Unexpecting (Unexpecting #1)

20. Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty

“During pregnancy a woman often forges a deeper and more intimate relationship with the father of the child.”

A Young Woman’s Guide to the Joy of Impending Motherhood

Dr. Francine Pascal Reid (1941)

J .B. found me in my apartment, where I’d taken refuge with a blenderful of margarita, heavy on the tequila. Whereas my sister felt the need to resort to sharp words when our mother was around, I seemed okay on the outside, but often felt the need for a great deal of alcohol after she was gone. Once my mother left, dragging her latest boy toy and his besotted brother Derek with her, Coop’s party lost all appeal for me.

″I thought you might be responsible for the missing blender,” J.B. said mildly, taking in the sight of me flopped across my bed, with my head hanging over the edge and taking great slurps from the straw sticking out of the blender without comment.

I pushed my ponytail out of my face and looked up with red eyes. I hadn’t yet figured out why I felt the need to cry over my mother’s news, even though I knew indulging in a crying jag would inevitably result in a monster headache later. Another thing I could blame on my mother. That and how her visit sent me straight to the bottle, after I’d vowed to lay off the drinking.

It’s not like my parents had a happy marriage. My father was an asshole, and he’s been dead for years. My mother deserves happiness in her life, doesn’t she? That’s the good daughter inside me talking. But the other daughter—the one who remembers living in the same house with Terri-with-an-i and watching her pretend ignorance of my father’s drinking and how it affected Libby and me; the one who caught her in bed with sixteen-year-old Aaron, whom I had a huge crush on at the time; the one she never managed to say good-bye to the day I left home to go to university—that daughter doesn’t really think Terri deserves any sort of happiness. That daughter thinks Terri should rot in a hole with her Botox injections and her Mr. Happy Rabbit vibrator. It’s not difficult to see which part of me has the better argument.

″Did you hear?” I asked J.B. scornfully.

″About your mom? Coop filled me in.”

″Can you believe it? He’s the same age as me. I know she likes them younger, but does it have to be so embarrassingly young? And then to bring his brother to meet me? What was she thinking?”

″That part’s pretty funny, actually,” J.B. said, not even trying to hide his smile.

″Ha-ha. Who wouldn’t want to date their step-uncle-to-be? Ugh. Ugh!” I took another long sip from the straw. “And then she says they want to have a baby? There’s a possibility my child will be older than her aunt or uncle! If I ever get pregnant, that is. Although after seeing Terri tonight, I’m starting to believe I shouldn’t be anywhere near a child so I don’t screw it up like she did.” I took one last swallow of margarita and flipped over on my back.

J.B. lay down beside me. The warmth of his weight on the bed beside me and his potent male smell were comforting, and I fought the urge to curl up in his arms. A hug from someone would be nice right now. I couldn’t even get a cuddle from my cat. He was sitting on the pillow just watching me self-destruct. It’s not like he hadn’t seen it before.

″Oh, I don’t know. You turned out okay,” he said.

I grimaced. “What do you know?”

″I know you didn’t run off and get married at nineteen, just for a reason to leave home.”

For J.B. to bring his marriage up instantly made me forget my pity party. “What happened with you two, anyway?” I asked hesitantly.

″There was a bunch of reasons. We were too young to get married, if you ask me. We were immature, had no money. Betsey always believed the good Lord would provide, as long as we loved each other enough. But then she got pregnant, and uh, lost the baby.” He glanced at me. “She was almost four months along when they realized there was no heartbeat. That’s when we both started to get pissed off with God, and I figured out he wasn’t going to provide for us and I’d better get my butt in gear. I went back to school, which was fine until Betsey got pregnant again. And lost it. And then she got pissed when I wasn’t upset enough that she lost the baby. I was upset because she was so upset, but she should have never gotten pregnant again.”

″You didn’t want a baby?”

″I was excited about the first one, but that’s before I woke up and realized it would have been a disaster. I’m not glad she lost it—any of them, but there was no way we could have handled it. We were kids ourselves. Betsey could barely take care of herself—always looking for approval. And she needed constant attention—there’s no way she could deal with a baby taking the spotlight from her. I was in school and couldn’t find a job, so I couldn’t pay for anything and the last thing I wanted was to work for my dad on the farm. That’s why I left home in the first place.”

″I can’t see you as a farmer.” I rolled over again so I was lying on my side facing J.B., who was staring at the ceiling.

″That was the whole problem—neither could I.”

″So what happened? Two kids, young and in love, facing the problems of the world by themselves—and then comes baby?”

″There shouldn’t have been a baby. Betsey told me she was taking birth control.”

″Nothing’s 100 percent, you know.”

″She lied to me and stopped taking it.”

″Ah. That’s not good.”

″Then she goes and does it again. After the second time, I started to think she wasn’t as perfect as I always thought and that us being married wasn’t a good idea. Plus, the good Lord wasn’t providing shit, and Betsey was becoming a bit of a bitch to live with. And about that time, she started messing around with my best friend. I came home once and found them together. That’s how my nose got broken.”

″From your friend?”

J.B. laughed, sounding embarrassed. “I wish. No, it was her. She hit me with a book to stop me from smashing his face in. I had a bit of a temper back then.”

″I don’t blame you. Is that—the card said her son, the one named after you?” I didn’t know how to put it delicately, but the thought of the paternity of a child out there named after J.B. had entered my mind once or twice over the last few weeks.

″Yeah. He got her pregnant, but then she tried to say it was mine. But I knew—it was easy to figure it out once you did the math.” J.B. said this in a deceptively casual tone, but I could see a muscle pulsing in his jaw. Definite unresolved feelings there, I told myself.

