hard I tried to puzzle it out or how many different angles I squinted at it from. I’d held my hand over my stomach, marveling and afraid at what I’d tried to pretend wasn’t happening inside of me, and I’d wept. Wept for the life I thought I was going to have, moving away to college. Wept for the life I’d wanted to share with Pax. And I’d wept for the life that had accidentally taken root inside of me, quietly arriving without invitation, filling me with so many conflicting emotions and feelings, that I didn’t even know myself anymore.
Today, I stand outside a different CVS, my hand placed protectively over my stomach as the baby performs somersaults, and I am no better off. I’m still so lost. So confused. So scared. The look on Pax’s face when he’d seen my stomach…
It’s snowing today. No rain. Fat, elaborate snowflakes eddy on the air, floating down to land in my shoulders and the thick woolen sleeves of my black peacoat. In the parking lot, the tires of all the Tacomas and F150s have created a soupy swamp full of gravel and dirt—a gambit of deep puddles that must be navigated carefully in order to make it inside the building with dry socks intact. The cold feels electric, a living force in the air. It makes me hiss, my nervous system revolting as I gingerly pick out a pathway toward the covered entrance to the store.
For the seventh time this morning, my phone explodes to life in my pocket, signaling that Pax is trying to reach me yet again. I don’t even check to confirm that it’s him. I can’t stand the thought of seeing those three letters arranged on the screen.
The look on his face.
Fuck!
The look on his face.
My eyes burn ferociously, my vision swimming. The cold, I tell myself. So bitter and biting that even the grown men with grizzly beards jogging into the pharmacy have tears streaming down their faces. I’m aware that my tears have nothing to do with the cold. I’m lying to myself, yes, but the lie is the only thing keeping me together right now. If I shoulder the truth, the floodgates will open, and I’ll bethatgirl, sobbing outside of a fucking CVS in public.
When my phone starts ringing again, I yank it out of my pocket, ready to hurl it into the trash can beside me, but…shit. No, it isn’t Pax. It’s Elodie. I should have realized she’d call.
“Hello?”
“I’m pulling up now,” my friend says. The moment I hear her voice, I feel the cracks widen. By the time I see the black SUV drawing up in front of the building, Elodie sitting behind the steering wheel, any composure I’ve maintained since I found out I was pregnant has completely dissolved. Bawling, wracked with sobs, I clamber into the passenger seat, my pulse skipping all over the place. I cover my face with my hands, unable to even look at her.
“Ahhh, Pres,” she murmurs. “It’s gonna be okay. Come on. Let’s go somewhere we can talk. Is there a café or something around here that you—”
“Can we just go and park somewhere? I don’t think I can face a big crowd.” I sniff, pulling myself together, dashing my tears away with the backs of my hands.
“Yeah, for sure.” She rubs my shoulder, giving the top of my arm a reassuring squeeze. We’re quiet as she drives around for ten minutes; I don’t even pay attention to where she’s going. I spend every second reining in my rioting emotions, steeling myself so that I’ll be able to talk calmly. Eventually, we pull over down a wide suburban street. To our left, huge cabin-style homes line up steep salted driveways, set back from the road. On our right, a vast blanket of deep, virgin snow stretches on for as far as the eye can see. In the spring and summertime, this is a public park with a playground and running trails that stretch on for miles, eventually winding up in Steele Creek. I haven’t seen it first-hand. Only images online. In a weird, disassociated way, I’ve been looking forward to the weather change, and exploring where all of those trails led, but now…
Fuck, now I don’t know anything.
I turn and give Elodie a watery smile. “Well, this is pretty stupid, isn’t it?” I laugh, even though I think it’d be more appropriate to start crying again.
“Hey. Don’t say that. It’s not stupid. It’s just…” There’s no mistaking the sympathy on her face.
“Complicated?” I suggest. “Confusing? Terrifying?”
“Yeah, I bet it’s all of those things.” She takes my hand, and for the first time since I found out I was pregnant, I feel like I’m not alone anymore. A fresh hail of tears washes over me.
“I’m sorry. I should—I should have told you,” I hiccup. “I just—I didn’t know what to—do—and—I was so scared—and—”
She leans across the car and draws me to her, pulling me into a tight, if slightly awkward, hug. “Shhh. It’s okay. It’s all right. It’s all gonna be all right.” She doesn’t say anything else until I’ve cried myself out and I’m calm again. “Give me a second. I just need to let Wren know we’re okay.” She fires off a quick text, then turns her attention back to me. “Why don’t you start at the beginning?”
I blow out a breath of laughter. “I’m pretty sure you can figure out the genesis of this story, Elodie. Even Pax Davis’s swimmers have problems with authority. If someone or something tells them they shouldn’t do something, they’re damn well gonna do it. Even the pill can’t prevent them from doing whatever they set their minds to.”
Elodie wrinkles her nose. “If we could not talk about Pax’s swimmers, that would begreat.”
The sigh that leaves my body feels like a breath I’ve been holding for months. So much tension leaves with it. Shaking my head, I look out of the window at the huge field of snow. In the distance, birds launch from a stand of evergreens, darting upward into the bone-white sky. “I don’t know,” I say softly. “I took my birth control religiously. I never missed a single day. I wasn’t taking breaks. I didn’t wanna have a period. As soon as I came up here and I knew I wasn’t gonna see Pax for a while, Ididstop so I could give my body a break. I figured my period would come in right away, but…” I shrug. “Obviously it didn’t. That was a month ago.
“And…you just didn’t feel like telling anyone? You didn’t want to tell me or Carrie? You didn’t want to tellPax?”
I face her again. It’s clear that she’s confused by all of this—the decision that I made to keep quiet. I don’t expect her to understand. How could she? “I know you guys love me. I know Pax loves me, too. But…I don’t know. I tried to pick up the phone so many times. I wanted to talk to him about it, but every time I tried, the words just wouldn’t come. I kept imagining how angry he was gonna be. How cold. How annoyed.”
“Pres.” There’s a chiding tone to Elodie’s words. “You couldn’t know that he’d feel that way. He—”
“Come on, E. This isPax Daviswe’re talking about. The guy is an unexploded IED. It’s a miracle he even wanted to date me in the first place. And then I’m suddenlypregnant? There’s no way he’d be anything other than pissed—”
