Текст книги "This Is So Not Happening"

Автор книги: Kieran Scott

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

jake

I found my mother and father sitting in the kitchen with HGTV on the mini flat-screen, eating Thai takeout. My legs felt stiff as I walked in and tossed my keys onto the counter. My fingertips tingled. Everything looked dull, from the marble counters to the wooden cabinets to the glare of the lights reflected in the sliding glass doors.

I was not the father. It was over. I was free.

“Jake.” My dad drew my name out slowly, his fork suspended over his noodles. He looked at me like he thought I might crack. “You’re home early.”

“Everything okay?” my mother asked.

I pressed my fingertips into the top of the island. Pressed down as hard as I could. Gritted my teeth. My eyes felt like they were about to pop. I actually thought I might cry.

My mother and father exchanged a concerned look. She got up and came over to me. Her hand was on my hand.

“Jake, honey? What’s wrong?”

I just stared. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. What was wrong with me? This was not what freedom was supposed to feel like. In my pocket, my phone vibrated for the hundredth time since I’d left the party.

“I’m not the father,” I said. My eyes flicked to hers. I watched them flood with hope, and I wanted to hit something.

“What?” my father said, standing.

My mother’s hands fluttered to cover her mouth.

“I’m not the father,” I said again, the words like sour milk in my mouth. I backed up from the island. “I’m not the father. Some other guy is.”

“Oh my God! Jake! Thank God!” my mother exclaimed.

“I knew it. I knew we should have forced that paternity test,” my father said, standing next to her now. “We could have known this so much sooner.”

Suddenly he was what I wanted to hit. Didn’t he get it? Didn’t he get that none of that mattered? I was not the father. The baby was not mine. That was all that mattered. I turned around and started out the door of the kitchen.

“Jake? What’s wrong? This is fantastic news!” my mother shouted after me.

I had a zillion comebacks on the tip of my tongue. Of course they thought it was good news. Of course they did. They never understood why I cared. Why I wanted to go to the doctor with her. Why it mattered. They never got it. They never fucking got it.

I tore up the stairs and into my room, slamming my door as hard as I could. Staring at me from the center of my classic sports car calendar was the date of Chloe’s next doctor’s appointment. I ripped the calendar down from the wall and hurled it across the room. I whipped my coat off and threw that, too. What I wanted to do more than anything was go back to Annie’s house and find Chloe. I wanted to find her and shake her and ask her why she’d done this to me. How long had she known? Why had she made me be there for her, made me care about this? What the hell was she thinking?

I covered my face with both hands and tried to think. I tried to see this how my parents saw it. I tried to focus on what was supposed to be positive.

The baby wasn’t mine. So what? It was never going to be mine anyway. It wasn’t like I’d been planning on taking it and raising it and being its dad. The second it was born, those people we’d met this afternoon were going to take it away and I was never going to see it again anyway. So who the fuck cared?

And now … now I wasn’t even going to have to be there. I wouldn’t have to be at the hospital, I wouldn’t have to hold Chloe’s hand, I wouldn’t have to see her cry. I was off the hook. That was Will Halloran’s problem now. That baby in the sonograms, the one I’d seen roll over that day, the one I’d wondered about being a soccer player like me …

It wasn’t going to be. Because it had nothing to do with me.

My phone vibrated again. I took it out of my pocket and threw that across the room too. Then I flung myself down on my bed face-first, covered my head with my pillow, and tried to breathe.

Tried as hard as I could not to be the pussy who cried at being let off the hook.

ally

On Sunday afternoon, Chloe was curled up in her bed, half under the covers with graham cracker crumbs scattered across her chest, watching The Vampire Diaries on DVD with the drapes closed. She looked over at me and squinted as I opened the door.

“Can you please close that?” she said, her voice whiny. “It’s too bright.”

This was very not good.

