10. Kendall
CHAPTER TEN
Kendall
THEN
I asked James to meet me at the Tickled Tea.
He said he’d meet me there at eleven, peak brunch time for a typical Saturday morning.
I arrived twenty minutes early. I grabbed a table outside and watched the steady flow of foot traffic.
I ordered a chai latte, sans raspberry flavoring, and it’s sitting in front of me now with condensation dripping down the side of the cup.
I looked up online whether or not chai lattes have caffeine in them, a fact I never concerned myself with until now.
Luckily, the Tickled Tea had a decaf option. Silver linings or whatever.
I used the twenty minutes before James arrived to prepare. To settle my nerves and find my words.
“Hey.”
I’m pulled out of my haze by James’s chipper greeting, followed by a sweet kiss on my cheek. “Hi,” I croak.
“Sorry I’m late.” He pulls out the seat across from me and takes it. The unruffled, nearly slap-happy smile on his face makes me want to scream. Not at him, but at myself. Or at the universe for flipping my world upside down. I manage to keep my cool.
“You’re not late,” I tell him with a level voice. “I just came a little early.” Actually, if we’re talking technicalities, I’m the one who’s late. Very late.
He looks at the long line that’s formed inside.
I can see him consider whether or not he should wait twenty-or-so minutes for a drink and a breakfast sandwich.
A mundane dilemma considering the bomb I’m about to drop on his lap.
Though maybe letting him order some food might help ease the blow.
At least he won’t be distraught and hungry.
“Did you want to get some food—”
“I’m pregnant.” Fuck it.
I watch the words tumble through his head. Each syllable, each consonant and vowel. As if he has to dissect each one, studying them to make sure he understood what I just told him. “What?”
“I—I’m preg—”
“Yeah, I heard you,” he answers, and the edge in his voice makes me want to stand up and walk away. This was a mistake. I shouldn’t have told him. I should’ve just figured this shit out on my own. He runs his hands through his hair, tugging at the roots. “Are you sure?”
His question confuses the fuck out of me. “What do you mean?”
“Like, did you take a test or something? Did you see a doctor?”
“I took a test,” I inform him. I’m a convoluted mess of emotions. I don’t want to be mad at him, but he’s making it a little difficult. “And I’m…I don’t know. I guess I’ll see a doctor soon.”
“So, you aren’t sure,” he reasons. “You haven’t had a doctor confirm—”
“Pregnancy tests are highly accurate. I took, like, five of them. I don’t think I’d get five false positives.
” My patience is balancing on an unsteady teeter-totter.
Bile climbs up my throat, turning my tongue sour and acidic, and for a second, I remind myself I’m fucking pregnant.
I’m a mixture of rampant hormones and the onset of morning sickness.
I’m not in the right headspace for this kind of conversation.
“And you’re sure you took it right?”
Is he fucking serious right now?
“You really can’t take a pregnancy test wrong.” The pendulum has snapped. My voice is loud and tense, and I don’t even care that the people around me can hear our very private conversation. I don’t care that I’m mad at him. “I peed on the stick and waited three minutes.”
“I mean, we’ve been using condoms,” he rationalizes. Not to me though. He makes his plea, his bargain, to the pregnancy gods, possibly even to a nearby stork making its rounds, hoping and wishing this is all just some mistake. A fluke. Five pregnancy tests and they were all faulty.
“Yeah, well, maybe one broke, and we didn’t even know,” I tell him.
“I don’t know, James.” I can’t do this anymore.
I’m so done with this conversation. I didn’t expect him to jump up and down with excitement, but I didn’t expect this.
This shell of the man I’ve been seeing, sifting through all the ways to erase the last three months of his life. To a time before we met.
Fucking pregnancy hormones. I don’t care if they’re causing me to make rash decisions.
I’m starting to turn into this unreasonable, irrational bundle of anxiety and anger, and I don’t know how much more of this I can take.
I need to get out of here before I do or say something I’m going to regret.
I stand up to leave, not bothering to take my drink with me.
“Where are you going?” he frantically asks.
I turn back to face him. “I’m going to go.”
“Wait, Kendall—”
“It’s fine,” I tell him, attempting to control the waver in my voice. I hide it with indifference. At least, I’m trying to. “Just…don’t worry about it. I’ll figure it out, I guess.”
