Heat rushed into his face. His mind screamed, trapped inside a body that had frozen solid.Fuck, fuck,fuuuuuuuck.
No condom. He hadn’t used one with Aubrey, either, but she’d said the risk was nearly nonexistent, given the timing. And really, the idea of impregnatingherdid nothing but set off a bevy of celebratory fireworks inside his head.
Butthisgirl...
His mind churned, going a hundred miles an hour. His mouth said, stupidly, “What’s your name again?”
“Tansy.” She scowled. “For the third time.”
“Okay, Tansy. Are you on birth control?”
“No.”
He dropped his head into his hands. This was a nightmare. This was his honest-to-god, literal worst fucking nightmare, and he couldn’t think. Still, Tansy didn’t deserve such a callous reaction. But he needed to get the hell out of this strange bed before he started screaming.
He stumbled through an awkward exchange, scribbling his number down, then adding the one for the mill, just in case.
“You’ll, uh. . .” He fiddled with the zipper of his slacks, wondering where all the mud permeating the fabric had come from. He’djustbought these. “...call me, if there’s anything to talk about?”
“Yep.” Tansy still hadn’t gotten dressed. He kept trying to look away, but either she didn’t care, or she enjoyed his discomfort.
He escaped as soon as he could, his head a tight ball of agony, the rest of him a hollow shell.
At home, he called into work and went straight to bed. Somehow, he survived the day.
To his dismay, he survived the next one, too. And the next. Three times, he went to Aubrey’s window after dark, only to stare through the glass at her empty bed. Three times, his heart tore itself to pieces, a storm inside his ribs he carried all the way home.
Two times, he tried to start a fistfight with his dad, wanting to lose himself in the oblivion of pain and straining muscles, but twice, Noah walked away sneering, not even invested enough to hit him.
Once, Nick reread Aubrey’s letter, then decided throwing himself off the top of the quarry would’ve been less masochistic.
The call came a week later.
A grumbling foreman came and found Nick out in the yard. “Phone call for you. But tell your damned girlfriend to stop calling here.”
For the barest edge of a moment, Nick’s heart lifted. But when he mashed the receiver to his ear and grated a hello, he knew by the shape of the indrawn breath on the other end that it wasn’t Aubrey. That she would never call him again.
He closed his eyes. “Tell me.”
“I’m pregnant,” Tansy said.
Nick met Tansy downtown.
He bought her ice cream, though afterward, he felt stupid about it. But wasn’t that what you did for a pregnant woman? Try to anticipate her cravings before she had them? Pamper her while she was busy growing your child in her belly?
She sat with him on a park bench in the square, haloed by afternoon light. She pushed the plastic spoon around her cup of strawberry ice cream as if she didn’t know what to do with it.
“So,” she said. “I guess you probably want me to get rid of it.”
He curled his hands around the edge of the bench. A glance at her stomach showed nothing much, yet somewhere beneath the torn jeans and laced-up combat boots, tucked into a secret corner of her body, a piece of him grew.
An entire future unfurled in his mind. He imagined sleepy kicks in a darkened womb, a first breath, a smile meant just for him. And later, high-pitched giggles. Shakily written letters. A flashlight shining through the thin walls of a blanket fort.
Despite everything, despite how messed up this had gotten, the daydream planted something breathless in his chest. Something wondrous. Like a far-off star had lanced through the blackened abyss of his life.
“I don’t, actually,” he said. “Not unless that’s whatyouwant.”
Tansy spooned ice cream into her mouth and watched him closely. “I’ve thought about it a lot, and no. It isn’t.”