I closed the door behind me. She lifted a remote from the bed, paused the picture on a highly flattering half-naked shot of Damon Salvatore, and let her hand drop again. Crumbs bounced off her pink flowered comforter and onto the hardwood floor.

“So are you in training to be a vampire?” I joked lamely.

Chloe sighed and brushed more crumbs off her belly. “I think I shouldn’t go to parties anymore. Parties and me don’t mesh well.” Pressing her hands down at her sides, she shimmied her way up into a sort of half-seated position.

I swallowed hard, my guilt trying to choke off my air supply. “It’s my fault, Chloe. I told Will.”

“I know. He told me,” she said, averting her eyes.

“I’m so sorry—” we both said at the same time.

I stopped talking. She laughed ruefully. “Me first?” she suggested, raising her eyebrows.

“Okay.”

I sat down at the end of her bed. A small amount of light peeked in from a crack between two curtains and emanated from the TV screen behind me. I felt tense. Like I shouldn’t get comfortable. I was so shocked she had let me in that it was like I was afraid to make any sudden movements—like I might startle her into recalling that I was the enemy. So I just sat there, half-turned toward her, my legs dangling awkwardly toward the floor.

“I’m sorry for what I did to Jake … and to you,” she began, picking up a crumb and crushing it between her thumb and forefinger. She kept her eyes on the bedspread. “It was wrong. I know it was. I just … didn’t know what else to do. Will and I had broken up already when I found out about the baby, and Jake … he’s a good guy. He’s a friend. He’s … I don’t know … safe? It felt safer than … the alternative.”

The alternative being the truth.

But I didn’t want to get angry again. I was tired of being angry. I wanted to give her a chance to explain. I did. Because I wanted a chance too.

“And then, all of a sudden, the whole thing was out of control,” Chloe continued, her eyes filling rapidly. “And everyone was talking about me. Everyone had an opinion. Everyone had something to say—most of it horrible. And meanwhile my back hurts and my ass is, like, huge, and I’ve got gas all the time, and my boobs? My boobs started leaking last week! Right in the middle of French class!”

My jaw dropped. Leaking boobs? What the hell was that about?

“I know!” Chloe said off my expression. “This whole thing is disgusting and I just want it to be over.” She covered her eyes and sniffled. “But at the same time, I keep catching myself talking to it—to the baby—like it’s in the room with me. And sometimes I think … I can’t wait to meet him or her. And then I realize I can’t. Because everyone says if I do, I’ll want to keep it and I can’t … I can’t … keep it.”

Chloe hiccupped and then started crying in earnest. My heart felt like it was tearing to pieces, and not in some neat, ordered way. More like some animal was going at it with its claws.

“It was so much … I just couldn’t deal,” she said through her tears. “I couldn’t deal with Jake and Will and the truth. I just couldn’t.”

“God, Chloe, I had no idea,” I said. “I mean, I knew it had to be hard, but I had no idea how bad it was.”

She started to say something but couldn’t get it out past the crying. Her nose was swollen and her eyes were like slits, but I found myself staring at her belly. That big mound where her flat abs used to be. It must have weighed a ton, or at least felt like it did. As guilty as I’d felt when I walked into the room, that feeling was suddenly compounded eighty times over. I had never considered how Chloe was feeling. I’d had fleeting thoughts about it, sure, but most of my focus had been on Jake. How unfair this was to him, how it was affecting his life. But clearly it was affecting Chloe’s a hell of a lot more. Just because she couldn’t resist a hot guy one summer night.

I was never having sex. I decided right then and there. Fit me for a chastity belt, stat.

“Can you … I need a tissue….” Chloe said, catching her breath.

She was reaching toward her side table but couldn’t quite grasp the box. I jumped up, grabbed it, and handed it to her. She blew her nose spectacularly and let her hands drop again.

“I’m sorry. Crying is, like, my number one pastime lately,” she said, attempting a sad smile.

“I think you have the world’s greatest excuse,” I replied.

She toyed with the crumpled-up tissue and sniffled loudly. “Do you hate me?”

