My Forbidden Date: A Brother’s Best Friend Romance

by Tara Brent

  I’d known Rick for a long time, he’d gone to school with my older brother and the two of them had been instant best friends. I’d always liked him, but I never dreamed that he would like me back. But he did. At least, I had thought he did.

  I’d never seen him this upset before.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know what you want me to say.” I hated that my words broke and my voice wavered as I spoke.

  Rick turned, he sighed as he looked at me and then sat back down. “No, it’s not your fault. I just... I don’t have time for this right now. I had expected this to all happen differently.”

  “But we can figure it out, right?” I asked him, pleading with him silently.

  I’d always seen Rick as so grown up and mature, surely he would know how to fix this. I needed him to tell me that this would be okay. That this was just a bump in the road and that we could fix it, we could change our plans. Rick was clever, he could sort it out and I knew that he could find a way for us to make this work. Except as I looked into Rick’s deep dark eyes, he just stared at me, looking just as terrified as I felt.

  “I... I don’t think we can, Samantha.”

  He avoided looking at me, his gaze going to the floor as if he just couldn’t meet me in the eyes. It was then that I knew.

  This wasn’t going to work.

  I gulped thickly as I felt the tears fall down my face. I couldn’t stop them and ashamed, I cried as I became scared of the situation I had found myself in.

  “Oh, no... no, it’s okay, Samantha,” he said, shuffling closer to me and grabbing my hands. He held them gently. “Don’t cry,” he whispered, attempting to comfort me. "I don't like it when you cry, Sammy."

  The pet name made me smile a little and for a moment I felt a small ray of hope. However, that didn’t last very long.

  “I’ll go with you to the clinic, okay? I’ll hold your hand,” he said.

  “Clinic?” I asked. For a second I was confused about what he meant, but as I looked at him I knew exactly what he was talking about. “You want to get rid of it?” I said, struggling to hold it together. Such a suggestion struck fear into my heart.

  Abortion felt like such a dirty word in my mind, something to be afraid of. I didn't know anyone who'd had to do such a thing. I didn't even know how it worked or where to go. It was something that happened to other girls - not me.

  “Don’t you?” he asked as if it were the obvious answer when it sounded like anything but to me.

  I stared at him blankly. I felt speechless.

  “Like I said, this was never a part of our plan. I’m going to be busy for the next few years with my business. You know that I’m doing really well and I can’t afford to not give it one hundred percent right now. Plus, you’re going to Yale. It’s going to be hard as it is with the distance between us. How could we possibly do that with a baby?! And all my money is invested, I can’t ask my parents for any more of a loan, I was lucky to get what I did.”

  He was right of course. It all made sense. But that didn’t mean that it didn’t hurt. It hurt me in a way that I hadn’t known before and I wasn’t sure that I could cope with the pain.

  “I think I need to be alone,” I whispered, overwhelmed with emotions. I was shaking. I felt sick. It was hard to believe that this was my life now. I didn’t want Rick to see me like this. I had always been an ugly crier and it was impossible to hold everything inside when I felt like my world was crumbling around me.

  “Samantha, come on, you know I’m right,” he said defensively.

  All it did was make me angry.

  “Just... I can’t look at you right now, just please go.” I turned away from him and lay on my bed, facing the wall stubbornly and making it clear that I didn’t want to talk to him any longer. It felt like a childish gesture but I didn't care.

  “Fine,” he mumbled, clearly annoyed.

  He leaned down to give me a kiss on my cheek but I flinched away. His kiss didn’t feel welcome. It made something unpleasant twist inside me.

  I waited until I heard my bedroom door close before I let out all the pain and frustration I was feeling. I curled up on my bed and sobbed into my pillow. Though I knew I had Rick, he had made me feel alone. He hadn’t said anything that I had expected him to and I felt a deep betrayal at his words and how easily he had turned on me. He had hardly asked me how I felt about it or what I wanted to do. Instead, he had just told me that he was right and got annoyed with me.

  It was a shock as me and Rick had never really argued before and I hadn’t expected this at all. I had honestly thought that he would just tell me everything was okay, yet the opposite had happened and he had made me feel even worse about this situation.

  I had turned the circumstances around and around in my mind. Never had I ever considered getting rid of the baby. I sniffled as I looked down at my stomach. It was too small to see anything, but there was a little life in there somewhere and it gave me a feeling inside that I had never experienced before. Something profound.

  Yet, I hated myself as I knew that Rick was right. I was eighteen and he was twenty-three. I had no experience with babies. I hadn’t even held a real baby before. I didn’t know anything about them. And I knew, babies cost money and time. My family was well off, but they wouldn’t be pleased about this situation, so I couldn’t rely on them for money. How could I ask for that? They were going to be so disappointed in me. Honestly, I was disappointed in myself. This happened to other girls, not to me. I was an honor student, I was top of my class, I was going to Yale. Now all of those things meant nothing.

