“She’s at the house.”
“At the house? Where are you?”
“I had to leave. Where are you?”
“You just left her there?”
I sighed.
“All she wanted was somewhere to stay. I don’t have to hold her hand, give her a grand tour.”
Was she scared she would steal Mom’s jewelry? That I’d go back to the house and find it completely cleared out? Maybe I would, only time would tell, right? Then she’d know I had been right.
“You’re doing the right thing,” she said.
Was I? Didn’t fucking feel that way. This wasn’t happening. Cassie wasn’t in my house. Liv wasn’t wherever the hell she was right then. She wasn’t telling me that it was okay that there was another woman in my house, telling me basically that she didn’t care that she was going to live there, encouraging it.
“Where are you?” I asked again.
“I’m at home, Lex. You should go home too. You have to work tomorrow.”
“I wish it were you, not her,” I said.
I heard her sigh.
“Lex-”
“I love you,” I said again. I waited. It felt like the sun could have risen and fallen again waiting for her to say something, the pause felt so long.
“I love you too, Lex,” she finally said. Yes. I felt like an idiot for thinking she didn’t.
“I’m not going back home, babe. You asked me to listen to her, and I did. She asked me for somewhere to stay, and she’s got it.”
“You should.”
“No, I should be with you. That’s where I want to be.”
“Lex. This… it won’t scare me away. Okay? I just need to know that you are willing to do what you need to do for that woman.”
“You don’t care if she’s pregnant?”
It slipped out. I didn’t realize it was something I thought before I said it. Cassie being pregnant was something I could ignore better when she was far away. Olivia… I didn’t want to turn her into some snot-nosed kid’s stepmom. Would she even want that?
“Of course I care, I just care more what you are going to do about it if it’s yours.”
It isn’t mine, I wanted to say, but that remained to be seen. I don’t want it, was more accurate.
“I’m sorry for all this, Liv. It’s a mess.”
“It’s okay,” she said softly. It was always okay. I got my shit together when Liv and I started dating. We’d been together for a long time—two years almost—and that was in high school. In high school years; that was forever. I never tried to fuck around on her, but I wasn’t perfect. She should have been with the guy who wore glasses, had a 4.0 and had a scholarship to go to Stanford.
Instead, she had me. She took me when she could have dumped my ass. She came close a few times. It didn’t matter how many times because I wasn’t a good enough guy to let her go. Still wasn’t.
“What are you doing right now?” I asked her.
“Nothing. Reading. I was going to try to call Iris and Rick, see if I could get Hayden for an afternoon.”
I could see her stretched out on her bed, on her stomach with a book. She’d be wearing a matching PJ set, something cute, in light pink, or blue. That was what she used to sleep in. She was grown now, maybe she slept naked, or in something lacy. Lingerie.
“What were you reading?” I asked her, instead of asking what she was wearing. I wanted to know what it was, whether she’d take it off if I asked, whether she’d touch herself where I’d ask her to, let me listen to her come. I wanted to know, but loitering outside a weed store wasn’t the right place to have that conversation.
“It’s called Vampire. It’s about the Rick Chase murders,” she said. Rick Chase, she called him, like they were friends. I didn’t get it. She was fascinated with that stuff. True Crime, famous murders. Weird shit like that. Sactown wasn’t by the beach, it wasn’t big like LA, it wasn’t affluent like San Francisco, but we had the whole state beat on craziest hometown murder story.
“Is it good?”
“Mm. Did you know he used to have roommates when he moved out with his mother, and he was so creepy they asked him to move out? When he didn’t, they did. All three of them.”
I smiled. This was nice. It wasn’t nice; it was gruesome, but nice. We’d talk like this all the time when we were meant to be asleep. She’d tell me about her weird American Psycho shit, and she’d listen to me talk football or just whatever else. It was great. We talked for nearly a full hour. We hung up when sitting up on my bike got too painful for my back.
20
Olivia
“You have a cat?” Alex asked groggily, moving beside me.
“Just ignore him, he doesn’t like that I don’t let him in the room,” I said. President Bartlett was outside the door making this sound like he was constipated. There was scratching against the door. It was Alex’s first morning at my place. He had managed to miss the cat the other couple of times he’d been over. He hadn’t managed to miss him as much as I had stashed him in James’s room when he would come over; that’s how he’d missed him.
“You hate cats,” he said sleepily, draping an arm over me and pulling me into him. His body was molded to mine. We had fallen asleep like that.
What time was it? I groped for my phone blindly. I heard it thud against the floor; I had knocked it off the bedside table. I wriggled out of Alex’s grasp and leaned over the side of the bed to look at it. Just before six a.m.
I heard Alex moving behind me. He cursed softly.
“I’m late,” he sighed, stretching out on the bed. I watched him move. His arms were thick with muscle. I looked at the ink on his left arm, no naked women or anything embarrassing. I ran my hand over his forearm. Nope, felt the same as the rest of the skin on his body. I didn’t know what I expected it to feel like, just… different somehow.
“Where are you going?” I asked. He had work; it was Thursday, and I did too. I knew that, but it was early. He looked at me. He held my hand, the one that was feeling him up.