“No,” I said truthfully. “I don’t hate you.”

“Does Jake hate me?”

She looked up through her lashes hopefully. I took a steadying breath.

“Honestly? I don’t know. He hasn’t answered my texts or calls since last night. I was thinking about going over there next, but—”

“Well, if you see him, just tell him I’m so sorry, okay? I didn’t mean for it to go this far,” Chloe said.

I looked down at the floor and nodded. For some reason I suddenly didn’t want to go over to Jake’s. All I wanted to do was go back to Gray’s, curl up in a ball, and not uncurl till morning.

“Okay,” I said.

There was a knock on her door and it opened a crack. Will Halloran stuck his head in, blinking in the darkness.

“Hey,” he said, looking between the two of us warily. “Can I come in?”

“Um, sure.” Chloe suddenly sat up straight, swiped under her eyes with her fingertips, and brushed the crumbs off her shirt. I handed her another tissue and made a wiping motion at my nose. She blew again and gave me a grateful look. Gross as it was, I swiped her snotty tissues and shoved them in the pocket of my peacoat, which I’d never taken off.

“Hey, Ally,” Will said as he awkwardly stepped toward me. He had a box of Entenmann’s chocolate chip cookies with him—Chloe’s favorite. “Hey, Chlo.”

“Hi,” she replied.

“I guess I should go,” I said. As I turned around I saw Damon’s chest glistening on the screen. I grabbed the remote and hit the power button, then opened one of the curtains a bit so Will and Chloe could see each other. “I’ll see you guys at school.”

“Hey, Ally?” Chloe said.

I paused with my hand on the doorknob.

“Thanks,” she said. “For being so cool.”

I blushed, embarrassed. I felt anything but cool. I felt like an immature jerk who really needed to stop being so self-involved. But Will and Chloe were looking into each other’s eyes now and this was clearly not the time to bare my soul.

“You’re welcome,” I said.

But I don’t think either one of them heard me. They had already started whispering to each other when I closed the door.

jake

Monday morning I faked a stomachache. Then I stayed in bed until noon. Around two thirty I went over to my dad’s home office, which had the only window that looked out at Chloe’s front door. I could see her driveway from my room, but once a car got behind the hedge, nada. And I wanted to make sure I saw Chloe come home. I had to make sure I didn’t miss her.

So I sat there in his ergonomic chair and waited. And waited. I squeezed on his stress-ball thing. And waited. I crumpled about a hundred pieces of paper and launched them at his trash can. And waited. Then it was three thirty and it was clear Chloe hadn’t gone to school either. Or if she had, she wasn’t coming back at a normal time.

“Fuckin A,” I said under my breath. I ran downstairs, grabbed my ski jacket on the way out, and sprinted across to Chloe’s. Instead of climbing to her room this time, I just walked in the front door. The place was deserted and quiet like a graveyard. I went up to her bedroom. She wasn’t there. I went back down to the media room. She wasn’t there. I finally found her in the library, lying on a couch, reading. She almost had a heart attack when I walked in.

“Jake!” She sat up straight. “Hi!”

She looked good. Neat. Happy. Her hair was in a ponytail and she had on a tight white T-shirt and a loose gray sweater. The sight of her looking so relaxed and happy made me want to slam that heavy book on her fingers.

“What the fuck, Chloe?” I said, striding around the couch. “What the fuck were you thinking?”

She went white, which was at least a little satisfying, and pushed herself up straight. Or as straight as she could get in her condition.

“Did Ally not talk to you?”

I blinked. “What? No. I haven’t been up for talking.”

And what would Ally say to me that would make Chloe look better, anyway? Ally was on my side.

“Oh.” She cleared her throat. “I’m really sorry, Jake,” she said, looking down at her hands. “I don’t know what else to say, but I’m—”

“You don’t know what else to say?” I shouted, hovering over her. “Do you even realize what you did to me? Ally and I almost broke up over this! I tanked the first semester! I tanked the frickin’ SAT! I might not get into college now, and for what? Because you felt like fucking with my head.”

