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“I know I need to tell him, but I don’t ever want to be the reason he stays,” I admit, closing my eyes, trying to keep the tears at bay.
“Why?” my mom now asks, and her question is so simple yet so complicated all at the same time. “Maybe you need to think about why you’re putting his life ahead of yours. What makes it okay for you to give up your future, but not him?”
“Mom, seriously? My future is running the Badger Creek ski lodge. His is possibly having a career in skiing that could set him up for the rest of his life. How are we supposed to compromise on something like this?” I ask her, wanting her to just tell me what to do. I don’t want to have to make any decisions on any of this. It all feels like too much.
“You aren’t. It’s not a compromise. The compromise is that you’re having a kid and both of you need to give things up. It’s what happens when you have a kid.” She says it all matter-of-factly, not letting me carry on about it anymore.
“What did my dad give up?” I now ask, a sudden rush of anger filling the room, hating that I’m questioning my mom on her advice.
“He gave up having you in his life, Elissa. He wasn’t meant to be a parent, but I was, and I think I did a damn good job. You don’t get to be angry at me over this. You came to me for advice and I’m telling you to tell Nick. That’s it.”
“I know, I’m sorry,” I reply, resting my head on her shoulder. “I honestly have no idea how this even happened. I’m on the pill.”
“I know how it happened,” my mom chimes in, letting out a laugh again, and I swear I want to scream out loud at her thinking any of this is funny.
“Oh really, how’s that?” I quip, rolling my eyes.
“You were on antibiotics right around the time Nick came back. If I had to guess, I’d say you got pregnant that first night you saw him, which means?—”
“Oh my god, please stop analyzing when Nick and I had sex,” I say, interrupting her. “I don’t need you to be thinking about this.”
“What? You asked and I’m telling you. Remember you had strep throat after you covered for that kids group lesson? Antibiotics make birth control pills pretty much useless. They remind you to use a back-up method when taking them.”
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t having sex so a back-up method wasn’t even on my mind,” I tell her, and she laughs, shaking her head.
“Elissa, you’re telling me that you and Nick have not had sex and you somehow ended up pregnant?” The sarcasm in her voice is apparent, which now makes me laugh.
“No, I just meant that when the doctor told me to use a back-up method, I blew it off. I didn’t think I’d be having sex. It all kinda happened so quickly.”
“And now here you are pregnant and I’m going to be a grandma,” my mom says, and it sounds completely ridiculous.
“Well, shit, you are going to be a grandma. That sounds really weird.” I clench my teeth, thinking about my mom as someone’s grandma. She doesn’t feel old enough, but it’s not like I’m seventeen, and even though I’m still struggling with how to tell Nick, I do feel a little better.
“You just spent Christmas with Nick’s parents and they’re now grandparents.” My mom holds up her hands as if to say it’s not impossible, and she’s right, it’s not.
“Is it okay if I stay here tonight?” I now ask, not wanting to stay with Nick, needing a little more time to myself to process everything.
“This is still your house too. You can stay here as long as you want. We have room for you and the baby, you know that,” she tells me, and I lean over to hug her.
“Thank you, Mom for being here for me even when I’m a jerk to you,” I say, sniffing back the tears. “I’m sorry that I got mad.”
“It’s okay, your payback is coming soon,” she jokes, resting her hand on my stomach. “This kid is part of you and Nick, there’s no getting away from the fact that it’s going to be a handful.”
“Thanks for that reminder. I remember my teenage years, so if this kid is a girl, I’m so screwed,” I reply, covering my face with my hands. “I owe you.”
“I know you do, and I plan to feed your kid Oreo cookies and root beer right before bed as payback,” she jokes, making us both laugh.
It feelsweird to be here in my bedroom after spending so much time at Nick’s parents’ house and then our trip to Arizona. But it also feels good. It feels comfortable and safe, giving me the much-needed time to think this all through.
As much as I want to be excited, I’m still so scared of what the future holds. I lay here in bed, letting my mind wander to a million different scenarios, some of them good, some of them not so good, but in the end, I still come back to needing to tell Nick.
I kept the pregnancy test, wrapping it in my dirty clothes and stuffing it into the suitcase. I have no idea why I kept it, but a part of me thinks it could be fun to surprise Nick. Maybe I’m missing the excitement in this and making it into something bad when it’s not.
But then I think about all the comments he’s made over the past few weeks about having kids and not wanting them just yet. Surprising him with a pregnancy test and a bunch of blue and pink balloons feels like a bad idea. It feels more like a punch in the gut.
I shake my head, clearing my thoughts as I reach over and grab my phone from the nightstand. Texting Nick, I let him know that I plan to stay here tonight, but even that feels shitty. I can’t keep this from him much longer without it seeming like I’ve done it on purpose.
I just wish that his meeting with his coach was done already so that I had more of an idea about what is happening with his skiing career. Even as I think this, I know it won’t make any of this easier, if anything, it could make it so much harder.
