But to my surprise, less than thirty minutes later, I could hear the sound of a bike pulling up to the complex. I remembered I’d never told Garrett that he needed to give me advance notice if he was coming, and that the only person—
BAM BAM BAM BAM!
“Jesus, fuck me,” I muttered to myself.
Garrett’s knocks were not the sound someone made when they were happy to be knocking on your door. I opened the door and saw him standing there—and he looked pissed but also a little worried.
“Someone better be threatening to kill you right now, Hannah.”
“No, it’s not that,” I said. “Garrett, I’m pregnant.”
Garrett stared at me slack jawed for a few seconds. I didn’t know what to expect next—maybe he thought I was pulling a terrible prank on him and was waiting for me to confess it was a joke.
“I…OK, you can drop it now,” Garrett said.
“Drop what?” I said, folding my arms.
“I’ve seen this trick before. Girl wants me around, I move on, she won’t have it, she tells me she’s pregnant. I’ve seen it a million times, Hannah, and I know how it works. Look, I’m sorry that I just walked out on you, but—”
“You think this is a joke?”
“Yes, I think it’s a joke. You think I’m going to show up to the hospital, see you give birth, and go ‘Oh my God, I’ve never seen anything so perfect, I’m going to be a father forever!’”
“I said, do you think, Garrett, this is a joke?”
Garrett gulped. He finally seemed to be getting it.
“I’ll show you the test.”
He opened his mouth, laughed, but caught himself. He still wanted to believe this was just a giant joke. I tried to have some degree of sympathy, but I was getting more and more pissed off. This was his child too.
“OK,” he said nervously. “Show me the test.”
“Come on,” I said, letting him into my apartment.
But when he got inside and I shut the door, he didn’t follow me.
“Are you coming?”
“I still don’t believe this is serious,” Garrett said, but he no longer sounded so sure of himself—he instead sounded like he was trying to convince himself or to hang on to the last desperate thread of his own reality. “I mean, look, I get it, I, uh, I know I acted like an ass, and I’m sorry, I really am, Hannah, but…”
I didn’t change expression.
“Fuck, please tell me you’re not serious,” he said, his voice begging me. “Please just show me this is one big joke.”
I shook my head.
It finally seemed to be getting through to Garrett. What had started as disbelief had morphed into doubt before finalizing into a sort of certainty.
He followed me to the bathroom, but there was no real reason for him to do so. He already understood that I wasn’t kidding. All that showing him the test did was affirm what he’d already accepted. The fact that he barely flinched at the confirmation of the test said it all.
“Oh, fuck,” he said, walking out of the bathroom to my couch like a zombie. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“You can say fuck all you want, Garrett, but I need you to be a part of this.”
Garrett showed no reaction to my words. If I didn’t know better, I would have said that he was in literal shock.
“I can’t, I can’t, I can’t do this,” he said. “Club’s under too much pressure. I can’t take this on, I’m—”
