by R. J. Lewis
He glimpsed around the empty streets. “Al, you’re not alone, are you?”
Al. God, I hated when he called me that. It made me sound like a boy.
I nodded again. “Yeah, I am.”
He exhaled, a look of irritation crossing his face. “It’s a real dodgy place here. You shouldn’t be alone.”
“I’m alone,” piped the girl, her hand still wrapped around his arm. “You gonna take care of that, Lawson?”
Directing his irritation at her, he snapped, “Do I know you?”
She looked unperturbed by his tone and giggled. “We met at the last party we was at. Hit it off and everything. You promised me a date. Don’t remember that?”
I watched her bat her eyelashes and stick her chest out. God, this was awkward.
“I haven’t been to a party in months,” he retorted, glaring at her now. “And I don’t promise people dates. How about you get on your way now?”
She blinked at him and then let go of his arm. “I ain’t lying –”
“Then you have me confused with someone else.” His face was hard, but he softened his tone as he added, “Hon, I’m not picking anyone up. That’s not my thing, alright?”
She didn’t respond for a moment. She was clearly not expecting that kind of reaction. She almost looked wounded.
“Go and have a good night,” he continued.
Embarrassed, she hurried away, her heels clacking against the pavement in haste. I felt a little bad for her. She obviously had her hopes up, and she had every right to given how pretty she was. I watched her fade away in the distance, impressed by his kind decline. I’d seen some awful rejections in my time.
“What’s going on, Allie?” he then asked, focusing back on me. I guessed letting girls down was a common occurrence for him because he was completely unaffected by it.
“No ‘hello, how are you’?” I asked light-heartedly.
He tilted his head to the side. “Since when have you ever come up to me before? This is not you. We’re not close. Something’s obviously up, and I don’t like beating around the bush.”
“Beating around the bush,” I repeated thoughtfully. “Interesting saying, that.”
“Allie.”
“I need your help.”
“Okay,” he said cautiously, “continue.”
Remembering the reason I was here, I shifted from foot to foot nervously. My eyes flickered away from his. I stared down at the cement and tightened my grasp on the strap of my bag when I said, “I got kicked out. I don’t have a place to stay, and I’ve tried getting a few friends to help me out, but their parents aren’t cool with me crashing. You’re kind of the only hope I have at the moment.”
Silence.
I peered up at him, trying to decipher his mood. He wasn’t giving anything away, but his eyes were moving all over my face. I tried not to blush by the intensity of his gaze, but I failed. I may have known him almost all my life, but like he said, we weren’t close. I was always by Ryker’s side. We were inseparable. Heath was sort of just the tag along that I never liked to be left alone in a room with. Things were always awkward. We never meshed, or ever had anything in common to talk about.
Yet I was blushing like a moron because he was extremely good looking. More so than Ryker because his body was filled out to the brim in muscle and his face was rougher. Despite the eighteen month gap between the brothers, Ryker had a lot of catching up to do. So, naturally, my body seemed to have a mind of its own. I supposed that was normal for a teenage girl, though. Hormones and all that at the slightest attention from a good looking guy and our shallow minds were drinking it up.
“Why would your mother kick you out?” he asked curiously. “I’ve always thought she wasn’t that kind of person to do that.”
Again, I shifted nervously. “Do we have to talk about this here?”
“It’s either here or in the truck.”
I looked around our surroundings, making sure no one was within earshot. We were completely alone, not a peep heard from nearby.
“Homeless people will be due out soon,” I muttered. Hedley was packed with them, and many of them stuck together and prowled the streets at night, causing havoc. You didn’t want to be alone out here if they were kicking about.
“Truck it is, then.”
He unlocked the doors and I hopped into the passenger seat. I immediately wound down the window, letting whatever little breeze there was inside. Heath sat down in the driver’s seat, his face turned in my direction.
“Out with it then,” he pressed, wasting no time. Either he was genuinely concerned about me, or he wanted to get whatever was up out of the way. In that moment, I had a feeling it was the latter.