Chloe struggled her way up from the couch. Her stomach sort of hovered between us like a planet. I used to think it was kind of mesmerizing, but now the sight of it made me want to hurl.

“I didn’t do this to mess with you,” she said. “I was confused, okay? I didn’t know what to do.”

“Well, here’s a newsflash, Chloe,” I spat back. “Next time you want to slut it up with more than one guy and get yourself knocked up, make sure you saddle the right one with all the crap.”

I never even saw the slap coming. She wailed me across the face so hard my dry bottom lip split.

“Fuck you,” I said, my cheek on fire.

“Right back at you,” she replied, shaking.

I turned around and stormed out of the house, slamming the heavy door behind me as hard as I could. My fingers clenched into fists as I booked it down the driveway, the frigid air stinging my face where she’d slapped me.

I couldn’t believe she’d slapped me. She had ruined my life and she thinks I deserve a smack? How self-centered and completely insane could one bitch be? I couldn’t believe I had ever thought Chloe Appleby was cool. Clearly she was pure, unadulterated evil.

I came around the bend in my driveway and slowed down. Ally was sitting on the front step. She scrambled to her feet when she saw me.

“Hey! No one answered the door so—” She paused and narrowed her eyes at me. “Are you all right?”

I touched my fingertips to my lip and they came back bloody.

“No, okay? I’m not all right,” I said, striding toward her.

“What happened?” she asked, her breath making steam clouds in the air. “Your face is red.” Then her eyes widened. “Did you just get in a fight?”

“What?” I scoffed, pausing next to her. “No.”

She went to touch my cheek, but I flinched away.

“Well, good,” she said, shoving her hands under her arms. “Because Hammond already pounded on Will after school today, so—”

“Yeah?” I said, imagining Will Halloran’s smug face purple and swollen and gross. “Good for him.”

Maybe Hammond wasn’t such a dick after all.

“Good for him?” Ally said, her face screwing up. “What did Will do?”

“Will exists, okay?” I shot back, even though it sounded completely stupid. “Will is the reason I’m in this mess.”

“No. He’s not,” Ally said. “At least, he’s not the only reason.”

Great. Now she was going to get on my case about how if I’d never had sex with Chloe in the first place, none of this ever would have happened. Which was true, of course. Which was why I’d been saying it to myself over and over and over again all weekend. All month. All frickin’ year. I didn’t need her rubbing my face in it like a holier-than-thou priss right now.

“I have to go,” I said, shoving past her.

I opened the door and went inside.

“Jake—”

“I’ll call you later,” I lied.

Then I closed the door on her half-pissed, half-disappointed face.

jake

WAY 2 BAIL LOSER. U BETTER B SPITTING UP BLOOD.

I turned off my phone after the tenth angry text from my swim teammates and tossed it onto the coffee table. They were pissed that I’d missed today’s meet, but if I had my way, I’d be missing a lot more. When I’d talked my mother into letting me stay home again she’d said fine, but I was going on Wednesday no matter what. Yeah. We’d see about that.

What was the point, anyway? College applications were due, like, now. I’d scored myself a solid low-C average for the first half of the year, and those were the grades they were going to see. Who cared if I flunked the rest of the year? I saw no point in sitting in class for the next six months. It was over. I was going to community college. If I was lucky.

The doorbell rang and I stayed where I was, on the couch in front of the Duke-Clemson basketball game. Then I heard footsteps behind me.

“Hey.”

I turned around, stunned. “Ally.”

She was the only person I hadn’t gotten a text from today, so I figured she was mad about me blowing her off yesterday. Her being here now was a surprise.

“Feeling any better?” she asked.

She came around the side of the sectional couch and sat down next to me, but kept a safe distance.