“The gym. I like to go before work.”
Lex had been cracking under the pressure at home—his words, not mine. He said he couldn’t stand Cassie being there with him, but he seemed to trust her enough to leave her in his house alone. We still hadn’t met. I didn’t want to meet her. I didn’t need to meet her in order to form an opinion of her. It wasn’t the her that mattered as much as how Lex reacted to her. This was the first actual night that he had spent over. She apparently worked evening and night shifts, so he could usually go whole days without seeing her.
He couldn’t do this her whole pregnancy; it was sort of a logistical nightmare. James hadn’t complained about me having him over, but if he was much more often, then he might. It would become like having a third roommate. He might ask him to start paying rent. He was out of the way of everything; his job, his gym, his mother.
Maybe this was his way of handling it. He wasn’t handling it the best way he could, but he wasn’t running from it. Okay, he sort of was, but at least he went home to it every day. He was ready to leave by the time I was getting breakfast. He had been on the couch with a bowl of oatmeal, President Bartlett sitting on his lap. He said he’d see me after work. His work or mine—he didn’t specify. I got out earlier than he did.
We tried to teach the kids the days of the week, but you aren’t really burdened by the concept of time when you are that young. I couldn’t wait for the week to end. Till then, I just had to wait for the day to get over and done with.
James was inside the classroom while I watched the kids outside. It had been a fairly uneventful day. Frankie had done his nap time rounds; I had let him color. A couple of concerned parents called in. Esme throwing a tantrum caught me pretty good on the cheek. Another day at the office.
It was finally three p.m. The parents were coming through, collecting their kids. The crowd of children thinned gradually. I watched a little boy and little girl argue over who got to slide down the po
le in the playground first. She seemed to be winning. I wouldn’t intervene until either threatened violence.
I saw Robbi coming out of her car, walking up to the school building. Dylan was under the slide, digging a hole. She walked up to me, hugging me.
“Your little boy’s under the slide,” I told her. “Want me to go get him for you?”
She shook her head. She was holding a plastic bag to her chest.
“I’ll get him. I got you something,” she said smiling.
She handed me the CVS plastic bag. It felt like a box. Did she get me tampons? Was she trying to tell me something? Had I been PMSing that bad? I looked inside.
The box was a friendly light blue with a red CVS logo in one corner. DIGITAL PREGNANCY TEST it announced. Easy to read results. The receipt was still in the bag with her handwriting scrawled on the back of it. Just to be sure, the note said. She made a smiley face in the ‘o.’ No shame, that one.
I shot her a dirty look.
“What is this?” I demanded.
“You’re due,” she said matter-of-factly. I was, just the next day in fact, but how did she know that? “If you don’t start in the next two days, you need to take it.”
I looked around us, really self-conscious that someone was listening.
“This isn’t normal Robbi.”
“Just do it. What are you afraid of?”
Nothing. Because there was nothing to worry about. There was nothing to worry about. There was nothing to worry about.
“This was fourteen dollars you could have spent on your beautiful boys, Robbi.”
“I’ll be waiting to hear the results,” she said smiling. No, she wasn’t, she’d be waiting to hear that I was pregnant. I bet she’d be thrilled. Finally, something in common, besides the fact that the men we were with were brothers. I’d finally be able to relate when she talked about breast engorgement and fabric nappies vs. diapers. I stole into the classroom to put the box in my purse. It was too big; I couldn’t get the purse zipped all the way. I just put it next to the purse, no one would come looking back there for it.
When I came back outside Robbi was there, but she was talking to Alex. Was it stuck up to think he was there for me? No, it was just true. I mean, he wasn’t there for his nephew. I waited in the classroom doorway for him. He took his time talking to Robbi, both of them looking over in my direction from time to time. James told me he was leaving and was exiting the classroom as Alex finally came inside.
“You and your sister-in-law have a good conversation out there?” I asked him.
He didn’t say anything; he just kissed me. Was this inappropriate? Yeah, but all the kids were outside. Didn’t their parents do this? It was fine. I let him kiss me, stopping him when his hands got too low to be PG13 anymore. He told me he wanted us to go see his mother together. He’d come on his bike, but I had driven to work. We could go to his place first, then use my car.
I was surprised he wanted to go home. Must have meant Cassie wasn’t there. We went back to his place. He took my stuff up to his room with him as I went to the kitchen to grab a couple of waters. Once at the fridge, I opted for a beer for him and a water for me. The thought had nothing to do with the pregnancy test in my purse, but I laughed at the irony.
I trudged back up the stairs. Alex was standing over his bed. His eyes were down, but when he looked up, they were blazing with anger. In his hand was the blue box Robbi had gotten me from CVS. Oh shit.
“Livvy, what the fuck is this?” he asked. He asked like he had found a text message chat with another man on my phone. I put the drinks down on the bedside table.
“I can… look, I didn’t get it myself. Robbi got it for me.”
“Do women just exchange pregnancy tests, like gifts? Why do you have this?”
“For fucking decoration, Lex; why do you think I have it?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what? There’s nothing to tell. I haven’t taken it yet.”
