Page 19 of Sweet Girl
“What is it?” She has me worried now. Especially after her father’s sudden death earlier in the year, it’s made me extra mindful of how brief life can be and how quickly it can disappear.
On autopilot, I reach over and grab her hand that’s gripping the edge of the car seat, but she pulls it from my grasp.
“Van, I’m pregnant.”
Oh shit.
That was not what I expected to hear.
I’m literally speechless. And I’m counting back to the last time we had sex. Did we use protection? Yes. We were always super careful. She has an IUD and I typically use a condom, unless we’re drunk and sloppy.
It was a joint decision we made when we first started sleeping together. We didn’t want to be young parents trying to raise a child without college degrees or careers. But we’d talked about it; what our lives would look like in the future. Our family that we’d have.
Someday. But not now. Not yet.
All my hostility I’d been carrying around with me evaporates. I pull into the gravel lot at The Springs entrance where only a handful of cars are parked. I lean over to - do what, I’m not sure? Touch her? Hold her? Whatever I intend, she dismisses by crossing her arms over her chest and turning her face in the opposite direction, avoiding my scrutiny. In search of answers somewhere outside the window.
“Wow, okay. You’re pregnant...not the end of the world. What do you want to do, Lynds? I’ll do whatever you want. If you want to have it, we’ll have it. We’ll get married. We’ll...”
And then that crack in my world splits wide open, the San Andreas fault opening up inside my soul, swallowing me whole and sending me careening down to the bottom pits of hell.
“Van, it’s not yours. It’s not your baby.”
I can’t quite fathom what she’s just said. It’s a jumble of words, bouncing around in my head, and I’m unable to make sense of them.
“Whatdoyoumean?” I mumble.
She finally turns back to me, tears streaming down her face, agony written all over it like graffiti on a wall.
“I’m sorry,” she stammers, body shaking from the violent sobs escaping. “I’m so sorry...”
Well, I guess that puts an end to my questions over Lyndsay’s faithfulness.
You want to know what’s worse than finding out your girlfriend of five years is sleeping with another guy?
Finding out she’s carrying his child.
