There is tension bubbling between us as we enter her room. The silence is almost making me nauseous, and I don’t even know where to begin. There is just so much to say…so much to figure out. I let go of Tiffani’s hand and sit down on the edge of her bed, interlocking my hands between my knees. She stands in the center of her room in her shorts and tank top, anxiously touching the ends of her hair, but I just can’t look at her.
“My mom kicked me out,” I say, breaking the silence. My eyes are still so swollen, and it hurts every time I blink.
“I’m sorry,” Tiffani says, but then she sighs. She crosses the room and sits down on the bed next to me, her thigh touching mine. “Actually,I’m not,” she admits, and I can feel her blue eyes boring intensely into me. Yet Istillcan’t look up to meet her gaze. “You…You’ve been cheating on me, Tyler.”
“I know,” I say, swallowing hard. I think her initial anger has worn off, because right now, she just sounds hurt. The guilt returns, reminding me once more that I handled all of this in the worst way possible. I shouldn’t have let Tiffani control me. I should have ended things with her, no matter what the consequences were, and then I wouldn’t have had to go behind her back with Eden. I shouldn’t have been so selfish either. “I’m sorry,” I tell her, and my apology is sincere. Finally, I look at her, and she looks defeated. I’ve never seen her like this before. Her nasty streak is completely gone, and now all that’s left is a heartbroken girl. “I just… I have this thing with Eden,” I mumble, fumbling with my hands. “I can’t help it. I didn’t mean to hurt you, Tiffani.”
“I don’t want to hear it,” she says, shaking her head slowly. She presses her hands to her forehead and runs her fingers back into her hair, taking a deep breath. “We need to put that behind us, because we have… We have a bigger issue.”
“Are you…” I can’t even say it. It makes my stomach churn, and I even move my hand to my mouth. “Are you really…”
Tiffani drops her hands from her face and turns to look at me. I look up at her too, and finally, our gazes lock. Her features are twisting, her lip is quivering, her blue eyes are glistening with new tears. “I was waiting for the right time to tell you,” she whispers, and it’s like the moment she first broke the news all over again. It’s like everything inside of me is shutting down.
“But how?” I splutter, angling my body toward her, shaking my head fast in disbelief. It’s not possible. We’re careful. We always have been. “You’re on birth control.”
“I guess I missed a couple pills. I don’t know,” Tiffani says, but her words become frantic and full of panic. She gets to her feet, her hands back in her hair, pacing the floor in front of me. “I’m scared out of my fucking mind,” she admits, and she bursts into tears.
“It’s okay,” I say quickly, standing. I reach out for her, grabbing her wrists and moving her hands away from her face. Without letting go, I tilt my head down so that I am at eye level with her. “It’s okay,” I say again, my voice firm. We are both breathless, both freaking the hell out. Neither of us knows what the hell we’re doing, and what I don’t tell her is that I am terrified too. “We’ll figure it out. Not you, not me.Us,” I reassure her, blurting out my words too fast. “Okay?”
As the tears roll down her cheeks, she gives me a small nod. Then, I take her in my arms, holding her head to my chest and burying my face into her hair. We have to put our differences aside. I have hurt her, and she has hurt me. But we can’t focus on that now. We need to grow up and cut the bullshit. We need to do what’s right.
“We have to stay together, Tyler,” Tiffani sniffs against my shirt.
“I know,” I murmur into her hair, but the harsh reality of the situation is crushing my soul. I want to be with Eden so desperately, but it was already so complicated before, and now it just seems impossible. I have to stay with Tiffani. I can’t leave her, not now.
Tiffani leans back from me, but I keep my arms hooked loosely over her shoulders. She wipes away her tears and then locks her gaze on mine. “I’m going to forgive you,” she says after a minute, her voice quiet. “Only because I have to.”
“And I’ll forgive you too.”
She furrows her eyebrows. “For what?”
“For telling my mom the truth,” I clarify. Tiffani isn’t all that innocent here either. Shedidset out to ruin my life this morning, andshe achieved everything that she wanted to. I have to look past that now though. There’s no more time for games. We have to be responsible, we have to be adults. “Can I…can I stay here?”
“Tyler…” she says, biting down on her lower lip. She shrugs my arms off her shoulders and takes a couple steps back from me. “You know my mom would flip. She always does.”
“Please,” I beg, reaching out for her elbow. I pull her back toward me until her chest hits mine. “I have nowhere else to go. Just for a couple nights until I can talk to my mom. Please, Tiffani,” I say quietly, my voice raspy.
Tiffani’s eyes search mine. I don’t know what she is looking for, but whatever it is, she must find it. Finally, she sighs and gives me a small nod. “Okay, but my mom is gonna kill us both.”
Relief fills me. I’m hoping I can lay low here for a couple days while Mom has the chance to think things through. Kicking me out was a decision she made in the heat of the moment, so I can only hope that she’ll regret it a couple days from now. “Have you told her yet?” I ask, sitting back down on the edge of Tiffani’s bed again. “Your mom?” Tiffani’s mom already hates me enough as it is, so I can only imagine how much she will despise me when she finds out I’ve knocked up her daughter.
“No,” Tiffani says abruptly, shaking her head fast. She sits down on my lap, linking her arms over my shoulders and running her fingers into my hair around the nape of my neck. “It’s our secret for now, okay?” she murmurs, her eyes locked on mine. She is so close, her mouth only inches from mine, and suddenly I find my body tensing up. The expression in her gaze is changing, gradually transforming into something that is all too familiar. She is confident, she is manipulative, she is in control. “Well, Eden knows too, I guess,” she sayswith a small shrug. She purses her lips and moves her hands to my jaw, tilting my face up to look directly at her. “But she seems to like keeping secrets, so I don’t think we have to worry about her,” she murmurs, then kisses me.
But her lips aren’t enough to distract me from the venom in her voice.
59
Five Years Earlier
The first thought that goes through my head when I slowly peel open one eye is that heaven looks and feels a lot like real life.
I can smell disinfectant and coffee. There are four pairs of wide eyes looking at me. My body feels broken. I am in a hospital bed, slumped back against a thick stack of pillows, a cup of water sits on the small table to my left. Two of the four pairs of eyes belong to police officers. The other two belong to a man and woman in suits. They hover by the door, watching me closely with saddened gazes.
My right eye refuses to open. My left slowly drifts back to the police officers. One is sitting on a chair in the corner, the other standing by his side. It takes me a minute, but I recognize the one that’s sitting down. It’s the same officer from last week. The one who picked me up on the street. The one who was nice to me. Officer Gonzalez.
“Tyler,” he says quietly, his voice fragile, breaking the silence. The room is tense and suffocating. I don’t know what’s going on. My head is fuzzy. I try to focus solely on Officer Gonzalez. “Do you remember me? We met last week.” I can’t even nod. I can’t do anything. I am frozen in place, unable to process anything. Officer Gonzalez motionsto the other cop. “This is Officer Johnson. And I’d like you to meet Paul and Janice,” he says, nodding to the man and woman by the door. “They’re social workers. They’re going to look after you.”
I try to part my lips to say something, to ask what is happening, but my entire face is throbbing. My throat is too dry. I have no words at all. Nothing comes out. I glance down at my arms, but they are black and blue. There’s a bandage around one of my hands. There’s one around my head too.
