Chapter Twenty Four #2
It’s awkward at first, the kind of silence that isn’t empty so much as it’s too full. I shove my hands in my jacket pockets because I have the urge to lace my fingers with hers.
Every time we pass a streetlight, her profile flicks into relief—brow set, mouth soft, the kind of determined that looks a hair’s breadth away from vulnerable if you know what you’re looking for.
“How are you?” she asks finally, eyes on the path.
The honest answer is a mess, so I take a breath and try to simplify it. “Coping,” I say, and wait for her to flinch at the nothingness of it.
She doesn’t.
“It’s… a lot. It’ll take some getting used to.” I swallow. “I’m in. Hundred percent. That part’s clear in my head.”
She nods once, like she’s been holding her breath for that sentence, and just lets it go. “Okay.”
We walk. A night fisherman’s lantern glows downriver like a fallen star. The path dips; her shoe slides on loose gravel, and I reach out without thinking. My hand closes around her elbow. She steadies herself and doesn’t make a thing of it, which somehow makes it a thing in my mind.
“Ben,” she says. “About my family.”
I almost laugh maniacally because that’s been bouncing around in my head since last week when she told me.
“I know you didn’t want Jason to know about… us,” she says, voice careful but not accusatory. “But we can’t really avoid it now.”
She glances at me and away. “Usually people wait a couple of months before telling anyone. I’m over six weeks, so we could wait longer if you want to. If that’s—”
My first instinct is yes. Wait. Hide in the tall grass. Let statistics be the excuse I need. I feel the word climb my throat—
—and I shove it back down.
Coward.
“No,” I say out loud, and the word surprises both of us with how sure it sounds. “We have to tell your family. We just… need to figure out the best way to do it.”
My hands come out of my pockets. They don’t find hers. “Do you think we should tell everyone together? Or your parents and Jason separately?”
She huffs a breath that might be a laugh if any of this were funny. “I should probably tell you something before we make a plan.” She looks sheepish, actually sheepish, which is an expression I’ve never seen on her face. “My mom already knows we slept together.”
I blink at her. “She… what?”
“I couldn’t keep it from her.” She shrugs, small. “It came up when she dragged me to lunch, and I just—she’s my mom. She doesn’t know about the pregnancy, though.”
I stare at the dark shape of the river and force my shoulders down. “Okay,” I say, because it is okay. It has to be.
“Then maybe we should tell her first. See what she thinks about how to approach Jason and your dad.” I try on the idea and, weirdly, it fits.
Gwen has been my triage nurse since I was a kid; letting her triage this doesn’t feel like a betrayal. It feels like not being an idiot. “If she’s already halfway inside the door, she’ll know how to keep the hinges from blowing off.”
Paige nods, relief loosening her mouth. “I thought the same. She might… soften the ground a little.” She flicks a glance at me. “I’m not saying we make her do it for us. Just… guidance.”
“Yeah.” I can hear Gwen already: Benjamin, you’re both going to look me in the eye while you say it. And then we’re going to breathe. “When?”
“Soon,” she says. “Tomorrow, if she’s free. I don’t want to spend day after day fighting off the urge to throw up from anxiety.”
“Tomorrow,” I repeat, and the word scares me. “You text her. Tell me when and where, and I’ll be there.”
We come around a bend where the trees open, and the river up against the bank looks like moving glass. A train horn moans far off, the sound sliding along the water until it reaches us.
There’s a flat rock that makes a natural bench. She sits. I stay standing for a beat, then fold down beside her, careful to leave space in case she doesn’t want my touch.
She tips her head back and looks up through the leaves. “How do you feel?” she asks.
“Scared,” I say. The word is ugly and simple and true, and it doesn’t kill me to say it.
“And… sure. Which is confusing. I keep thinking about my dad and all the ways I don’t want to be him.
” I exhale. “And then I think about the screening and the ultrasound, and I don’t care how scared I am.
I’m going to be there.” I look at my hands because I can’t look at her.
“Even if you don’t want me hovering. I’ll hover from a respectful distance. ”
Her mouth curls. “I’m not big on hovering,” she says. “But I’m also not big on being alone.” She nudges a pebble with the toe of her shoe and watches it skip down the bank. “I don’t know how to want both and not feel like I’m contradicting myself.”
“We’ll figure it out,” I say, and hope to God I’m not making a promise I can’t keep. “Or we’ll screw it all up. But at least we’ll do it together.”
She laughs, quick and bright in the dark. I feel a little jump in my stomach.
We sit in silence, listening to the sounds of the river rush past.
I can feel her next to me without touching her. I can feel myself wanting to touch, to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, put my palm on the back of her neck where skin meets soft hair, press my mouth to her lips and tell her it’s all going to be okay.
The desire for her is not subtle either. Six weeks and change haven’t done a thing to minimize my wanting her. If anything, the wanting is more, sharper, from everything we haven’t let ourselves do since.
I keep my hands on my knees. I’m not an idiot. Sleeping together again right now would be like striking a match in dry timber and then acting surprised when the house goes up in flames.
She tips forward, elbows on her thighs.
“Do you think he’ll hate us?” she asks suddenly, and it takes me a second to realize she means Jason. “If he does, we’ll manage. But… do you think he will?”
“I think he’ll be angry,” I say. “At me for not telling him, at himself for not seeing it. But hate?” I shake my head. “He doesn’t do hate. He does loyalty and stubbornness and lectures. He’ll do those. Then he’ll do what he’s always done and love you so hard you want to punch him for it.”
“And you?” she asks in a small voice.
I sigh.
“I’ll take whatever he hands me,” I say. “If that’s an earful and a week of not looking at me, I’ll take it. If it’s a punch, I’ll take it. And if he never wants to see me again…” I huff a short breath.
“I’m not proud of the way we started this, Paige. It’s not a mistake, especially not now. But he might not see it that way.”
She studies the water, then me.
“Okay,” she says. “Then, yeah, we’ll deal with it when we get there.”
A moth flits low and the hair at my forearms lifts. We sit there long enough for my back to remind me my age and for the rock to feel like… well, a rock under my ass.
When we finally stand, I’m surprised at how reluctantly I do it. We take the path back, steps falling into the same rhythm, my porch light pulling us home.
At the bottom of my driveway we stop.
“I’ll text my mom,” she says. “See if tomorrow works. If it does, we’ll figure out a time when no one’s home.”
I nod. “I’ll be there.”
She looks at me in the porch-light half-dark.
“I keep thinking about today,” she admits, so soft I almost don’t catch it. She clears her throat. “Thank you.”
I swallow. “You were the brave one,” I say, and then immediately wish I’d chosen anything else, because brave doesn’t seem like an adequate enough word for what she is.
My eyes flick down to her lips, and I see hers do the same.
“I should go,” she says.
“Yeah,” I say. “Text me when you get home.”
For a second I think she’s going to touch my arm. She doesn’t. For a second I think I’m going to tuck that one impossible strand of hair behind her ear. I don’t.
Finally, she nods and turns away.
She gets in her car. I stand and watch her taillights slide away, red fading around the corner.
I go back up the steps and sit where I was when she pulled in. I am still scared. I am still steady. I am still exactly where I said I’d be.
Tomorrow we tell her mother. Then, we take the next step. And the one after that.