by Lark, Jane
Neither Mom nor Lindy would believe me when I said no. Both of them kept pressuring me.
I shut them out of my mind, and sought refuge in thoughts of Rach again.
She was opening up to me more now. She spoke of things from her childhood. She still never broached any more recent subjects though. But I was getting to know her better, including all her little quirks, like how she bit the tip of her tongue when she was writing.
As I put my key in the lock of the door to my apartment I remembered Rach taking my order in the restaurant while secretly biting her tongue. It made me decide to eat at the restaurant after my run.
My cell buzzed as I walked through the door. I took it out of my pocket.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Jason. I’m just calling to tell you Lindy is seeing a lot of Billy.”
God, what was this maneuver? “Is she? Well, it may be a good thing, Mom. She needs someone to talk to and they always got on okay.”
I’d always known Lindy was controlling, I’d learned in the last week just how manipulative she could be. She totally had Mom on her side. Like this was an out and out war, and Mom was standing on the opposite hill. The problem was, it wasn’t me they saw themselves fighting against, it was Rach.
“Are you saying you don’t care, Jason?”
“Mom, Lindy and I are finished, if she hooks up with Billy, then good for her.”
“Billy is your best friend.”
“Yeah, and so they’ve spent a lot of time around each other, and he likes her…” And good luck to him.
“Is that girl still with you?”
I’d shut the door behind me as I was speaking and I’d taken off my hat and scarf, and hung them up, now I was juggling the cell between getting my arms out of my jacket. “Yeah, Mom, she is, we’re getting on well. I really like her. Thanks for asking.”
“There’s no need to be sarcastic. Your Dad and I are finding it very awkward working with Lindy.”
“Well, I’m sorry you feel that way, but…” My coat slid off. I hung it on the peg. “…I finished with Lindy as soon as things started with Rach, and I can’t help it that I’ve fallen for Rach or that I just don’t think Lindy is right for me…”
I turned around and saw something left on the counter.
“Jason, you and Lindy have been together for years. I agree with her, this other girl has brainwashed you, or something, seduced you I suppose––”
“Mom, we’ve had this conversation, give me a break…”
“Give you a break, Jason… Your discarded fiancée has been crying on my shoulder for a fortnight––”
“Well now she can cry on Billy’s shoulder.” Perhaps it was a heartless thing to say, but I was sure Lindy was playing out this drama. “Mom, I really don’t think she loved me for who I was. Can’t you just be glad I feel happier with Rachel. Rachel is good for me, Mom. We even run together, Lindy never even tried to run with me, you know she didn’t, she used to hate me going out to do it. Rach and I, we laugh together, she cares about me…”
I walked over to the counter.
Rach had left after me. Her shift had started at one. She must have left whatever it was out.
It was a long plastic strip.
“And how can you know that? You’ve only known her weeks, and you don’t even know where she comes from.”
“Philadelphia.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Mom.” I was tired of them attacking, Rachel. “Just give me the benefit of the doubt…”
When I reached the counter I absentmindedly picked up the plastic thing, not really looking at it.
“Jason.” My name was a reprimand, and then Mom started crying.
“I’m sorry, Mom, but I know you’d like Rachel, you would. Maybe I should bring her home to meet you. Maybe then you’d understand.”
I heard her sniff and control her crying.
“I’m sorry you’re stuck in the middle of me and Lindy. You shouldn’t have to be. But I can’t keep pretending Lindy was right for me, she wasn’t. I care about her, I do, we spent years together, but Rachel is more important now, and Lindy can’t expect me to let you and her keep running Rachel down. I’m sorry, Mom.” I looked down at the plastic thing in my hand and felt my heartbeat pause.
Oh my God.
A pregnancy test.
A fucking positive, pregnancy test.
“I’ve got to go, Mom.”
I just ended the call.
Fuck.
Fuck!
No.
Seriously?
I breathed, realizing I probably hadn’t breathed for a minute or two.
Really?
It had to be Rachel’s. No one else could have been in the apartment.
My heart pounded.
God.
We’d used condoms, every time.
It was just so odd the way it was left on the side, though, like it had been left for me to find.
But what a way to announce such a thing, and, what the hell did it mean?
My head was spinning. Had she seriously left it out deliberately?
It was too early to go to the restaurant. I couldn’t talk to her before she finished her shift anyway.
My hand ran over my head. Shit. I didn’t understand.
No.
Rachel? What the hell does this mean?
I’d go running. I couldn’t do anything now anyway. I’d go running.
Chapter Eleven
I walked into the restaurant, my heart racing. Only tonight it wasn’t purely from the adrenaline stirred by running.
After I’d got back from my run and showered, I’d decided to come straight down here. My hair was still wet.
Rachel was taking an order. I knew she was biting the tip of her tongue as she wrote it down, nodding to the women around the table.
The sight of her brought a flood of emotion. She was so familiar to all my senses, and my heart cried out to her. Oh, Rach, why?
She was wearing her black pencil skirt, and she was side on to me. It hugged the curve of her bottom and her thighs and her stomach, that was completely flat, and her white shirt fitted her slender frame perfectly, caressing the curve of her breasts.
