Chapter 4 Two Pink Lines
KNUCKLES
“We need to talk,” Simone said as she intercepted me after school before I could get to my motorcycle.
“What’s up, Sexy Simone?” I teased lightheartedly even though she seemed upset.
“This,” she said as she handed me a plastic stick.
I glanced down and swallowed hard. This couldn’t be what it looked like.
My eyes darted back up to meet hers. I could have drowned in the brown pools that stared back at me.
They shimmered with unshed tears and I knew the test in my hand was exactly what I thought it was.
When I didn’t say anything, she did. “I’m pregnant.
” I barely heard those two words because they were whispered and at the same time they echoed in my head as if she had shouted them.
“What are we going to do? My mom won’t help me raise a baby. She had to raise me all by herself.”
“How in the hell did this happen? We were always careful.”
“At Ashely’s party. The first time. Remember?
” she asked. It hit me then that the first condom had broken.
Neither of us thought anything of it because it didn’t seem like much was missing from the condom.
I screwed my face up as I remembered thinking that.
As if I could judge how much of my load was still in the condom versus what might have been left inside her.
As my father always said when he side-eyed me at the dinner table, “It only takes one tiny fuckup.”
Damned if he wasn’t right.
“Can we go somewhere else to have this conversation?”
“Why? Are you embarrassed?” Her quick shift in attitude pissed me off, but I took a breath and remembered she was pregnant and probably scared.
“Simone, I don’t need a bunch of people knowing our business before we even have a chance to digest it, let alone figure out what we’re going to do, okay?”
She nodded her head and then leaned into me so no one else could see that she was crying.
I was right, her emotions were all over the place.
Not that my own weren’t, but I wasn’t the one carrying a baby.
From what my grandma said, it was no picnic to be pregnant.
She had laid into my dad about how he left “that poor woman” - my mother - to do everything herself, including giving birth to me.
I had been too young to know my mother’s story, but from what I’d overheard throughout the years, she had been in the system and didn’t have any family to speak of.
Every time my eyes drifted back to Simone, my mom was at the forefront of my mind.
I wouldn’t leave the mother of my child to do it alone - whether her choice was to terminate or keep it. I’d be there.
Jasper walked up right when I managed to get Simone tucked into the passenger seat of her car. “What’s up, man? Thought we were going for a ride with Trav and Pat today?”
“Something came up. Gotta get Simone home. She’s upset.”
Jasper stared at me for a solid minute, then Simone, and back again. “She claiming you knocked her up or something?”
The grim look on my face must have told him everything he needed to know. “Fuck, man. Okay, give me a call later. Don’t do anything stupid.” I ignored the pointed look he gave me.
My father knew it only took a tiny fuckup because that was how I ended up in his life.
My mother raised me alone until I was four.
She got sick and couldn’t care for me anymore and left me with my grandparents - my father’s family - who had no idea they had a grandson out there.
It wasn’t because my mom tried to hide her pregnancy or me.
It was because my father - who knew she was pregnant - walked away and pretended for years that I didn’t exist. It was only when I was about to turn twelve that my father stepped up to play the role of my dad - poorly.
He already had his own family by then. A wife and two kids he considered legitimate.
He had never told his wife who I was and it almost cost him his marriage.
I liked his wife. My stepbrothers were cool, too.
My dad was a dick and only took me in because my grandparents wouldn’t turn over the ranch to him until he took responsibility for his first son.
They would have kept me, but they thought they were teaching him a lesson and didn’t bother to consider what teaching him a lesson might mean for me.
At least, not until it was too late to correct their mistake.
My history - basically repeating where my dad first went wrong - played in the back of my mind as I drove Simone out toward my grandparent’s house and then changed my mind and pulled off to head toward the lake instead.
I didn’t need them to know about the baby just yet and certainly didn’t want to rub Cassidy’s nose in our situation if she noticed we were at Grandma’s house together.
“Taking me back to the scene of the crime in the hopes it will undo itself?” she asked.
I chuckled. “If only it worked like that.” Her expression soured.
“Don’t look at me like that. We’re both too young.
We haven’t even graduated high school yet, Simone.
I just thought better about bringing my grandparents into the mix until I knew what you wanted to do.
And you know, the last thing either of us needs is a baby on the way.
Still, that doesn’t mean I won’t do the right thing. ”
“And what is the right thing here?”
“If you want to keep it, then we’re going to get married. It will have to be a small ceremony and we can’t have a honeymoon or anything because we have to save up for baby stuff, but…”
Simone jumped across the car and wrapped her arms around my neck as she planted kisses all over my face. “I can’t believe you’re going to stick by us,” she whispered into my ear.
If she knew anything about my family, it would have never been in question.
I couldn’t do to her what my dad had done to my mother.
The dreams I once had about starting a family with the girl next door one day would have to be put aside.
Besides, I’d well and truly fucked any chance of that all to hell anyway.
Cassidy wouldn’t even look at me sideways anymore and she never stepped foot outside on her property when she was home.
The fire pit sat cold and lonely every night.
I knew because I’d been staying with my grandparents since then, on the off chance that I’d get to talk to her alone.
It wasn’t that I wanted to keep hiding our friendship, but I didn’t think our first conversation since the fallout needed to happen at school in front of everyone either.
I slowly got out of the car and brought Simone with me.
I felt like an asshole for thinking about another girl, especially her former best friend.
Still, I’d always thought that one day, Cassidy would do amazing things in life and I’d find a way to be man enough to deserve her when we were older.
I never meant to alienate her or drive her away.
That chance was gone now for so many reasons.
I rubbed my hand over my chest - in the spot that ached when I thought about Cassidy no longer being in my life.
If it had been her who I had knocked up, she would have known how I would respond.
She knew everything about my family situation.
The fact that she hadn’t ever told Simone, meant a lot.
It also made me think of what my grandpa had said that last night I talked to Cassidy.
She was loyal and honest. My stomach hurt with the heartache as I glanced down into Simone’s eyes and saw calculation there.
She might have been pregnant, and it was an accident, but she had already come up with a plan, and I couldn’t help but think I had just played right into it.
She was still friends with Cassidy. That meant I’d probably still have to see her every fucking day and it was going to hurt like hell when I had to watch her move on.
Then again, I knew about her crush on me and she would have to watch me start a family with her best friend.
I wondered why Simone was so important that Cassidy was willing to forgive her and not me?
I guess it didn’t matter any longer. Simone needed her friendship more than I did, especially with a baby on the way.
“You’re doing what?” Jasper shouted.
“You heard me. I need my best friend by my side.”
“What if I don’t support your plan?”
“So, you don’t support me?” I asked him.
“That’s not what I said. Look, James, that girl has been up to something. Are you even sure she’s pregnant?” He paused for a minute and then shook his head. “Or that it’s yours if she is?”
“We were together many times since that party, but the condom broke that first night, man.”
“And who supplied the condom that broke?”
I stayed quiet because I didn’t like what he alluded to, but I couldn’t lie to him either.
Simone had the condom because I didn’t have any on me.
There was a fucking reason that I didn’t.
I’d been hoping that Cassidy would come with her and that we could talk that night.
I knew I’d have to take things slow with her since we’d never been friends outside of our private space where her family’s land and my grandparents’ butted up against one another.
Unfortunately, for my dumbass, when Cassidy didn’t show, I took that as a sign.
It wasn’t until the next day - when the alcohol cleared my system - that I thought to ask why Cassidy hadn’t come to the party.
What I found out made me feel incredibly sorry for her and angry with Simone.