Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Eight weeks later.
Mac set the pregnancy test face up on my bathroom counter. Lemon and I stood on either side of her as we waited for the results. Lemon grabbed the box and reread the side of it again. “One line is negative. Two is positive.”
It wasn’t even my test and I was nervous. The three of us went silent as we watched one pink line appear. Then another one.
Lemon inhaled sharply and I blinked a bunch of times to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. Mac didn’t utter a word. I didn’t think she was even breathing.
“Maybe it’s a false positive,” Lemon said.
“I’ve missed two periods,” Mac said, her voice sounding empty.
“It was only one night?” I asked in disbelief.
With Ezra.
She hadn’t told us much about that night they had met at the gallery.
Just that he had taken her to dinner and then his house to show her his art.
Of course, we knew what bringing her home meant.
Mac had, too. His parents were out of town, and she’d stayed the entire night until late morning the next day.
She described that night as one she’d never forget and the best sex she had ever had.
“It was one night,” Mac reiterated.
“You used a condom, right?” Lemon asked.
Mac sighed through her nose. “Every time.”
“How many—?”
“A lot,” Mac said, cutting Lemon off.
So one of the condoms had failed to do its job. I was so glad I was on birth control now. The odds of one failing had been stacked against me more than her back then.
Mac sighed again and went over to sit on the closed toilet.
“What are you going to do?” Lemon asked. “I mean, are you going to keep it?”
Mac leaned forward with her elbows on her knees and ran her fingers along her scalp. “I don’t know.”
“Are you going to tell him?” I asked.
Mac frowned at me. “How am I supposed to do that? It was a one-time thing. I didn’t ask for his number, and he didn’t ask for mine.
He told me he was going away to some fancy college.
He made it clear that it couldn’t be more.
I agreed because he and I are from two completely different worlds.
” She covered her face with a groan. “Everyone is going to think I baby-trapped a north-side guy for his money.”
Lemon and I exchanged a look. Guys from the north side of the bridge did make comments about south-side girls like that all the time. Even if they were true, Mac wasn’t like that.
“Fuck what other people think,” I told her. “That’s not you, Mac.”
Lemon went to go sit on the floor in front of Mac. “Lottie’s right. You know the truth and so will those who care about you. That’s all that matters.”
“If you want, I can try to reach out to him through social media?” I asked.
It had been a week since graduation. So it wasn’t like we were going to see him in school tomorrow.
Or Stewart’s gallery, for that matter. Ezra hadn’t displayed his final to be voted on this time.
Only I and a few other students had, and we’d find out the winner of the most votes today.
It was a shame, because I’d seen Ezra’s final and it was breathtaking.
It was so good, I was pretty sure it would have beaten mine.
His final had been to draw something imperfectly beautiful.
Personally, I would have nailed that type of drawing.
Ezra had had a hard time with it. He was kind of a perfectionist to a fault when it came to his art.
I could see why Ms. Clark gave him such a challenge.
What he’d come up with made it hard to believe he’d struggled at all.
He had drawn the nearly naked body of a woman.
You could not see her face. Her one breast that you could see from the side because of her sensual position was covered by her hand.
Her hips and legs were positioned in a way that didn’t reveal her lower parts.
The imperfect aspect was smack dab in the center of the drawing.
It was a scar on the woman’s lower back.
Ugly, jagged, and long. The thing was that you barely paid attention to it.
The woman was too beautiful and alluring.
Ezra hadn’t shared exactly why he wouldn’t display it at Stewart’s. He’d just said that it was a personal piece.
I supposed I understood. My final was extremely personal as well. I’d shed many tears as I worked on it. I had drawn a man in a suit hugging a little girl tightly and smiling despite the many arrows sticking out of his back.
Ms. Clark had stared at it for the longest time after I revealed it to her.
“It’s incredibly heartbreaking. The sacrifice, the protection, the happiness on his face, the holding of the little girl.
I don’t have to be told that this is a father and child.
I can see it. There’s so much you are showing, but its core is love.
