1. Eric #2
Her short hair is messy but not out of control, and she’s changed into a long nightshirt that covers most of her legs.
She has dark eyes, but I can’t see the color.
And she must not have been wearing much makeup since her face looks clean.
Below her neck and on top of her breasts, just right underneath her left collarbone, there’s a one-lined swallow tattoo, captured mid-flight.
She’s quite pretty. She’s just not her. Swallows represent homecoming, but this wasn’t coming home for me.
She’s smoothing her palms over the fabric.
The intimacy of the gesture turns my stomach to the point I taste some of the whiskey I must have drunk earlier.
“I better…”
She stretches out her hand and offers me the jacket.
I grab it without touching her fingers. “Thank you.”
“You wanna crash on the couch? It’s late.”
It’s still pitch-black. Middle of the night. Though, here’s the last place I want to be. I can’t be here. I need to get the hell out.
I shake my head. “No, thank you.” I hesitate. Better give her peace of mind, too. “The condom didn’t break. I checked.”
“Actually,” she says, voice dry, “I don’t think you came. You didn’t seem to want me to touch you, or to touch me. You pulled away and passed out as soon as I made myself come.”
Of course I didn’t fucking come. I never do.
I’m more than my failures. The words do nothing.
They just echo in my chest, dull and useless.
Her voice keeps going. There’s a cavalier replay of what sounds like awful sex.
I’m glad I can’t remember it. My lack of orgasm.
Lack of touch. My disengagement. My feet shift uneasily, my skin crawls in need of cleansing, and my ears buzz, like static, in overpowering self-loathing.
I am, apparently, a robot-like lover. The wrong voice referring to me as a lover makes me feel worse than I already do.
She doesn’t mean it in a bitchy way, just facts. Not that I’m surprised by any of it.
“I can leave my number if you need help getting Plan B,” I say, trying to claw back some decency. “Or I can go to a doctor with you—”
She waves me off.
“I have an implant.” She lifts her arm like proof. “You don’t need to worry about that. Do you want to leave your phone number for anything?”
“Fuck no.”
Her brow arches—amused, maybe, or just tired. Once, a long time ago, I might’ve been intrigued by her openness. Now it just makes my own shame louder. I shove my arms through the sleeves and turn to go.
“I understand,” she says, standing, her clothes shuffling. “But from what I’ve seen, I should tell you… This journey you’re on? Something’s gotta give. It shouldn’t have to be your sanity.”
I turn back, a nasty retort on my tongue, but she’s already heading to the bedroom. She hasn’t said anything I don’t already know.
Outside, the cold bites at me. I walk and try to find my way, annoyed that I am too far from home to walk. I need a cab.
I flag one down. Sliding into the back seat, I let the shame and exhaustion swallow me whole.
I should’ve known better. Drowning myself at a bar, alone, drink after drink until I ended up in stranger’s beds—I stopped doing that shit.
I had a plan. She’d get this fucker out of her system while I made myself better for her.
My hopes blew up, and I fell back into old habits.
Because if she’s having a baby with someone else—with him of all fucking people—I cannot wish that their relationship’ll implode.
That he’ll just show his true colors, and she’ll dump his ass.
Because if I know anything, it is that a parent is a child’s world.
And Amanda’s child deserves their whole world.
I’m more than my failures.
I whisper it to myself like a fucking prayer. As if it means something or words could undo the fact that someone else gets to give her what I once thought would be ours.
I’m more than my failures.
In the dark of this back seat, it still feels like I’m nothing but the sum of all my failings—lack of cum included. A broken, empty version of the man she once saw a future with.
Because there is no baby for me, but Amanda is—
“Pregnant.”
I repeated the word again as if my refusal to believe it could make it any less true.
For a second, Amanda’s eyes softened, and she reached her hand out to me, palm up, in gentle offering.
I grabbed it because her touch is my lifeline.
I couldn’t show her this hurt me. Maybe the what ifs of what we could have been hurt her too.
What if I had been braver? What if I had told her what I felt for her three years ago?
What if I had understood that she could never be “just a friend” any of the times she’s had my back since we were kids?
Without letting go of her hand, I downed a shot of bourbon, and unlike her, I welcomed the numbing burn. Instead of pulling away, I slid over to the chair next to her and held her hand in both of mine.
“Are you feeling okay? Nauseous?”
She nodded. “Sometimes.”
Amanda took a sip of the soda. “The ginger ale helps. Thank you.”
She squeezed my hand and let go of it. Friend zoned. Dismissed. That’s what it felt like. I wanted to grab her. Hold her. Kiss her so hard that the life she carries becomes biologically mine. But I couldn’t. Inside, I tried to concede to him. The live-in boyfriend and baby daddy were his labels.
There was no way they’d walk away from each other now. No way in hell.
“So”—I laced my fingers together so as not to reach out to her again—“what did he say?”
“I haven’t told him—” Her throat was clogged, and she avoided my gaze. “It feels like I’m trapping him, you know? Hell, it feels like I’m trapping myself.” She swallowed thickly. “You’re the first person I’m telling.”
Of course she was telling me first. I’m her person. I’m her everything, but… What a waste.
“What do you want to do?”
The answer was immediate. “Fuck if I know.”
I didn’t believe that for a minute. She wanted it. Amanda had a job, she had a partner, she had a life plan. She wouldn’t not have it. I gently bumped her shoulder into mine, and she met my eyes.
“Talk me through it.” Because even if it killed me, I was keeping all the labels I could hold on to.
“I just—” She choked on a sob, and I felt myself lose all the progress I had made in putting distance between us. I wrapped my arm around her shoulder and pushed her head into the crook of my neck.
“I just don’t know how, you know? I can get insurance, but when will I write?
When will I work? How will I pay for shit?
Twelve to sixteen thousand dollars a year!
That’s apparently what it costs to keep a baby in the U.S.
Childcare alone is going to be like a grand a month—I—we’re not even married… ”
“Shhh.” I got her to quiet down before she started hyperventilating. “The first question is, do you want it? Do you want his baby?”