Total pages in book: 64
Estimated words: 61100 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 306(@200wpm)___ 244(@250wpm)___ 204(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 61100 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 306(@200wpm)___ 244(@250wpm)___ 204(@300wpm)
“That’s where I got my tattoo!” Callie says. “Those guys are great, even though they come off pretty surly. Which ones were you seeing?”
I shake my head and let it drop into my hands. “All of them.”
Her voice is filled with awe when she says, “All? There are … four of them, right?”
I nod, looking up at her through my tear-filled eyes.
“Do you know which one is the father?”
I shake my head and reach for another tissue from the box on the counter.
Callie hesitates and then asks, “Do each of the men know you were with the other men?”
At least I finally have a positive answer for her. “Yes, we were all together. I was seeing all of them.”
Her eyes, which were already fairly big, go wider still, and I can tell she’s imagining this, and it makes me sad on top of the panic and fear I’m feeling, because I miss them so much.
There’s a knock at the door again; it’s Brittany checking in.
When Callie opens the door for her, Brittany starts to ask about the test, but she changes course after getting only a few words out. “I can tell by your faces what the results are.” She steps in and hugs me with a comforting strength. “It’ll be okay.”
For some reason, her assurance only makes me more upset. “They don’t want anything to do with me. They broke up with me, and I just moved into my own place.”
I rub my hands over my face. “I have a lease now, and car insurance, and all kinds of expenses that I’m working two jobs to cover. There’s no way I can afford a baby, and who’s going to take care of the baby while I’m working so much?”
I’m spiraling, and it’s getting hard to breathe again.
Brittany brushes my hair back from my face and makes me look her in the eyes. “It will be okay,” she says firmly. “Sure, it’s not what you were planning or expecting, but it happens to millions of women, and you will get through it.”
She keeps looking at me until I nod. I try my best to stop crying, or at least slow the tears down to a trickle. I blow my nose and nod again, even managing to give her a faint smile.
“Trust me, it’ll work out,” she says.
I want to believe her. I really, really do.
40
ROSE
Somehow, I make it through the night. Brittany tells me I can go home, but she’s already helped me so much, and I don’t want to leave her short-handed.
When the show lets out, I’m at my post in the lobby, ready to answer questions and sell future show tickets to audience members as they’re leaving. I get a few odd looks, no doubt because my eyes look like I outlined them with a red marker, but I’m proud that I manage to keep myself together and do my job.
Callie offers to come over and stay the night with me, and I’m very tempted, but I tell her that I’ll be okay.
I have to be okay.
I let myself fall apart earlier when I got the test results, but now I need to be strong and face my problems head on.
At my apartment, I manage to fall asleep from sheer emotional exhaustion, and I feel marginally better in the morning, though a fresh, but smaller wave of panic hits me when I first wake up and remember that I’m pregnant.
There’s a baby growing inside me.
With the clarity of a decent night’s sleep, I realize I need to tell the men about this, whether they want to hear it or not. I didn’t get into this situation by myself, and hopefully, I won’t have to go through it by myself. Even if they don’t want to be fathers, they deserve to know.
But I don’t want them to feel obligated to me. They’ve made it clear that they don’t want to be with me, and I don’t want a baby to change their minds. I don’t want them to feel like they’re being forced to be with me.
I have this fear that they’ll somehow think I got pregnant to try to trap them, but I have to trust that they know me well enough to know I wouldn’t do something like that. With condoms as our birth control, it’s not even something I could do. It’s not as if I was on the pill and decided to stop taking it without telling them.
Since it’s still the weekend, I have another day off from the coffee shop, and I definitely need the time to think things through and do some planning.
It’s not like I can just send a text message. Hey, I’m pregnant. Call me later. That would go over really well.
While I sort through a couple of my still-unpacked boxes, I think about the best way to tell the men. As I imagine different scenarios, I also envision how they’ll take the news, but I have to tell myself not to speculate about it, because picturing their reactions only makes me more stressed than I already am.