His love for his daughter. Well done, Lottie. ”
Hearing that from Ms. Clark had been a huge relief. Like Ezra, I almost hadn’t displayed my final at Stewart’s, either, but everyone who cared about me had encouraged me to.
“Not right now. Maybe later after I figure out what I’m going to do,” Mac replied. She shook her head. “How am I going to have a baby, go to school, and work part time?”
Lemon set a hand on her knee. “I’ll be here with you.”
Mac was going to take classes at Summerhaven Community College while Lemon commuted forty-five minutes to the college she’d been accepted to in the next city.
A knock made all three of us jump. “You girls okay in there?” Vivian asked through the locked bathroom door.
“Yeah,” we all said at the same time.
“It’s almost time, Lottie,” Vivian said.
She was talking about the voting results at Stewart’s. They would be announcing it on their website.
“We’ll be out in a minute, Mom,” Mac said.
Vivian returned to the living room, where my guys, Noble, Bash, Theo, and Bram were waiting.
Everyone was here today to see if I won.
If I did, we’d celebrate. If I didn’t, we’d celebrate anyway.
The guys and I left for California in a week, and this would probably be the last big gathering we had with everyone we cared about before we left.
I had found out I’d gotten into the art school in California the same day as Roe had learned he’d gotten accepted to Stanford. We had received our acceptances two days after my childhood home burned down with Mother and Prue dead inside.
So much had happened in the past two months, both good and bad. Mostly good. Some moments went by in a blur; others were agonizingly slow.
That night two months ago, Bram and my guys had gotten to me faster than it had taken firefighters to arrive. I had just been sitting there as they rolled up. The guys didn’t like having to wait on Bram to finish hugging me and making sure I was all right to do the same.
As the firefighters worked to put the fire out, I spoke to the police and told them what had happened.
It took a while to completely extinguish the fire and by that point most of the house was gone.
I wasn’t too upset about losing it. There had been too many bad memories in it, and I’d never planned on living there again.
I was in more shock at having to shoot my own mother than anything.
I’d had nightmares for a while. Usually I saw Prue’s dead body or relived shooting Mother. Wyatt, Roe, and Reid took turns sneaking over when I couldn’t stay at their places to hold me while I slept. As the weeks passed, I was able to go longer and longer without having the bad dreams.
There was a funeral for Prue. My guys, Bram, and JJ attended it with me.
I felt so bad for her family. I’d asked JJ to help me anonymously reimburse them for all the funeral costs.
I wanted to give them more, but JJ said it was difficult just to give the little bit of money for the funeral.
He said that to push more on them would only upset them and defeat the purpose of giving it to begin with.
After the funeral, my guys and I finally took the time to sit down and really discuss what was the best path to take.
Roe told them that he also got accepted to MIT.
We talked about it for a long time. Going over the pros and cons of California versus Massachusetts, MIT versus Stanford, the different art schools in each state, where we would live.
Roe had been set on California because of me.
I had been set on MIT because it was a better school for the career he wanted.
After going over everything, it was Reid and Wyatt who made the decision.
Of course, they sided with Roe, but I couldn’t be mad about it.
I was part of them now and they wanted what was best for me, too.
We started making plans after that. When we first got to California, we were going to stay in the beach house I owned, but had never been to, until we found a house near Roe’s and my schools. We’d already hired a realtor to help us as soon as we arrived next week.
Before leaving the bathroom, Mac told us not to worry about her for the rest of the day and said we would talk more later.
Going out into the living room and acting like everything was fine despite knowing what Mac was going through was odd.
I had plenty of practice pretending that everything was all right when it wasn’t.
My life was different now, though. It felt harder to slip on a fake smile around people who loved me.
As soon as I walked into the room, Wyatt announced that it was time as he scrolled the gallery’s website on his phone while sitting on Bram’s large modular couch.
I took a seat next to him, with Reid and Roe sitting on either side of us.
Everyone scooched in or stood closer, waiting for Wyatt to make the announcement.
“The Noah received the most votes! Lottie’s piece won!” Wyatt yelled.