“I just need a place to stay,” I told him, looking out into the parking lot. Heath’s dark eyes were a thing to be feared. When he looked at you, he really looked at you, and it was like he could read your every freaking thought. I didn’t want him to know mine.
“It’ll only be for a couple days,” I added hastily. “I’m not looking to impede on your life for a long time. I know it’s an inconvenience –”
“I want to know why you got kicked out,” he interrupted coolly. “As far as crashing my place goes, I’m not bothered by that. It was Ryker’s place not too long ago, so the room’s practically yours. But I have to know what’s up, Allie. He promised me to look out for you, and it’s only been four weeks since he’s been gone and you’ve already been kicked out of your house. I need to know why.”
I swallowed hard. This was hard to talk about. I didn’t want to do it now. I just wanted a goddamn roof over my head. Today had been hell. A confrontation with my ultra-religious mother and I was thrown out the door with nothing but the bag on my back, told never to come home again unless I was seeking to be saved. I was the sinner. The horrible temptation that others in her community would be disgusted by.
Anxiety built inside of me as he continued to watch me. I suppressed the tears, reliving the decision I made right after she’d thrown me out. It was hard, but it was the right thing to do, and I still had to endure the pain of it soon.
“The problem is going to be taken care of,” I told him. “So it doesn’t matter.”
He shifted his body around to look at me closely. I glanced at him, shrouded in the dark with those eyes pinned to me.
“Taken care of,” he repeated slowly.
“Yeah. So don’t worry about it.”
Slowly, the realization dawned on him, and with a heavy sigh he said, “Shit. You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”
With a nod that made my chest ache, I whispered, “Yes, I am.”
Three
Allie
“Shit,” he cursed again, shaking his head. His nose flared and his eyes darkened as he ran a hand through his buzz. “I thought you were smart, Allie.”
“I was never smart,” I replied flatly.
Harsh silence filled the air. He was lost in thought, looking away from me and out the windshield. “Is it Ryker’s?” he then asked, tensing his jaw.
I fought the anger inside of me unsuccessfully. “Of course it’s Ryker’s,” I answered rudely. “He’s the only person I’ve ever been with, Heath. Everyone knows that.”
“I’m just making sure,” he retorted, casting me a bitter look. Jeez, what the hell was wrong with him?
“Look,” I said on a sigh, “like I said, it’s going to be taken care of.”
“You’re going to have an abortion, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“I booked it in for this week. I’m going down to the clinic tomorrow to see what my options are –”
“Jesus Christ,” he interrupted, huffing angrily now, “how far along are you?”
“Eight weeks.”
“And you’ve known for how long?”
“Two.”
Another painful silence. One that had me feeling ashamed. I looked down into my lap, fighting the tears that were suddenly springing in
the back of my eyes. I didn’t expect a positive reaction from anyone – after all, Ryker and I were to blame for this mess – but a bit of understanding wouldn’t kill. Instead, I got kicked out of my house by my piece of shit mother who was screaming scripture at me and then being glared at by Heath like I was the biggest disappointment of all.
And maybe I was.
“Have you told Ryker?”
Panic shot through me. “No,” I said glumly. “I haven’t.”
“So you’re going to have an abortion without his say?”
I rubbed my face in exasperation. “Heath, he told me himself he never wants to be a dad. He’s always used condoms to stop that from happening, but we’ve had a scare before and the first thing he said when my period was late was to get it fixed. He will not have a different opinion about this.”
“He still has the right to know.”
I shook my head, frustrated that he was making this difficult. “I’ll deal with that on my own terms. It’s none of your business, anyway –”
“It’s none of my business?” He laughed without humour and shook his head in shock. “You made it my business by coming to me!”
This was not how I thought this would go. A part of me sort of hoped he’d just agree to let me crash at his place and leave me be. Of course that was stupid, naïve thinking. I should have known Heath would want to ask questions. He was never the kind of person that just went with the flow and kept to himself. He had to know everything.