He paused before he started tearing at the box, ripping it open.
“Okay then, here, take it,” he said, spilling the contents of the box on the bed. “What do you do? You piss on it, right?”
He had ripped the cardboard clean in two. I reached for the stuff on the bed: the test pieces and instruction leaflet.
“Lex, don’t. There’re instructions in there; you’ll damage it,” I said, gathering the pieces and the folded sheet of instructions. I took them and walked into the bathroom, shutting the door. About ten seconds passed before I heard his voice on the other side of the door.
“Are you taking it?”
“No,” I said.
“You’ve got it in there with you… you might as well,” he said.
I rolled my eyes.
For some reason, I really didn’t want to know whether or not I was pregnant anymore.
“I don’t need to take it. I’m not pregnant.”
“Liv, just take it.”
I sat on the closed toilet reading the instructions.
“Are you taking it?” he asked again.
“Lex, stop,” I said. I looked at the pieces on my lap. It wasn’t like building a bed, just simple assembly of some interlocking parts.
“Do you need help or something?”
I rolled my eyes.
“Just leave, I’ll come out when I’m done,” I said to him. I reread the instructions. I had never taken one of these. I had never had a reason to before. It seemed simple enough. Easy to read results, it had promised. I just had to pee on it. I couldn’t hear him out there, but he was probably still waiting. I put the test on the side of the sink and set the timer for three minutes on my phone.
“At least tell me what you’re doing, babe,” he said. I ignored him, flushing the toilet in response instead. I had two-and-a-half minutes to wait. What would I do? I washed my hands and waited. I watched the minutes tick down. He could come in if he wanted, I just wanted to know before he did. Then I could prepare myself for his reaction.
Relieved if it was negative, mad if it wasn’t. Maybe a silent, cold mad where he’d leave the room, maybe the house, and I’d receive a text in a while saying simply ‘get rid of it.’ Maybe he’d yell, throw something, call me names for fucking up with my birth control.
I jumped when the timer went off. My thoughts were getting away from me. Alex knocked at the door; he had heard it too. I wasn’t sure whether I had locked the door behind me. I must have because he wasn’t in there with me right then.
I didn’t want to touch it. It was face up by the sink. I shut my eyes and went over to the sink, feeling my way there. I opened my eyes and looked down.
It was digital, so it was going to either say ‘pregnant’ or ‘not pregnant.’ No wiggle room for error or misunderstanding. I looked at it. The result was blinking. ‘See leaflet’ it reported. What? I checked the instruction leaflet. That was what happened when there was an error. There were two to a box, so I could always just try again, but I couldn’t just then. Guess I was still maybe pregnant.
I opened the door, and Alex jumped back like he had been leaning against it.
“So?” he said expectantly.
I held the test up.
“See leaflet? What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means see the instruction leaflet. I have to take the other one; something went wrong with this one. There was an error.”
“So what are you waiting for; take it.”
“It doesn’t work like that Lex,” I said. “I’ll take the second one tomorrow morning, that’s the best time to take them, anyway.”
“So… what does that mean?”
I shrugged.
“We have to wait until tomorrow to find out.”
He took the test looking at the flashing message. I left him to it, walking away, back into the room to retrieve the other test that I would take the next morning. I took the instructions leaflet too, carefully putting them in my purse.
“You’re way too calm a
bout this, babe,” he said, coming into the room.
I thought about it; why would I panic? For what? Not for the result because it would be whatever it was going to be. If anything, I would be nervous about his reaction. The bum test had calmed me down. I could start panicking tomorrow.
“Why would I panic? Panicking won’t change whatever the result of the test is going to be.”
“Are you sure you can’t take it now?”
“I can’t pee on command, Lex. It’s just one night. The result will be the same as it would have been now.”
“You don’t understand, Liv, stop treating this like it isn’t a big deal.”
“How big a deal is it then? Tell me.”
“At least with you, I’ll know for sure whether the kid is mine or not.”
I tried to say something but was speechless for a beat.
“Whatever… whatever is going on between you and Cassie isn’t my business. I’m sorry you might have impregnated two different women. But, like you said, Cassie’s might not even be yours, and we won’t know for sure about this one till tomorrow.”
I grabbed my purse and left the room. I started down the stairs and heard him follow me.
“Where are you going?”
“You look like you might need some time alone. I’ll call you tomorrow with the good or bad news.”
“Will you stop, come back here,” he said, grabbing my arm. “You can’t just leave.”
“Yes, I can. I am. There’s nothing left to say. The only thing you want to hear from me is that the test was negative, and I can’t tell you that now. I’m not going to stay. Just tell me how your mother is, okay? I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“At least come and see Mom with me,” he said.
I stopped. He was not trying to guilt me into staying with him by using his mother.
“Tell her I say hi.”
I left.
I got home, and James was there. I had my own room, but at times like this, that wasn’t enough. Times like these were times when I saw the appeal of having your own home. Privacy. Carte blanche to do your messy moping in every and any room you chose.
Alex (Heartbreakers & Troublemakers Book 3) Page 15