My mother’s eyes soften, “Oh, Jane.”
“She didn’t even tell him. He was so shocked. So hurt,” I say through tears.
“Did he take a paternity test? To make sure the baby was his?” my mother asks.
Julia squeezes my hand tighter.
A paternity test. “I-I don’t know. When I asked him, he said‘I can’t even fucking believe you right now.’I just sounded like a heartless, jealous girlfriend.”
“No, sweetheart. You were the voice of reason. There’s no way to know right now if this baby is really his unless he has one done,” my mother says.
My shoulders slump. “I’m sure it’s his. My love life always has a soap-opera vibe to it. And I don’t know if it would even matter to Dex.”
“He’s such a dick,” Julia whispers. “They all are.”
My father, clearly fed up, storms back into the living room and yanks me up by my arm. I’m instantly fifteen again and he’s caught me making out with Carlo Vega behind the pool house at Shannon McKenzie’s party. I squeal now just like I did then.
“Oh, Mouse. Stop being so dramatic,” my father scolds. “You weren’t even with this-this…” His face turns an awful shade of red, thinking of a ton of foul names for Dex right now, but thankfully chooses none of them. “This guy, for what? Three months? And one of them you lived on opposite sides of the world from each other. Get up and get in the shower and clean yourself up.” He points to Julia and shakes his finger at her. “You? You get up too. Go clean yourself up. In your own apartment right now.”
Julia squawks out a yelp and runs for the door.
I lurch up too, and stumble past him toward the bathroom. I know he’s right. Three months. A mere ninety days. That’s all it was. I know I shouldn’t be reacting this way.
“Harry,” my mother groans.
“What? Three months, and that’s a serious relationship? Let her take a shower and she’ll wash him right out of her hair,” Dad insists.
I trudge my way down the hall and into the bathroom.
“Do you think they’re going to eat the rest of that pizza?” I hear my father ask.
“How could you be hungry at a time like this?” my mother hisses as I close myself in the bathroom.
In the mirror my reflection is a complete stranger—someone desperate and lonely. Why have I spent so much time looking for the perfect man? I’m not even sure I ever believed in the traditional-heteronormative-marriage-relationship for myself, but still, I’ve searched and searched for one, chasing after anything that came close. Why couldn’t I be more like Julia, jumping from one guy to the next without a care or a tear for any of them?
I run the water in the shower, filling the bathroom with steam, blurring my reflection. As I undress, I feel a twinge of cramps. I must be getting my period again. It’s been so crazy I don’t even know when it’s due anymore or when it stops. I could swear I just had it.
Imagine Dex’s surprise ifIwas late? I wouldn’t wait nine months to tell him, though, and I don’t understand how or why Stephanie would keep that from him? She did try to call a few times, maybe he just hadn’t given her the chance to tell him?
The truth is, I don’t know what I would have done in the situation. I’m sure she was scared, trying to do it alone. I shouldn’t judge her choices or his, it didn’t happen to me, it happened to them. I’m just collateral damage.
Under the hot spray of water, I wash my hair five times and scrub my body raw. The amount of debris and chocolate that swirls around the drain doesn’t surprise me at all.
By the time I emerge from the bathroom, my hair is dried and straightened, I’m fully dressed, and my parents have purged every ounce of filth they could have found in my entire apartment. They just saved me a ton of money I would have spent on a cleaning crew.
“I did you the favor of pouring all the alcohol in your apartment down the drain. You don’t want to make that a habit. Your great Aunt Rose was a drunk. She always smelled like cigarettes and cheap whiskey. She never married. She died alone with a dozen cats. When they finally found her body, half of her right leg was gone and all the cats had alcohol poisoning.”
“Harry!” my mother yells.
“Ew, Dad, really?” I blurt.
“It’s better not to end up like that,” he urges, shaking his head gravely.
They force me to go out to get something to eat where I sit in silence as they vomit neighborhood gossip at me and I push my food around my plate, pretending I’m feeling better and everything is back to being fine.
By nine o’clock I’m in bed, on freshly laundered sheets that don’t smell like Dex’s cologne any longer, staring at my phone and all the texts from him.
Dex:Hey
