26. Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Six
Laredo
P regnant.
The word flashes in my head like a three-story-tall, red-hot fireplace poker stabbed between my ribs.
I drop to my knees next to Betty, who’s curled herself up into a ball, pressing her forehead against her knees, her arms wrapped tight, hoping nothing penetrates. I wrap an arm around her shoulder. “I’m here,” I whisper to let her know I’m not going anywhere.
“Ha! Do you hear yourself.” Her mom continues to throw shots at me. I can take them. I’ve not lived a righteous life and have had to deal with jealous boyfriends and a husband or two in my past. They don’t call me the black sheep of the family without reason. I’m used to being a target—bring it on.
“Stop. He didn’t know!” Betty shouts into her knees, never looking up at her mom. My hand strokes her lower back.
“It’s fine. She needs to get it out of her system. I’ll take it.” My words are for Betty, but I speak them loud enough to give her mom permission to continue her barrage. This is her moment. I’ll have mine soon enough.
I have a hundred questions, but I won’t ask them here. Not like this. Not with her mom hovering over us. I lower my backside to the ground next to Betty and match her sitting position. “We can stay like this all night. We don’t even have to speak.”
Betty pokes her head up, her eyes peeking through the wild strings of her dark hair, a questioning look gauging my seriousness.
“I’m here.” I repeat the words I should’ve said long ago.
She hooks her fingers around my biceps and presses her cheek against it. I wrap my arm around her and pull her tight against me. Her sniffles fade away as her mom stands in silence, staring at us.
“That’s it? You’re not going to tell him what he put you through? How irresponsible the two of you have been?” I ignore the daggers her mom shoots at me and focus my attention on Betty.
Betty does the same and whispers to me, “Do you want to come inside?”
I rise. I help her to her feet, a protective arm around her waist. “Mrs. Vacarro, your daughter and I are going inside to have a private conversation.” I spare Betty from having to dismiss her mother. “You’re right. We have a lot to talk about. I wish we had met under better circumstances. Hopefully the next time, it will be.” I tip my head at her, hoping she takes the hint.
“Hmmpf,” she snorts, and Betty pulls me when I pause.
“Don’t turn around. Nothing good ever follows one of her grunts,” she whispers.
“It’s funny that you think there’ll be a next time.” A half dozen retorts leap to the tip of my tongue, but they all halt when I realize this is Betty’s mom. It’s obvious my existence has caused damage to their relationship.
Betty opens the door to her apartment, and I turn to face her mom. Her hand clutches in front of her, fire in her eyes. She’s a fighter. Protective of her daughter. Good. Betty is worth protecting. “I pray that you are wrong.”
Her hands lower by her side, and she tilts her head, attempting to read me. I remain calm and don’t give her what she’s seeking. Betty tugs me by the wrist, pulling me into the apartment, and then slams the door in her mother’s face.
An audible breath escapes my lungs, and I wait for her to speak. To tell me that her mother is wrong. That I misheard what I just heard.
I wait for her to say anything.
Instead, she stumbles toward the couch as if it’s all she has the strength to do.
I feel the pounding in my chest as my heart races and my mind attempts to process everything.
My eyes search the small apartment for signs of a baby and come up empty. Did Betty have the kid? Am I a father?
Without thinking, my feet lead me down the narrow hallway leading to her bedroom. I know it’s an invasion of privacy, but I must know.
Like the main room, the bedroom is tiny. The secondhand dresser is so close to the end of the bed I doubt the drawer fully opens. No crib. No toys. Not even a diaper bag.
It leads me to only two conclusions. One of which I don’t want to think of as a possibility. “Is it true? Were you…” I don’t allow myself to complete the question but force myself to look at her.
Guilt and regret flood her face. A look that even the tears streaming down her cheeks won’t erase. Her nod confirms what her mother said. My mouth falls open with the next question, which she cuts off.
She raises her arms. “I know,” she starts, but she doesn’t know. If she did, she never would have withheld this from me. “This is not how you were supposed to find out.” She points to the couch for me to join her. Sitting is the last thing I want to do.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” When her face scrunches, I know she’s not prepared to answer me. “Where is he? She?” My voice cracks as the magnitude of what is occurring hits me.
Am I such a horrible person that she couldn’t pick up the phone and tell me? What did she fear?
She nibbles on her lip and mutters. “Sit.” She pats a spot next to her. “Please.”
I take a step toward the couch, my hands squeezing the back of the couch in a feeble attempt to steady my world. “Speak.”
Her watery eyes are filled with a regret that scares me like I’ve never experienced before. She stumbles to her feet, her gaze locking with me, an unspoken need to look me in the eye when she tells me. “Two weeks after you left last summer.” I watch her fight to maintain her shaky composure, and I stop breathing. “I realized I was late.”
My shoulders slump. How did I not know? Why didn’t I stay in contact with her? Because I never do. I’ve been the king of the fling forever. A few days of fun, and then off to the next city. The next girl.
We used protection. I’m not irresponsible. But it’s only 99.7 percent effective. Which makes us the lucky ones.
Betty’s finger toys with the back of my hand, and I realized I must’ve dropped my head to have something other than her to focus on. Her touch is tender. An everything is going to be alright touch.
Is it? How could it?
How can she be so calm?
