by Kieran Scott
“God, Chloe, I had no idea,” I said. “I mean, I knew it had to be hard, but I had no idea how bad it was.”
She started to say something but couldn’t get it out past the crying. Her nose was swollen and her eyes were like slits, but I found myself staring at her belly. That big mound where her flat abs used to be. It must have weighed a ton, or at least felt like it did. As guilty as I’d felt when I walked into the room, that feeling was suddenly compounded eighty times over. I had never considered how Chloe was feeling. I’d had fleeting thoughts about it, sure, but most of my focus had been on Jake. How unfair this was to him, how it was affecting his life. But clearly it was affecting Chloe’s a hell of a lot more. Just because she couldn’t resist a hot guy one summer night.
I was never having sex. I decided right then and there. Fit me for a chastity belt, stat.
“Can you … I need a tissue….” Chloe said, catching her breath.
She was reaching toward her side table but couldn’t quite grasp the box. I jumped up, grabbed it, and handed it to her. She blew her nose spectacularly and let her hands drop again.
“I’m sorry. Crying is, like, my number one pastime lately,” she said, attempting a sad smile.
“I think you have the world’s greatest excuse,” I replied.
She toyed with the crumpled-up tissue and sniffled loudly. “Do you hate me?”
“No,” I said truthfully. “I don’t hate you.”
“Does Jake hate me?”
She looked up through her lashes hopefully. I took a steadying breath.
“Honestly? I don’t know. He hasn’t answered my texts or calls since last night. I was thinking about going over there next, but—”
“Well, if you see him, just tell him I’m so sorry, okay? I didn’t mean for it to go this far,” Chloe said.
I looked down at the floor and nodded. For some reason I suddenly didn’t want to go over to Jake’s. All I wanted to do was go back to Gray’s, curl up in a ball, and not uncurl till morning.
“Okay,” I said.
There was a knock on her door and it opened a crack. Will Halloran stuck his head in, blinking in the darkness.
“Hey,” he said, looking between the two of us warily. “Can I come in?”
“Um, sure.” Chloe suddenly sat up straight, swiped under her eyes with her fingertips, and brushed the crumbs off her shirt. I handed her another tissue and made a wiping motion at my nose. She blew again and gave me a grateful look. Gross as it was, I swiped her snotty tissues and shoved them in the pocket of my peacoat, which I’d never taken off.
“Hey, Ally,” Will said as he awkwardly stepped toward me. He had a box of Entenmann’s chocolate chip cookies with him—Chloe’s favorite. “Hey, Chlo.”
“Hi,” she replied.
“I guess I should go,” I said. As I turned around I saw Damon’s chest glistening on the screen. I grabbed the remote and hit the power button, then opened one of the curtains a bit so Will and Chloe could see each other. “I’ll see you guys at school.”
“Hey, Ally?” Chloe said.
I paused with my hand on the doorknob.
“Thanks,” she said. “For being so cool.”
I blushed, embarrassed. I felt anything but cool. I felt like an immature jerk who really needed to stop being so self-involved. But Will and Chloe were looking into each other’s eyes now and this was clearly not the time to bare my soul.
“You’re welcome,” I said.
But I don’t think either one of them heard me. They had already started whispering to each other when I closed the door.
jake
Monday morning I faked a stomachache. Then I stayed in bed until noon. Around two thirty I went over to my dad’s home office, which had the only window that looked out at Chloe’s front door. I could see her driveway from my room, but once a car got behind the hedge, nada. And I wanted to make sure I saw Chloe come home. I had to make sure I didn’t miss her.
So I sat there in his ergonomic chair and waited. And waited. I squeezed on his stress-ball thing. And waited. I crumpled about a hundred pieces of paper and launched them at his trash can. And waited. Then it was three thirty and it was clear Chloe hadn’t gone to school either. Or if she had, she wasn’t coming back at a normal time.
“Fuckin A,” I said under my breath. I ran downstairs, grabbed my ski jacket on the way out, and sprinted across to Chloe’s. Instead of climbing to her room this time, I just walked in the front door. The place was deserted and quiet like a graveyard. I went up to her bedroom. She wasn’t there. I went back down to the media room. She wasn’t there. I finally found her in the library, lying on a couch, reading. She almost had a heart attack when I walked in.
“Jake!” She sat up straight. “Hi!”
She looked good. Neat. Happy. Her hair was in a ponytail and she had on a tight white T-shirt and a loose gray sweater. The sight of her looking so relaxed and happy made me want to slam that heavy book on her fingers.
“What the fuck, Chloe?” I said, striding around the couch. “What the fuck were you thinking?”
She went white, which was at least a little satisfying, and pushed herself up straight. Or as straight as she could get in her condition.
“Did Ally not talk to you?”
I blinked. “What? No. I haven’t been up for talking.”
And what would Ally say to me that would make Chloe look better, anyway? Ally was on my side.
