“This changes everything.”
“It changes most things, but you getting a job after school won’t change.” She let out a breath. “And I’m going to finish school, as well. I might need to take some time off afterwards to get through the first couple of years of this baby’s life since my plan to go directly into social work the way I wanted might not work with a crying infant at home.”
“Natalie,” I whispered.
“No, it’s fine. And I know you’re going to hate this idea, but I do have a trust fund. I have several, actually.”
I frowned, not liking the sharp tug of annoyance I felt at that. It wasn’t Natalie’s fault that she came from money, but I hated that she would be able to provide for herself and our child without any help from me.
“Don’t get that look on your face. You said you wanted to be here, so be here. I’m going to work. I’ll finish school and find my path. I don’t know how it’ll all settle. And I don’t know what my family will say—or even yours. I don’t know how our friends will react, and I don’t know what you and I will be to each other while we’re doing this, but I know I’m privileged. I know that I have more avenues for this pregnancy than many others would. I don’t want to think about all of that right now. I don’t want to deal with every single detail. All I’ve been doing this past week is dealing with every minute issue in my life. Can’t I just have like a moment to breathe?”
I pushed away all thoughts of money and futures and nodded before leaning down to kiss her. She froze for an instant, and I was suddenly afraid I had done the wrong thing.
“Is this smart?” she whispered against my lips, and I shook my head.
“Not really. But why the hell shouldn’t we complicate things further?” I growled.
She nodded against my lips before kissing me back, and I wrapped my arms around her.
I had no idea what the hell we were going to do, or what might happen to us in the next moment, but if we could pretend for just these few seconds, then…why not? The part of me that had always wanted her wasn’t going away anytime soon.
And now, we would be forever connected in a way that neither of us had planned.
So, maybe I could pretend for just this instant, and later we could deal with the consequences. Something that we had to face with every turn.
Nine
Natalie
I sat in the large living room and did my best to act as if I weren’t panicking. And yet, panic was pretty much the only emotion I could focus on. There was fear, anxiety, and a dash of excitement, but mostly panic.
Tanner stood on the other side of the room, talking with Pacey, but I could tell his head wasn’t in the game. Instead, he seemed to only nod along as if he were stressed out like I was. I didn’t blame him since I was right there with him. I couldn’t understand how this was happening. Only, of course, I did. We were here to tell the roommates what had happened. It had been three weeks since we found out. Three weeks of hiding and making plans that weren’t really plans. How could you make plans when everything was so up in the air? Grad schools and jobs after this final semester were necessary, yet I couldn’t focus on any of it when I knew that things could change on a dime.
We needed to tell my family. We needed to tell his family, but it wasn’t happening yet. We wanted to make the three-month mark before we told our parents and altered everything. But we also knew that we couldn’t hide things from the roommates. I didn’t know what it said about the connections we had made that we could so easily tell our friends and not our families, but perhaps it made sense because we had chosen that family.
“Do you want to tell us why you asked us here?” Nessa said after a few more minutes, and I swallowed hard. Pacey gave me a look, and everybody began looking between Tanner and me, their brows raised.
“You owe me five dollars,” Nessa said, and Miles shook his head. He pushed his glasses up his nose, a small smile crinkling his face.
“You can’t let them know we were betting on whether they were doing it or not.”
I knew my face drained of color, and I looked across the room at Tanner. He cleared his throat as he made his way to my side. I sat in a wingback chair, slightly apart from the others, and hoped they hadn’t noticed.
I needed to be able to think, though. And I couldn’t do that if I was sitting next to everyone, trying to have a normal conversation that was anything but normal.
Pacey leaned forward and put his hand on my shoulder, squeezing, and Elise smiled. “I guess that’s four for four. That is why you asked us here, right? To tell us you guys are dating?”
“It does make it kind of neat,” Dillon added as he ran his hands down Elise’s arm.
Pacey cleared his throat. “Should I be the one who asks when this happened and how serious it is?”
Mackenzie looked up at Pacey and snorted. “You know that’s my line.”
“I’m just saving you the trouble, darling.” He leaned down and kissed her softly, and I gritted my teeth, doing my best to catch my breath.
“It’s relatively new,” Tanner said, and I looked up at him, my eyes wide.
He sighed and leaned down, brushing his lips against mine. “Well? It is.”
“Yes, it is.”
“What’s going on?” Elise asked, her voice suddenly somber. “This seems a little more serious than you just telling us you’re dating. Not that dating isn’t serious. But…I don’t know, talk to us.”
My mouth went dry, and Tanner leaned forward and then handed me my water. I hadn’t even asked him to do it, yet he seemed to know what I needed.
Why was he so great? We spent as much time together as possible, the two of us the only ones in on our secret. I had a doctor’s appointment coming up, and we needed to figure out how to become parents. But we also did our best to pretend that it wasn’t happening. We made pretend plans and went back to work. Tanner was still stripping, and I was still doing charity work.
And, all the while, we had been lying to everyone and acting as if our lives hadn’t been irrevocably altered.
“I’m pregnant,” I blurted, and Tanner’s hand squeezed my shoulder so tightly, I was afraid it might leave bruises. He let me go quickly as if he realized what he had done, and I swallowed hard.
Everyone was silent for so long, I was afraid I hadn’t actually said anything.
Perhaps I only imagined saying the words. The silence was deafening. And yet, Tanner had reacted, so I must have said the words aloud.
I was pregnant.
This wasn’t how I’d expected my life to go. I had thought that I would have children someday—much later in life. Perhaps even nearing my thirties, once I was truly settled into my career and found the perfect husband, and we were settled for just a bit longer. I wanted to be secure in who I was and the dreams I had before bringing a child into the world. I wanted to help other children who didn’t have the footing they needed to thrive.
“It’s not April yet, is it?” Nessa asked before letting out a hollow laugh that didn’t ring true to my ears. “You can’t be serious. We didn’t even know if you were genuinely dating. When did this happen? How did this happen? And why is my voice getting so high?”