“Um, yeah,” I muted the TV and sat up straight. “Sorry about yesterday. I got into it with Chloe and—”

“Yeah. She told me.”

My face felt hot. “She told you? I can’t believe you’re even speaking to—”

Ally held up a hand. “I don’t want to talk about Chloe. Actually I think we should talk about anything other than Chloe.”

I motorboated my lips and slumped back again. “Sounds good to me.”

“So … I talked to the coach at Rutgers today,” she said, putting on a bright smile as she shimmied out of her coat.

“Yeah?” I said.

“Looks like I’m going to be a Lady Knight,” Ally said.

I felt this ridiculous surge of excitement, followed by complete jealousy. “Yeah? That’s great!” I reached over and hugged her.

“I know, right?” Ally said. “She said to send my application through her and it would be taken care of.”

I crossed my arms over my chest as I sat back again. “You sure you want to stay so close to home? I thought UNC was calling your name.”

Ally lifted one shoulder. “I don’t know. Rutgers has a great program and they need forwards right now, so I might actually get playing time next year. Plus it feels far enough away that I can live there, but close enough that if I get homesick I can come home. I think it’ll be good.”

“Good,” I said. And if I’m at Bergen Community next year, I’ll get to see you whenever you do get homesick.

“So what about you? How’re the applications coming?” Ally asked, bouncing back on the couch, and a little closer to me.

“They’re nonexistent,” I replied.

“What?” she asked.

I shrugged, picked up the remote again, and turned up the sound. The Duke fans were chanting while the timer ticked down. “What’s the point? I’m not getting in anywhere, so …”

“They don’t just look at your grades, you know,” Ally said, sounding very cheerleader-y. “There’s your sports and your job … and you aced a college course last summer. That has to count for something.”

I scoffed. When I thought about that class, I thought about Chloe, who’d taken it with me. And thinking about Chloe was dangerous at the moment.

“Right, so how am I supposed to explain my two-point-oh average after acing a college class?” I said, turning my palms up. “‘Sorry, admissions board, I got lazy’?”

Ally chewed on the inside of her cheek for a second. She rested the side of her head on her hand, her elbow on the back of the couch. Then she sat up straight.

“I’ve got it! The essay!” she said, grinning.

“What do you mean?”

“You explain the first two semesters’ grades with your essay! You tell the truth!” she exclaimed.

I laughed so hard I thought my ribs might crack. “Are you serious?”

“I’m totally serious!” Ally pulled her school-issued laptop out of her bag and powered it up. “Everyone wants a personal statement, right? So we write an essay about the pregnancy scare, how much it affected you, how much it changed you … but most important, how it matured you and made you see what’s important in life.”

I blinked. “What’s that?”

She rolled her eyes at me. “Hard work. Getting good grades. Planning a future. The admissions people live for a good life lesson learned. They’ll be eating out of your hands!”

I muted the TV again and sat up straight. I did dimly recall one of the lecturers at one of our many college-planning assemblies saying something about admitting faults to the interviewers. Something about how no one was perfect and admissions boards hated it when people pretended they were.

“Dude. This could actually work,” I said.

“See? Something good could come out of all of this,” she replied happily.

Out of nowhere, I felt mushy and choked up. I stared at Ally as she opened up Word and started a new document. What had I done to deserve a girlfriend like her? I’ll tell you what: nothing. Zippo. Nada. She’d stuck by me through the miles and miles of crap with Chloe. I’d slammed a door in her face just yesterday and now here she was, helping me. Either she was completely deranged, or she honestly did love me.

“Ally?” I said.

“Yeah?”

“You’re kind of awesome, you know that, right?” I said.

Ally grinned. “I do feel rather awesome right now.”

I cracked up. “Good. Because you are.”

Then I leaned in to kiss her and she kissed me back.

“Okay. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s start writing,” she said.