″Wow. And she still sends you cards? I think I’d just go off and crawl under a rock someplace if I did that.”

″You’re nothing like her.”

We lay there quietly for a few minutes, J.B. staring at the ceiling and me staring at him. I wondered if he was counting the dots on each ceiling tile like I do. I resisted the urge to run my finger down his profile, from his forehead, up the slope of his nose, touching the softness of his lips, to the arrogant jut of his chin. I resisted, mainly because this was the most intimate I’d ever gotten with J.B., even counting the times we had sex.

J.B. suddenly rolled over and caught me staring at him. “What?” he asked.

″Nothing.” I could feel myself blushing.

″You’re staring at me like I’ve got two heads.”

″Just one. It’s a nice one, though.” I reached over and flicked his nose with my finger. J.B. didn’t smile. He just looked at me. “Now you’re looking at me all funny-like.”

He gave a strained smile and turned his head. “You know, Case, I—” J.B. stopped short as we heard footsteps coming down the stairs.

″Casey?” I heard Morgan’s voice.

″Um, down here!” Both J.B. and I leaped off the bed like we were guilty of something.

″Are you hiding?” Morgan called as she came down the stairs. I heard her stumble at the last step. The extra height of it always trips people. “Are you okay?” When she poked her head into my bedroom, she looked surprised at the sight of J.B. standing beside me. “Oh! I didn’t know you were down here.”

″Just rescuing the blender,” J.B. said quickly, grabbing it from the floor.

″Oh?” Morgan’s gaze swiveled from J.B. back to me, and then to Sebastian, still lying on the pillow taking it all in. Then she jerked her head toward the stairs, like she was trying to tell me something.

″Everything okay upstairs?” J.B. asked, noticing her gesture .

″Fine, but Casey, I found someone wandering around looking for you,” she said.

″Please, don’t let it be my mother or someone else she’s trying to set me up with!” I begged with my eyes closed.

″Much better than that,” Morgan assured me. “But maybe…”

″Come on down,” I called reluctantly. There were more footsteps and another stumble at the bottom. I should put up a sign or something. I sat back on the bed, expecting Cooper and a lecture about drinking all the margaritas.

″David!” I said in surprise as he stepped into the doorway of my apartment.

″You told me to stop by,” he said with a big grin. He looked good in a pair of khaki shorts and a dark green polo neck.

″That’s great!” It was mainly awkwardness that made me jump into his outstretched arms. “I’m so glad you came. You remember Morgan—obviously.” My laugh was a bit forced. “This is J.B., one of my roommates.” I was having difficulty looking at J.B. for some reason.

″Hey.” J.B. took David’s hand and they shook, but he was looking at me the whole time. “David, as in—David?”

″That’s me,” David said a little too heartily. “Hey—that your cat?” He went to Sebastian and started giving him a good scratch.

″Ah.” J.B. looked from me to David and there was not a lot of warmth in his eyes. “Well, I’ll get out of here. I’ll take the blender back up to Coop.”

″I’ll get out of here too,” Morgan chimed in. “But, Casey, look, about what your Mom said—”

″I’m fine,” I told her wearily.

″No, but that’s good. It’s about Derek.” I looked blank for a moment. “The brother. I know your Mom thought maybe…” she trailed off, glancing at David nervously. I wanted to say, don’t worry about giving away secrets, but I didn’t. “Look, he asked for my number.”

″Who, Derek? You’re kidding!” I laughed.

″I kind of gave it to him,” she told me in a small voice.

″What?”

″I thought he was cute,” she said defensively. “And he seemed nice.”

J.B. started to laugh. “Way to go, Morgan!” He draped his arm around her shoulder. “Scoop him up right under Casey’s nose. You don’t need me to go to the wedding with you—you’ll have no problem finding your own date. ”

″I wanted to talk to you about that,” she said to him.

″Let’s go get a drink then.” Without a word to me, he headed to the stairs, his arm still around Morgan. I watched him go with the feeling I did something wrong. It was like the moment on the bed never happened.

″So.” David stepped away from Sebastian and rubbed his hands together. He glanced out the doorway as if to watch J.B. walk away. “That the roommate? He’s pretty.”

I gave his arm a sharp slap. “None of that talk, okay? I’m still getting used to the idea. I still have flashbacks, torturing myself if you thought some of our friends from school were better-looking than me.”

David threw his arm around me and squeezed. I had a moment when I wished he would do more than give me a friendly squeeze, but I quickly squelched it. “Ah, Casey, I loved you best of all.”

″Back then,” I added. “But it’s nice to know why you didn’t argue with me breaking up with you.”

David hugged me again. “You’ve always been a good friend.”

″And the best girlfriend you’ve ever had, or ever will have, don’t you forget!”

David laughed, looking at me strangely before settling on the edge of my bed. “I know this probably isn’t the best time, but I was wondering if you’ve given it any thought? What we talked about Tuesday night?”

″You talked. I sort of sat there with a stunned expression on my face.”

″Well, there was no easy way to tell you. I thought you handled it all right. Does that mean…”

″I’ve thought, and I haven’t thought,” I told him. “Which means, it sounds like the thing to do, but I haven’t figured everything out yet. I’ve been waiting for my period to come, and then…”

David shuddered. “I guess I should get used to hearing about that sort of stuff,” he grinned.

″Maybe.”

″Maybe is pretty good. I’ll give you a little more time to think about it, then.”

″I should have figured it out in a day or two,” I said.