“Oh.” She cleared her throat. “I’m really sorry, Jake,” she said, looking down at her hands. “I don’t know what else to say, but I’m—”
“You don’t know what else to say?” I shouted, hovering over her. “Do you even realize what you did to me? Ally and I almost broke up over this! I tanked the first semester! I tanked the frickin’ SAT! I might not get into college now, and for what? Because you felt like fucking with my head.”
Chloe struggled her way up from the couch. Her stomach sort of hovered between us like a planet. I used to think it was kind of mesmerizing, but now the sight of it made me want to hurl.
“I didn’t do this to mess with you,” she said. “I was confused, okay? I didn’t know what to do.”
“Well, here’s a newsflash, Chloe,” I spat back. “Next time you want to slut it up with more than one guy and get yourself knocked up, make sure you saddle the right one with all the crap.”
I never even saw the slap coming. She wailed me across the face so hard my dry bottom lip split.
“Fuck you,” I said, my cheek on fire.
“Right back at you,” she replied, shaking.
I turned around and stormed out of the house, slamming the heavy door behind me as hard as I could. My fingers clenched into fists as I booked it down the driveway, the frigid air stinging my face where she’d slapped me.
I couldn’t believe she’d slapped me. She had ruined my life and she thinks I deserve a smack? How self-centered and completely insane could one bitch be? I couldn’t believe I had ever thought Chloe Appleby was cool. Clearly she was pure, unadulterated evil.
I came around the bend in my driveway and slowed down. Ally was sitting on the front step. She scrambled to her feet when she saw me.
“Hey! No one answered the door so—” She paused and narrowed her eyes at me. “Are you all right?”
I touched my fingertips to my lip and they came back bloody.
“No, okay? I’m not all right,” I said, striding toward her.
“What happened?” she asked, her breath making steam clouds in the air. “Your face is red.” Then her eyes widened. “Did you just get in a fight?”
“What?” I scoffed, pausing next to her. “No.”
She went to touch my cheek, but I flinched away.
“Well, good,” she said, shoving her hands under her arms. “Because Hammond already pounded on Will after school today, so—”
“Yeah?” I said, imagining Will Halloran’s smug face purple and swollen and gross. “Good for him.”
Ma
ybe Hammond wasn’t such a dick after all.
“Good for him?” Ally said, her face screwing up. “What did Will do?”
“Will exists, okay?” I shot back, even though it sounded completely stupid. “Will is the reason I’m in this mess.”
“No. He’s not,” Ally said. “At least, he’s not the only reason.”
Great. Now she was going to get on my case about how if I’d never had sex with Chloe in the first place, none of this ever would have happened. Which was true, of course. Which was why I’d been saying it to myself over and over and over again all weekend. All month. All frickin’ year. I didn’t need her rubbing my face in it like a holier-than-thou priss right now.
“I have to go,” I said, shoving past her.
I opened the door and went inside.
“Jake—”
“I’ll call you later,” I lied.
Then I closed the door on her half-pissed, half-disappointed face.
jake
WAY 2 BAIL LOSER. U BETTER B SPITTING UP BLOOD.
I turned off my phone after the tenth angry text from my swim teammates and tossed it onto the coffee table. They were pissed that I’d missed today’s meet, but if I had my way, I’d be missing a lot more. When I’d talked my mother into letting me stay home again she’d said fine, but I was going on Wednesday no matter what. Yeah. We’d see about that.
What was the point, anyway? College applications were due, like, now. I’d scored myself a solid low-C average for the first half of the year, and those were the grades they were going to see. Who cared if I flunked the rest of the year? I saw no point in sitting in class for the next six months. It was over. I was going to community college. If I was lucky.
The doorbell rang and I stayed where I was, on the couch in front of the Duke-Clemson basketball game. Then I heard footsteps behind me.
“Hey.”
I turned around, stunned. “Ally.”
She was the only person I hadn’t gotten a text from today, so I figured she was mad about me blowing her off yesterday. Her being here now was a surprise.
“Feeling any better?” she asked.
She came around the side of the sectional couch and sat down next to me, but kept a safe distance.
“Um, yeah,” I muted the TV and sat up straight. “Sorry about yesterday. I got into it with Chloe and—”
“Yeah. She told me.”
My face felt hot. “She told you? I can’t believe you’re even speaking to—”
Ally held up a hand. “I don’t want to talk about Chloe. Actually I think we should talk about anything other than Chloe.”
I motorboated my lips and slumped back again. “Sounds good to me.”
“So … I talked to the coach at Rutgers today,” she said, putting on a bright smile as she shimmied out of her coat.
“Yeah?” I said.
“Looks like I’m going to be a Lady Knight,” Ally said.
I felt this ridiculous surge of excitement, followed by complete jealousy. “Yeah? That’s great!” I reached over and hugged her.
“I know, right?” Ally said. “She said to send my application through her and it would be taken care of.”
I crossed my arms over my chest as I sat back again. “You sure you want to stay so close to home? I thought UNC was calling your name.”
Ally lifted one shoulder. “I don’t know. Rutgers has a great program and they need forwards right now, so I might actually get playing time next year. Plus it feels far enough away that I can live there, but close enough that if I get homesick I can come home. I think it’ll be good.”