As we got down to business, I made my first New Year’s resolution. From here on out I was going to be the best boyfriend ever. Now that Chloe and the baby were out of the picture, I could focus my energy on Ally. And I was going to do whatever it took to deserve her.

ally

When the doorbell rang on Wednesday afternoon, my mom and I both went to get it at the same time. She glanced outside and paused.

“Who is it?” I asked.

“It’s your father,” she replied, her tone unreadable.

My heart skipped a nervous beat. I hadn’t been alone with both my parents since last summer, and none of those meetings had gone very well. At least if he was going to show up at our doorstep, he’d picked a moment when Gray was at work and Quinn was at musical rehearsal. My mother took a deep breath and opened the door. Dad stood on the flagstone porch wearing his coat and hat and clinging to about a dozen red, black, and white balloons.

“Hello, Christopher,” my mother said coolly.

“Melanie,” he replied with a nod. Then he turned his attention my way. “Congratulations, kiddo!” he shouted, shoving a huge gift bag at me. He pulled me into a hug, and the balloon ribbons tangled around our arms.

“Um, thanks!” I said as my mother closed the door behind him. “What’s with the gift?”

“Open it up!” he said happily, shoving his hands under his arms.

His wool hat was pulled low over his brow, and his nose was red from the cold. He made no move to take off his coat, and my mom didn’t ask him to. Feeling a little awkward standing in the middle of Gray’s marble foyer with my estranged parents, I put the bag on the floor and tugged out the tissue paper. Inside was a huge black teddy bear wearing a red Rutgers sweatshirt.

“This is so cute!” I said, turning it around to show my mom.

“Aw, Chris. You didn’t have to do that,” my mother said, smiling nonetheless. Well, at least she was thawing.

“Are you kidding? It’s not every day your only daughter decides on a college,” my father said. “There’s more in there, you know.”

I pawed through the bag and found a black Rutgers hoodie, a set of Rutgers pencils, a laptop cover, a pair of flannel pj pants, a coffee mug, and a Scarlet Knight bobble head.

“Where did you get this stuff?” I asked, gathering the swag up in my arms.

“I had the day off, so I drove down there and pretty much cleaned out the bookstore,” my dad told us. “I’m so proud of you, kiddo.”

“Thanks, Dad.” I piled the many gifts back into the bag and gave him a hug.

“And I was thinking … maybe I could take you out to dinner?” he asked, looking at the both of us. “To celebrate?”

“Both of us?” my mom squeaked.

“Yes, it would be the three of us,” my father said, his voice just the slightest bit sarcastic. “Mel, I know you’ve moved on, and I’ve accepted that. At least, I’m working on accepting it. But something tells me that Ally might like it if the three of us could be alone together without a fight breaking out. I’m willing to give it a shot if you are.”

My pulse raced as I waited for my mom to answer, and I knew my face looked like a hopeful puppy’s. My dad was right. I would pretty much kill to spend some regular family-time with my parents, and with the wedding planning and Gray always being around, I was starting to think it might never be a possibility.

“Please, Mom?” I said. “Gray’s not getting home till late anyway, right?”

“And Quinn’s going over to Lauren’s after rehearsal …,” my mom said, thinking aloud. I bit my lip. My dad seemed to be holding his breath. “All right. Why not?”

She went to the closet to grab our coats, and my dad and I exchanged a grin. For the first time in a long time I wasn’t thinking about Jake or Chloe or the baby or anything else. I mean, I knew one dinner wasn’t going to change anything big—my mom was still getting married, of course—but it felt like, in some small way, I had my family back. And at the moment, that was all that mattered.

ally

At school, things got bad for Chloe fast. Everyone was texting crap about her, giggling behind her back in the halls, whispering and snickering whenever she walked by. She tried to ignore it, but it seemed like there were unshed tears in her eyes every minute of the day. It had been bad enough when she was just pregnant, but now that she was onto her second baby daddy, the whole school was buzzing with amused disgust. Someone wrote the word SLUT on her locker in indelible marker. Her Facebook page got so bad she had to block almost everyone. And next to her picture in the hallway—the one announcing that she’d won most likely to succeed—the words had been taped over with a sign that read MOST LIKELY TO GET VD.