I was full on, properly, in love with her. I was. Perhaps it had been love at first sight. I don’t remember ever feeling this deeply for Lindy.
God, Rach. Why leave it on the side?
She glanced across at me and gave me a weak smile, while her cheeks turned pink.
Then she focused back on the table she was serving.
Another of the waitresses came over to me. “Do you want me to get you a table while she’s serving?”
They all knew I was her boyfriend now.
“Yeah.” God my heart was still going like a bass beat. I probably should’ve waited until she’d finished her shift, but the questions in my head were driving me mad.
Was she really pregnant? Fucking hell. It had only been three weeks or so. Could you even find out that quickly?
The other waitress led me to a table near the kitchen entrance. It was where I normally sat, because then Rach and I had more opportunity to smile and nod at each other when she passed.
I felt like she was the blood in my veins, like without her I wouldn’t be able to breathe, or my heart wouldn’t beat. I’d be paralyzed or dead if I didn’t have her.
I sat for a little while, watching as she took food out to a family and then took menus to another table. I thought she was coming over to me then, but she didn’t, she went to another table to take their order.
I felt like my heart might beat right out of my chest when she did come toward me. She looked hesitant and her smile appeared uncertain. Maybe she’d been hoping someone else would serve me, but the others had hung back waiting for her.
She grabbed a menu off the counter as she moved, and then held it out to me when she reached the table. “Hi.”
I’d wanted to surprise her tonight and make her smile when I’d first
thought of coming, but she’d beaten me on the surprise factor, multiplied by a hundred.
“Hey.” I didn’t know what to say to her. I could hardly say, are you really pregnant, in the middle of the restaurant. But I couldn’t hold the question in.
“I didn’t know you were coming in, what can I get you?”
“Did you leave it on the counter for me?”
We’d spoken at the same time, but she still heard me and turned crimson.
“Dammit,” she whispered. “Did I leave it on the counter? I meant to throw it in the bin.”
I nodded.
“Oh shit. I’m really sorry.”
My heart was still racing. “Rach?” My eyebrows lifted.
“Oh God, Jason, I’m sorry, you think it’s yours. It isn’t yours. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I… I was in shock. I…” Tears flooded into her eyes, and I instantly regretted mentioning it while she was working. But at the same time, I felt grief and confusion, and God, I don’t even know what. My life had turned topsy-turvy within a fortnight, and now it had spun entirely off its axis.
She took a breath. “Just tell me what you want to eat, we can’t talk now. I’ll try and get off early.” She sniffed then bit her lip, and wiped her eyes with her cuff. “I’m sorry. I know it’s gonna ruin things.”
I caught her hand as it lowered. “It’s okay, Rach. We’ll talk in a bit. Just get me a coffee and a burger.”
“Yeah.” She sniffed again, as I let her hand go.
One of the other waitresses brought my order over, and she lifted her eyebrows at me when she put it down implying she’d had some conversation with Rach over her bringing it across.
Rach was over the other side of the restaurant serving another family. Then she moved to the far corner to give a couple of guys their bill.
I watched her, as I lifted my burger to eat it.
There were a hundred questions running through my head. Whose baby? There obviously was a baby. So whose? How? She’d admitted to one-night stands, was it the product of one of those? Did she even know the guy’s name? Or was she not even sure which guy out of several could be the father?
I had to know what had happened in her life to leave her pregnant, alone, and ready to jump off Manhattan Bridge.
Over the last couple of days, I’d felt like she’d given my life some meaning again, and now I wasn’t sure of anything. Everything kept shifting like sand under my feet when I stepped on it.
Fucking hell, Rach. How did you end up in this mess? And why would you do it to yourself?
She didn’t flirt with the guys across the room. I was afraid she would, with doubts unraveling and tangling in my head. They paid their bill and when one of the guys said something to her, she merely smiled at him, then shook her head.
I had a feeling he’d asked her out.
I felt a rush of anger. I’d never been jealous over Lindy. I’d never needed to be, but hell I sure was jealous now, or perhaps the better word was possessive. I felt threatened and bruised over the revelation about the baby. I felt like Rach was my territory, just mine. But now I kept picturing her with other guys. I didn’t want to, and I didn’t want her to be with anyone else but me, now. I’d found her. She was mine. And I wanted to be hers.
When the guys counted out notes I could tell they’d given her a hefty tip, even though she hadn’t flirted. The problem was, she didn’t even need to flirt with guys, she was so beautiful that they were interested whether she did, or didn’t. She’d listened to me the other week and she’d stopped flaunting herself, but even so she was just a great girl and her light voice and the spirit burning in her eyes sucked you in. Well that and her hot body.
Had I been seduced? I really didn’t think so. But fuck, she was pregnant. How long had she suspected? When would she have told me if she’d not forgotten and left the test out? Or would she just have got rid of it and never said?
Dammit. Rachel.