  My phone vibrated from where I had shoved it under my pillow. It was Rick.

  I’m sorry, it read.

  I sat up frustrated as I read it. What a jerk! I felt like throwing my phone across my room but instead, I threw the pregnancy test, feeling betrayed by my own body.

  I should be happy that he had apologized, but it just made me angry. How dare he have the nerve to apologize for something that he wasn’t sorry for? He was sorry that he had upset me. But he wasn’t sorry that he wanted me to get an abortion. He wasn’t sorry that I was going through this.

  He’ll never understand.

  I felt like everything was ruined. I wasn’t sure that we could fix this. The way that Rick had spoken to me, the way he had made me feel at my most vulnerable... He had broken my heart. I wasn’t sure if I could ever forgive him for that.

  ***

  I shuffled in my seat uncomfortably. It was an awful plastic thing that creaked every time that I moved. It made me feel self-conscious as if everyone was staring at me every time I shifted. I felt ashamed and my face burned in embarrassment at finding myself in such a place.

  You can do this. You need to do this.

  Except I couldn’t make myself believe my own words. It didn’t feel right. Nothing about this felt right, but I had no choice. What else could I do?

  I stared at my phone, my hands shaking. The clinic was silent and there were a few women sitting in the tiny white waiting room. I was surrounded by posters depicting sexual health and contraception and I wished I had known everything that was written up there. I hadn’t realized how naive I was until it was too late.

  I wondered what the other women were here for. Were they getting abortions too? Or were they here for something else? There was a middle-aged lady who looked very well put together.

  There's no way you’d be as stupid as me, I thought. She must have been there for something else.

  I wished I had told my mom. I wished that I had told someone. Anyone. But I had only told Rick. How could I admit this to anyone? I would have to explain who the father was and I didn't want Rick to get into trouble. I didn't want to have to explain how stupid and naive I had been. I would seem like such a stupid little girl to them.

  Everything had been fine until this had happened but now everything had changed and I couldn't stand the sight of Rick. After our discussion the other night, I'd been awake all night and ended up crying mysel
f to sleep. I tossed and turned the whole night, the thoughts of my predicament turning around and around in my head. I was scared. Terrified. I knew I needed to make some very important, hard decisions. The first one of which would be breaking up with Rick. The way he had spoken to me, how he had made me feel so alone in my difficult time... it had shown me a side of him that I didn't like and I couldn't forget it. It was too hard to forgive.

  I had ruined everything, but I couldn't undo any of this. I couldn't go back in time. No. So instead I had called Rick and broken up with him and to my surprise, it wasn't as hard as I expected it to be. No. That was the easy part.

  Still, there was no avoiding it.

  I wished that I could just pretend I had never been with Rick and move on. But it was impossible. It wasn’t just me who was feeling the effects of the break-up. My parents were bugging me as to why I had suddenly started avoiding Rick when he was at the house - I would hide in my room and lock my door, turning my music up loud so I didn't have to listen to his stupid voice.

  My parents had always known I had a crush on Rick and Rick’s parents always teased that we would get together in the future. After all, they were all best friends. We all lived on the same street. We had grown up together in the same way that they had. They were frustrated because we couldn’t give them a straight answer to what had happened no matter how much they asked. To them, it seemed like I was giving Rick the cold shoulder out of nowhere. I had merely told them that I had given up on my crush and that I needed to be serious, ready for when I went to college. In the end, I took the blame and said I wanted Yale more than I wanted a silly crush. I wasn’t sure why I didn’t tell the truth. Maybe it was because I was scared. But then again, he hadn’t told the truth either.

  I couldn’t be with Rick after he had made me feel like I was forced into a corner. He had made me feel like I didn’t have a choice. Like the choice I had been thinking about was wrong and that he was right. It was unacceptable. I just couldn’t look at him the same way. Things felt different and it was like I had seen him in the wrong light and once I had seen him that way it was impossible to erase it from my mind. Rick had always been understanding, compassionate and good with my emotions - with knowing what I wanted even when I didn’t. I think that was why I had thought he would support me. I had thought I had known him. Obviously, I was wrong.

  I was wrong about a lot of things.

  I wiped my eyes as they filled with tears. It was hard to stay calm and to process that this was real and not some kind of horrific nightmare. I had never dreamed that I would end up here.

  “Samantha Jenkins,” a polite voice called and a lady dressed in a nurse's uniform was waiting for me. She smiled at me kindly but it did nothing to rest the beating of my heart or the clamminess of my sweating hands.

  I felt my heart drop as I stood on shaky legs.

  This was it. There was no going back now. Everything was going to change.

  I took a deep breath though it was far from soothing and I involuntarily let out a sob. I looked at the floor ashamed and then walked towards the door.

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