“No, Kendall, I’m sorry,” he pleads. “I didn’t mean to react this way. Please don’t leave.”
“It’s fine, really,” I tell him, my voice cold.
“Forget I even said anything. Like I said, I’ll figure it out.
” I leave before he has a chance to say anything else, to convince me he’s really okay with it when it would be a complete and utter lie.
I don’t turn back to look at him once. Not even when I slide into my car and he’s still in my periphery, no doubt a dumbfounded look of guilt and regret on his face.
I practically peel out of the parking lot, and next thing I know, I’m in front of my apartment building.
I’m parked in my car, wondering what to do next.
I have this clump of cells growing bigger and bigger each day.
It’s half me, half James. And he just wrote the whole situation off with irrelevant details like questioning the integrity of an elongated tube of rubber or how to pee on a damn stick.
What the hell am I supposed to do with that?
How am I going to figure this shit out? A baby isn’t part of my plan.
I moved here for a goddamn job, a job I’m loving so far, not to plan a future with a baby in it.
And I don’t think Principal Morrow would be thrilled to have her temporary substitute need her own damn sub.
I trudge out of my car, keeping the same lousy pace as I walk up to my apartment. Once inside, I change into sweatpants. A Saturday in sweatpants with a tub of ice cream. Too bad a bottle of wine can’t join the party.
I’m about to whip out a spoon from my utensil drawer when I hear a knock at the front door. I’m scared to see who’s on the other side. With the apprehension and fear making my body sluggish, I undo the dead bolt on my door, and when I peek through the narrow opening, I see James.
His solemn face and downturned eyes cleave my heart, making me wonder where we go from here. How do we move on from this? Do we part ways? Too broken and fragile to go on as if everything is going to be okay? Or do we somehow make this work, unwanted pregnancy and all?
“What do you want?” I don’t look him in the eyes, worried if I do, I’ll start blubbering like an idiot. I need to stay calm and collected. In control when I feel the least in control I’ve ever been in my life.
“I’m sorry.”
I almost break, bury my face in my hands, and start crying and crying until I’ve become a wet, sobbing mess. But I try to keep it together, try being the operative word. “It’s fine,” I lie.
“No, it’s not,” he responds. I see him take a half step closer then stop. I haven’t allowed him in, and he’s trying to respect that. “It was a lot to take in, and I didn’t handle it well.”
“James, it’s fine. We—we said we were going to take things slow anyway. This wasn’t anything serious, so I get it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We weren’t meant to be something serious, so I understand why you’re…reacting the way you are,” I explain. “It’s not like we’re actually together. We’re not in a relationship—”
“Because you don’t want to be.”
I look at him like he just said those words in a foreign language. When I don’t respond, he continues.
“Kendall, I want what you want. If you want us to take things slow, then we take things slow.” He takes that step, no longer hesitant but now so sure and confident.
“If you want to be with me and let me call you my girlfriend, then I want to fucking be with you too. I want you to call me your boyfriend.”
I thought those cheesy titles would turn me off. They’re too cliché, too corny. But when he says those words, my heart swells.
I start to brush him off, turn away with my hand on the doorknob, ready to close my door and leave my vulnerable, achy heart protected behind it.
But he reaches for my face, cupping my cheeks in his hands.
I see the desperation settle in his eyes, right along the watery edges that have grown red and weary.
His nostrils flare, almost like he’s so goddamn frustrated, and it shifts something in me.
A tilt in the other direction. I’ve never seen him so hell-bent and determined, and a part of me bends.
“I’m not going to forget it,” he whispers. “And I’m not going anywhere.”
“You’re not?” My voice shakes, and it sounds hopeful when that’s the last thing I want.
I don’t want to hope. I don’t want to dream up a future where things could work out.
Where we’d actually be happy with a little baby on the way.
Because what if it didn’t? What if this all ends in a big mess we don’t even know how to come back from?
And throw a baby into that mix? How careless and stupid would that be of us?
But then James kisses me, soft and reassuring. He holds me like he’s never going to let go, stroking a hand down the back of my head. He cradles me in his arms, a soothing gesture that has me really believing everything is going to be okay.
“We’ll figure it out,” he whispers, hot against my cool, shaky skin. “I’m here, and we’re going to figure it out together.”