“Look, I’m sorry,” I said calmly, trying to diffuse the situation immediately. “I’m sorry, Heath. I know you must be disappointed in me, and I am too. But please, don’t work against me right now. I’m scared. Alright? I can’t do this, and Ryker would agree. He’s in prison, and I’m out here on my own, and it’s hard…”
The fear and stress of the last two weeks finally made me crumble. The tears hit hard, falling heatedly down my cheeks. I covered my face with my hand, not wanting him to see. I was so angry at him, but I knew he was demanding answers from a good place. But, god, I just wanted this to go away. I wanted to put it behind me quickly. I didn’t want to stay up another damn night thinking about how I was going to fix this.
“Allie,” he then said in a gentler tone, “this is huge.”
“Don’t you think I know that?”
A warm hand touched mine. He gripped it gently and drew it away from my face. I blinked hard and stared at him. He turned his body around to face me. Having long adjusted to the darkness, I saw the concerned look on his face.
“Abortion is a huge step,” he said solemnly. “That’s not something to take lightly. That can scar you emotionally, Allie. It might solve a problem now but it might create an even bigger one later. You gotta be sure that this is what you want.”
Speedily, I said, “It is, Heath. It is. I’m sure of it.”
He cocked his head to the side. “Are you really sure though? I think you’re just scared right now and reacting impulsively.”
“I said I’m sure.” Why did he have to keep dragging this out? I was having a hard time as it was convincing myself this was right, I didn’t need him digging around until I was showing that hesitation.
“What if I talked to Ryker? He might see things in a different light –”
“Heath,” I cut in, gripping his hand back tightly, “you know Ryker. You know this is what he’ll want too. He said so himself on many occasions.”
He cursed under his breath and looked away. He knew I was right. There was no way in a hundred years Ryker would tell me to keep this baby. He never wanted to be a father. He had some sort of personal issue about it that I could never get to the bottom of.
“What kind of life would the child have anyway?” I said, more to myself than him. “Growing up without a father figure for five years, and then learning about where he was and why he was in there. That kind of thing could mess a kid up.”
Not to mention I would have to drop out of school and struggle to support a kid that didn’t deserve to grow up in abject poverty in a place like Hedley. Believe me, I was one of those kids, and it sucked.
God dammit it all to hell. I felt sick to my stomach just thinking about it.
“Allie,” he suddenly whispered to me, drawing me out of my clusterfuck of thoughts, “if you had nothing to be scared of, would you still abort?”
His question threw me off. My mind went mute, but my body spoke otherwise. I put a hand to my stomach without thought and dropped my head. I stared into my lap, unwilling to admit the truth to that question.
“I can’t,” I told him on a sob. My being shook with defeat. “I’ve got no way to do this, Heath. I’m so alone right now. I can’t do it. I can’t. I’ve only just turned eighteen. I don’t even have a job, and I’ve looked and looked and…”
An arm went around me, and it was so unexpected that I jumped. He’d never been this close to me, and now abruptly his warmth was all over me. He pulled me to him, my forehead hitting his chest as I cried hard against his thin shirt. The smell of sweat and mild cologne cloaked me, reminding me of the safety I used to feel in Ryker’s arms when he held me this near.
“If money wasn’t a problem, if you didn’t care about what Ryker wanted, if you weren’t alone, and if… you had someone to help you, Allie, would you still abort?”
Impossible, I wanted to say. Because he didn’t seem to understand that even if I kept the baby, I’d have a multitude of problems.
But my mouth opened anyway and said what was in my heart. “No, I wouldn’t.” Because what woman would ever want to do it? It was easy to say that you wouldn’t. That it was morally wrong. But when you were faced with the hardship of not being able to care for something that was given to you without planning, reality turned into a broken, unforeseen road. One where the choices you thought you would make became ones you couldn’t.