If I didn’t hate my school before, I did now.

The deluge of crap she was dealing with made it that much harder to hold on to any residual anger and resentment I had toward her. Instead I felt sorry for her and indignant on her behalf. And now my rage was focused on everyone else.

One afternoon, Jake and I were hanging out by his locker, making plans to get me to his away swim meet, when Chloe and Will came walking down the center of the hall together. Will was the only bright spot I could see in the pregnancy fog. The two of them had been inseparable since that day he’d come to visit her at her house with the cookies, and nothing seemed to faze him. Not name-calling, not graffiti, not the fight with Hammond, nothing.

“Hey, Chloe. Are you sure it’s Will’s this time? ’Cause, you know, maybe it’s mine!” some jackass from the football team shouted after them as they neared Jake’s locker. “I know you were a little drunk that night, baby, but don’t you remember me?”

Will’s jaw clenched as his teammates cackled. So much for being unfazeable. I had a feeling he was about five seconds away from another throwdown.

“Just ignore them,” I said under my breath, but loud enough for Will and Chloe to hear. “Their heads are so far up their asses they can’t see daylight.”

Will managed a smirk, but Chloe was too busy staring at the floor. Or she would have been if her massive belly hadn’t been in the way. She lifted her eyes slowly and looked at Jake, who was busy shoving things in and out of his locker. Things he’d already shoved in and out.

“Hey, Jake,” she greeted him hopefully.

“I gotta get to the bus,” Jake said, slamming his locker door closed and tugging on my arm. “Let’s go.”

I felt prickly and sick as I shot an apologetic look at Chloe. As far as I knew, Jake hadn’t spoken a word to her since their fight, and it didn’t look like he was about to start today.

“I’ll call you later,” I said as I was tripped off down the hall. I let Jake have his way for about two yards before I wrenched my arm out of his grasp and stopped walking. “God! What’s the matter with you? I’d like to keep that attached to my body, please.”

Jake turned to me, an exasperated look on his face. “Why are you being nice to her? Did you space on what she did to me? Shouldn’t you hate her as much as I do?”

I took a deep breath for patience. Jake had been through a lot and I knew it was going to take him a while to get over it. But he’d been acting nonstop pissed off for, like, two weeks now, and being the person who spent more time with him than anyone, I was so beyond over it. My fantasy about things going back to normal in our relationship if he wasn’t the father? That was definitely not coming true.

In some ways, yes, he’d been the model boyfriend, sending me flowers for no reason, leaving little notes in my locker, texting to say I looked pretty or that he loved me or that he was thinking about me. But in other ways he was completely distant. He shut down whenever Chloe was in the room, and even after she left it was like he couldn’t get comfortable. Like something was eating him raw from the inside out.

“Jake, I know what Chloe did was huge, but she was terrified and … and hormonal,” I said under my breath, deciding not to feed him the gory details of her bodily functions and discomforts—details I was having nightmares over. “It’s over now. She told the truth. Your applications are in, you’re doing better in school…. Can’t you at least just be human to her?”

Jake looked at me as if he didn’t even know me. “No,” he said. “I can’t.”

“Jake,” I implored.

A few of his swimming buddies walked past toward the gym, and one of them reached out to slap his hand. He gave the guy a tight smile and our conversation was momentarily suspended.

“You know what? I don’t want to talk about this with you anymore,” he said finally. He sounded more resigned than angry. “I don’t want to talk about Chloe at all. Can’t we just … pretend she doesn’t exist?”

I wasn’t entirely sure how that was possible, but right then, I was sick of thinking and talking about it too. So, just to end the conversation, I said, “Sure. Fine. We’ll pretend she doesn’t exist.”

Jake smiled. “Thank you.”

He was just leaning in to kiss me when Hammond appeared from behind.