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“Sure, you can do this by yourself. I know you can. I never doubted you could. I’m trying to tell you that I don’t want you to. I want you to let me help raise this child.” My lips are a breath away from her forehead.
She tilts her head back and stares up wildly into my eyes. She doesn’t speak, so I take that as my opportunity to continue.
“I’m ruining your future. This is my fault. I didn’t…I messed up. You know I never meant for any of this to happen, Click. I would never purposely put either one of us in this situation. We’ve already gone over this a million times since that night.”
Gia wasn’t drunk that night. She wasn’t out partying it up for the hell of it like my teammate assumed she was when he sent me that text, like I assumed she was before I knew better.
I should have known better. You know what they say about assumptions.
“It was perfect though, wasn’t it?” Her words are a hushed confession. She reaches out and brushes my hand with her fingertips. The hand that still grips the test that’s irrevocably altered our future.
“What?” I can feel my brows pull together in confusion. My heart beats erratically in my chest at the implications of her words. I’m getting whiplash from the rollercoaster of emotions we’re riding.
Every conversation we’ve had in the weeks since that night has been about how what happened between us that night can’t happen again. How it was one time and one time only. Our secret.
“That night was perfect, wasn’t it, Damien? Despite all of this.” A small smile ghosts her lips, and my stomach plummets to my feet. If we’re going to do this, I can’t afford to let myself think that way. I can’t allow myself to focus on the past.
Gia was working on an article for her photojournalism class. It was her first big assignment. She was documenting micro-movements of the body. Specifically, how hormones related to male and female social interactions cause minute changes in our body’s natural reflexes.
That night. That party. She was flirting…with fire. Quite literally.
It was my fault. I didn’t give her time to explain. But she was using herself as a test subject. She was her own fucking decoy in a dangerous game with real people. Gia never saw the danger in what she was doing. In her mind, it was a controlled experiment in an environment that was anything but controlled.
When I walked into that party and saw her all over a guy that I know for a damn fact is bad news, I drug her out of there and back to my place without a single word…from me. She threw plenty of words in my direction.
The bigger problem? I was blind to the danger too. Even when it was staring me right in the face like a giant neon warning sign.
When we got back to my place and I finally let her explain, well, she still needed to finish her experiment. It was just the two of us. I agreed because every fucking time I thought about her back at that party my blood boiled. It was late. I’ve never been very good at telling her no. It had to be me.
That’s the thing about art. The beauty is in the abstract – the unexpected.
I don’t think either of us expected what happened next.
“More than that. I lost it. I lost my control.” I admit as I exhale weeks of conflicting feelings in one confession. I shouldn’t be saying any of this. We should be focusing on the issue at hand.
I’ve replayed that night in my mind so many times. I’ve never been reckless. I’ve never broken my own damn rules. I’ve never been weak. Until that night. I was lost to her. And every night since then I’ve tried and failed to wrap my mind around the why and the how when it comes to my relationship with Gia.
How did we go from homework after hockey practice to making the biggest decision of our lives standing in the middle of a dorm room?
How did she go from the young girl with braces and braids to the woman I see standing in front of me today with her wild dark hair combed out, framing the sleek cheekbones of her beautiful face?
She rocked my world that night and turned everything I thought I knew to be true upside down. I haven’t recovered.
Her hand tightens around mine.
“I’m in too.” Three words. She utters three single words that crack the façade of my carefully constructed fortress of strength.
I’ve tried so hard to remain strong in the midst of the chaos unfolding around us.
I need to be strong for Gia. I need to remain strong for our baby. But those three words nearly bring me to my knees at her feet.
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” I dare ask the question that beats like a drum in my head relentlessly. The answer to everything that happens from this point in our lives forward hangs in the balance between us.
“I’m saying that…I don’t know. I don’t know what the future holds for us, but I know that I want to do this, even if it’s hard. Because it will be hard. I…I guess I’m saying that I want to raise this baby.” My heart stalls with the conflicting emotions I feel in her words.
“That’s my baby in there. My future.” What’s left of my control snaps. I try and fail to choke down the emotions that crash over me in waves.
Another tear falls from her cheek onto the exposed skin of her chest where her robe crosses and forms a deep V.