I felt his hot breath in my ear. The scent of him was as comforting as his closeness. His grip around me tightened when he whispered the five words that would forever change our lives.
“Then let me help you.”
Four
Heath
I walked into the apartment with a bag of fast food I picked up on our way back. I always ate after a good fight, and the second Allie smelled the food in the air at the drive thru, I could tell she was starving too, so I ordered for both of us. She followed closely behind me, eyes red and raw from all the tears spent on our drive here. I went to the kitchen as she stiffly took a seat on the couch.
The apartment was small with the kitchen facing the tiny living room, but Ryker and I never cared about the size. Rent was affordable, we’d each had our own rooms and that was all that really mattered, especially if it meant having privacy with our women. I liked living simply, and since he got locked away, the clutter had stopped piling up. As a result, the place was always neat and tidy.
I filled the plates up with our burgers and fries, all the while I idly watched her wiping away the waterfall of tears. Her body was tense and unmoving. Probably still absorbing the change in her decision. I went to her and handed her a plate. Then I walked to the balcony door and stared out into the dark sky, barely touching my food. I should have been eating, but my mind was too distracted.
I was all kinds of fucked up. My brain felt like a box of scattered puzzle pieces. One minute I was congratulating myself for talking her out of the abortion, and the next I was wondering what kind of help I could possibly offer her. I didn’t know a damn thing about pregnancy or babies. Hell, I was hardly making it by now on my wage as a low level mechanic at a small car shop.
I pissed away my school years by taking nothing seriously. Didn’t help my dyslexia made learning double what it took an average kid. I was paying for it now, but I never could have foreseen this.
I turned my head to look at her. My lips curved up at the sight of her stuffing the food down her throat like she’d been hungry for days. And just that thought alone wiped that smile off my face.
Pregna
nt. She was hungry because she had a living thing growing inside of her.
Fuck, the girl was tiny. It was next to impossible imagining her with a giant, round belly. She was so young, but you couldn’t really see it in those fierce blue eyes. She’d always been ahead of her years. She’d lived through a life of chaos: a father that inexplicably took his life away, a religious mother that had given her a hard time, and Ryker’s sentencing after the stupid ass got busted for selling a shitload of crack in an alleyway not too far from here.
And now this.
Fuck.
Immediately I sensed I was entering a territory that was out of my depth, and I suddenly wished Ryker hadn’t gone to prison, hadn’t left me alone to pick up the broken pieces in his girlfriend’s life. This was their problem, not mine!
The selfish thoughts ran rampant through me, seeking ways to jump ship from this mess and continue living my bland life. But then her eyes met mine, and the desperation in her face stopped them cold in their tracks, reminding me of my promise to Ryker and the certainty I felt behind my words when I said I’d look out for her.
In some fucked up way this was my fault. I didn’t even know the details and I was already blaming myself. I should have kept a careful eye on Ryker and Allie. I should have made sure Ryker knew what he was doing having sex with a girl two years younger than him and what it might mean for her if he wasn’t careful every damn time. I should have told him the consequences and just how far it could push away someone as pure and good as Allie, because you knew from a mile away she was special. Instead, I got caught up in my own bullshit, my own sob story, and my own struggles.
I failed them.
No. I failed her.
Had I been a better brother I’d have made Ryker into a responsible, good man. Not one that randomly decided he wanted to commit crime to live the better life while deceiving us with lies that he wasn’t. To be fair, he hadn’t always been like that. Ryker had been on the straight and narrow before he got involved in the wrong crowd some years ago, dragging Allie with him through the mud. Why she stuck around him for so long, I couldn’t understand. Sticking out like a sore thumb, she had never integrated within his crowd. Even now she looked nothing like the girls in Hedley. She was always in loose clothes, walking the streets during the day with giant headphones on, her heavy backpack sagging to her bum, and a baseball cap on. It was like she yearned to be invisible to everyone but Ryker.