I think back to last summer. Adam and I were feuding, our family band was breaking apart. Betty kept me together. She was my anchor. I should have told her how much I appreciated the time we spent together. But I didn’t. Everyone I cared about left me. Hailey for a solo career, Adam after our family band dissolved. It was so much easier to walk away from Betty before she did the same to me.
“I’m usually pretty regular, but it hadn’t been a typical week.” She wags a finger between the two of us. “At least not for me.” I feel the burn of her words. An indictment I deserve. Her words aren’t laced with anger or regret, just facts. She gives me a broken smile that, under different circumstances, I might find adorable. “I wasn’t concerned until I was,” she continues, and I already know what comes next.
“I took a home pregnancy test, and it was positive.” Her voice cracks with emotion, but I don’t look at her. I finally slip down to the couch, knowing I shouldn’t be on my feet when she tells me the rest.
A sniffle fills the air, and I’m not sure if it’s hers or mine. She slides onto the couch next to me, knees on the cushions, twisted toward me. “I’m sorry,” she whispers, and my blood runs cold because I have no idea what she is sorry for.
“I didn’t want to believe it. It’s not…” The tears return, and I force myself to look at her. This is a side of Betty that didn’t appear last summer. We were all good times, laughs, dancing, and joking. Of course there is another side to her. A side I want to protect just as much. I stroke the back of her neck; I don’t tell her everything’s going to be okay because I don’t know this.
“For three days, I walked around like a zombie. In denial. It wasn’t until day four that I told someone—Liv.”
I try not to react to the fact that she told her best friend, Olivia, before telling the father of her child.
“She’s the one who convinced me to tell my mom. And she pressed for me to call you.”
I would applaud Olivia for having some common sense, but Betty is referring to a call that never came.
“But I kept putting it off. Told myself I’ll call after my mom stopped freaking out.” She shifts, swinging her legs to the floor. The minute her toes hit the floor, they begin bouncing, a rapid, staccato bounce that matches the rapid pounding in my chest. “Then I told myself I’ll call after the doctor’s appointment.”
My fingers dig deep into the sofa cushions. “Did you…”
Her hand lands on my forearm, halting me from asking the question I don’t want to. “It was a false positive. The home test was wrong.”
I remain frozen.
“The doctor performed three different tests to confirm. I was never pregnant.” Her voice remains strained. “The home pregnancy test was wrong,” she repeats, making sure I understand.
I should feel relief, but I don’t. Instead, I feel an unearned sense of loss. “You were never?”
She squeezes my forearm. “No.” My gaze shifts to her hand. “There’s no baby. Never was.”
My chest remains tight. I realize her answer isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card. It’s an indictment of me. How I’ve lived my life. Reckless. Irresponsible. If I had presented myself as an upstanding person, she would have never questioned whether to call me. I should’ve known. And I realize I wanted to know, regardless of the outcome. “I wish you had called.” My voice is filled with regret. An image of a baby bouncing on my knee, Betty and my sister, Hailey, giggling on the beach as our son takes his first steps. Betty and I holding hands walking the boardwalk pushing a stroller.
It’s a ridiculous image to possess, yet it warms my heart. For the first time in my life, I picture myself with an overwhelming sense of joy from something other than being on a stage in front of thousands of people.
“There was no need. We both agreed as spectacular as our time together was, we lived in two different worlds.” Her voice is tender, gentle, a reminder of the tender heart beneath. “I had upset my world enough for the both of us.” She waves her hand toward the door. “My mom.” Her arms whirlwind toward the folding table with the mismatched folding chairs. “My living arrangements, my job, everything changed.”
She’s right. We had agreed to go our separate ways. I realize this is on me. “I should’ve called you.”
Her head shakes, letting me know she doesn’t agree. “It’s not…”
I lean into her and press my lips to her cheek. I give her a ghost kiss. “What impacts you impacts me.”
Her eyelids flutter, and her gaze stares deep as if she’s intending to read my soul. Her tongue darts out, swiping across the top of her lower lip before she speaks. “Who are you, Laredo Williams?” The twinkle in her eye gives her away. She had feared this conversation because she had only known the wild, rock-star version of me. The guy that would run away from responsibility. The type of guy who, if told he got someone pregnant, would pump a fist, high-five a stranger, buy the bar a round, and then leave town to avoid being tied down.
It’s the version I show the world. It’s the only version of me that Betty knows. It’s time for me to change that.
I pull her into a tight embrace and place a kiss on the crook of her neck. Tonight, I’ve discovered a secret about Betty; it’s about time I share one of my own. “You should never have to carry a secret on your own. You can talk to me. I’m sorry for not giving you the impression that I care for you, Betty. That I care for us.”
Her focus is brighter than any spotlight I’ve ever stood under. She’s taking in every word. Good, because I want to make sure she hears this next part.
“It’s about time you got to know me. The real me.” I think of my sister. Whenever I misbehaved, she would threaten to tell the world my real name. The one I hated growing up. I remember the day I adopted the moniker Laredo in middle school to impress a cute girl who had just returned to Indiana from a family trip in Texas, where she fell in love with cowboys, ranches, and horses.
That was decades ago. Very few people these days know my real name. It’s about time that’s changed.
“My real name is Zekiel. Zekiel Williams. It’s time you met him.”