She didn’t finish early. I had to endure watching her for an hour and a half. When they closed up the diner, I went out back to wait for her, and stood with my hands in my pockets looking up at the sky and watching the mist of my breath rise. I felt like the initial shock was wearing off and now the weight of this reality was setting down on me, heavily.
A baby. Was I going to stay with her? Was I going to let her stay with me?
I’m only twenty-two. Just twenty-two. If Lindy and I had got married next year, I’d still have waited three years or more to start a family. I’d have waited until I could afford somewhere larger to live, somewhere with a yard for a kid to play in.
Rach was only twenty-one. We’d never even discussed what hopes and aspirations she had. We’d just spent the last three weeks living. We were young. Rach was a life’s-just-for-living type of girl.
If we did stay together, how would we live with the two of us and a baby in my tiny apartment?
She came out the door pulling on her coat, and her gaze lifted to my face then looked down at the sidewalk as she continued putting on her coat.
She looked guilty and concerned, like she didn’t know what to say to me.
Well I didn’t know what to say either, and I’d started to feel as if I was getting to know her––now I felt as though I didn’t know her at all. Shit, wasn’t that what Lindy had said to me just over a week ago?
Yet still, when her gaze finally met mine, I had that rush of feeling, like a river tide sweeping in racing through my body. I loved her. I did. I really did. I didn’t want to let her go.
Then what was I going to do, say I wanted her kid too? God knew. I didn’t. Not yet.
“Can we walk in Brooklyn Bridge Park? I don’t wanna go home yet.”
Home? Was it her home? Was this thing between us permanent or temporary? I deliberately hadn’t asked myself and hadn’t discussed it with her, because I didn’t want to think about it yet. Okay we were living together, but that was accidental. I didn’t know what this thing was between us, it just was. It had gathered like yeast in dough, and I was afraid any discussion would be like cold striking the fermentation, and it would all collapse.
I kept my hands in my pockets as we turned and walked toward the park, slowly.
“Aren’t you gonna shout at me?”
I glanced at her. “Why? What good is shouting going to do?”
“I thought you’d be angry.”
Was I angry, over the baby? “I’m not angry, just shocked, and a bit, well… I don’t know what to think, Rach. Or what to do. I just wish––”
She looked up at me. “You hadn’t met me, or you’d left me on the bridge,” she said, finishing my sentence, although that hadn’t been what I was going to say. I didn’t correct her though and she carried on. “I understand if you want to tell me to get lost…”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know if that was what I wanted to say to her. But fuck I loved her. Devil and deep blue sea––here we were again. Would I ever escape these choices?
Her hands had been at her sides, now they slid into her pockets and she sped up the pace, taking a step ahead of me then turning to cross the street.
I was adrift on the deep blue sea with her, and it was rocking beneath my feet.
Dammit, I didn’t want to let her go, and I didn’t want to let her down, but… could I really keep her, and her kid?
“You’re going to have to tell me what happened before I found you on Manhattan Bridge,” I said, as we reached the other sidewalk. She stopped and looked at me, her hands still in her pockets. “I know you don’t want to, Rach, but I need to know…” It was a plea. I just needed to be able to understand. Perhaps if I did, I could adjust my head to all of this.
She looked at me, her eyes dark in the streetlight. She was thinking, making her own choices. “I’ll tell you in the park.”
I’d feared losing the joy and the shiny newness of our relationship. It was gone; she was deflated. She’d lost the bright light which had called me to her through the dark when we’d gon
e to the club.
I felt broken.
She walked a little ahead of me in silence leading the way, her hands in her pockets as mine were.
A part of me wanted to hold her, but another part just couldn’t reach out.
My heart was drumming in my chest again, and I really felt like I didn’t know what to do with myself, whether to laugh, cry, or shout, as we entered the park.
She walked to the rail at the water’s edge, gripped it and looked down at the inky water. She never spoke.
I hovered a little behind her. My hands still in my pockets.
“Rach?”
She turned and leaned back against the rail, her eyes on mine.
“Whose is it? Do you know?”
She looked hurt. “Yes, I know.”
“Whose then?”
“It belongs to the guy I lived with for over a year before I met you.”
“You were living with a guy?”
“I walked out on him, and left everything there. Well it was all his anyway, he’d bought everything for me for a year.”
A little like I’d been doing.
“Start at the beginning, Rach.”
She reached behind her and hooked one foot up on the railing then pulled herself up so she sat on it.
I was worried she’d fall back, but I still didn’t touch her. I could grab her if she did fall though.
She looked at me again for a moment, then over my shoulder at the other people in the park, there weren’t many.
“I didn’t grow up in a house, like you, with a family, like you. I’m one of six, and the youngest…” She’d never spoken of her family before. “Mom was a sucker for guys. We’re all from different fathers…”
“And you’re not in touch with any of your family?”
She glanced at me again, like it was a stupid question. “No. We all got out of there as fast as we could. I never went back, I don’t know if they did. I haven’t seen any of them since I left Mom’s.”
She looked across the park once more.
“My uncles came and went from the house all the time. Countless men, so many I don’t even remember the number she got through. Then when I was fifteen one of them took a fancy to me––”