“Good,” I said. And if I’m at Bergen Community next year, I’ll get to see you whenever you do get homesick.
“So what about you? How’re the applications coming?” Ally asked, bouncing back on the couch, and a little closer to me.
“They’re nonexistent,” I replied.
“What?” she asked.
I shrugged, picked up the remote again, and turned up the sound. The Duke fans were chanting while the timer ticked down. “What’s the point? I’m not getting in anywhere, so …”
“They don’t just look at your grades, you know,” Ally said, sounding very cheerleader-y. “There’s your sports and your job … and you aced a college course last summer. That has to count for something.”
I scoffed. When I thought about that class, I thought about Chloe, who’d taken it with me. And thinking about Chloe was dangerous at the moment.
“Right, so how am I supposed to explain my two-point-oh average after acing a college class?” I said, turning my palms up. “‘Sorry, admissions board, I got lazy’?”
Ally chewed on the inside of her cheek for a second. She rested the side of her head on her hand, her elbow on the back of the couch. Then she sat up straight.
“I’ve got it! The essay!” she said, grinning.
“What do you mean?”
“You explain the first two semesters’ grades with your essay! You tell the truth!” she exclaimed.
I laughed so hard I thought my ribs might crack. “Are you serious?”
“I’m totally serious!” Ally pulled her school-issued laptop out of her bag and powered it up. “Everyone wants a personal statement, right? So we write an essay about the pregnancy scare, how much it affected you, how much it changed you … but most important, how it matured you and made you see what’s important in life.”
I blinked. “What’s that?”
She rolled her eyes at me. “Hard work. Getting good grades. Planning a future. The admissions people live for a good life lesson learned. They’ll be eating out of your hands!”
I muted the TV again and sat up straight. I did dimly recall one of the lecturers at one of our many college-planning assemblies saying something about admitting faults to the interviewers. Something about how no one was perfect and admissions boards hated it when people pretended they were.
“Dude. This could actually work,” I said.
“See? Something good could come out of all of this,” she replied happily.
Out of nowhere, I felt mushy and choked up. I stared at Ally as she opened up Word and started a new document. What had I done to deserve a girlfriend like her? I’ll tell you what: nothing. Zippo. Nada. She’d stuck by me through the miles and miles of crap with Chloe. I’d slammed a door in her face just yesterday and now here she was, helping me. Either she was completely deranged, or she honestly did love me.
“Ally?” I said.
“Yeah?”
“You’re kind of awesome, you know that, right?” I said.
Ally grinned. “I do feel rather awesome right now.”
I cracked up. “Good. Because you are.”
Then I leaned in to kiss her and she kissed me back.
“Okay. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s start writing,” she said.
As we got down to business, I made my first New Year’s resolution. From here on out I was going to be the best boyfriend ever. Now that Chloe and the baby were out of the picture, I could focus my energy on Ally. And I was going to do whatever it took to deserve her.
ally
When the doorbell rang on Wednesday afternoon, my mom and I both went to get it at the same time. She glanced outside and paused.
“Who is it?” I asked.
“It’s your father,” she replied, her tone unreadable.
My heart skipped a nervous beat. I hadn’t been alone with both my parents since last summer, and none of those meetings had gone very well. At least if he was going to show up at our doorstep, he’d picked a moment when Gray was at work and Quinn was at musical rehearsal. My mother took a deep breath and opened the door. Dad stood on the flagstone porch wearing his coat and hat and clinging to about a dozen red, black, and white balloons.
“Hello, Christopher,” my mother said coolly.
“Melanie,” he replied with a nod. Then he turned his attention my way. “Congratulations, kiddo!” he shouted, shoving a huge gift bag at me.
He pulled me into a hug, and the balloon ribbons tangled around our arms.
“Um, thanks!” I said as my mother closed the door behind him. “What’s with the gift?”
“Open it up!” he said happily, shoving his hands under his arms.
His wool hat was pulled low over his brow, and his nose was red from the cold. He made no move to take off his coat, and my mom didn’t ask him to. Feeling a little awkward standing in the middle of Gray’s marble foyer with my estranged parents, I put the bag on the floor and tugged out the tissue paper. Inside was a huge black teddy bear wearing a red Rutgers sweatshirt.
“This is so cute!” I said, turning it around to show my mom.
“Aw, Chris. You didn’t have to do that,” my mother said, smiling nonetheless. Well, at least she was thawing.
“Are you kidding? It’s not every day your only daughter decides on a college,” my father said. “There’s more in there, you know.”
I pawed through the bag and found a black Rutgers hoodie, a set of Rutgers pencils, a laptop cover, a pair of flannel pj pants, a coffee mug, and a Scarlet Knight bobble head.
“Where did you get this stuff?” I asked, gathering the swag up in my arms.
“I had the day off, so I drove down there and pretty much cleaned out the bookstore,” my dad told us. “I’m so proud of you, kiddo.”
“Thanks, Dad.” I piled the many gifts back into the bag and gave him a hug.
“And I was thinking … maybe I could take you out to dinner?” he asked, looking at the both of us. “To celebrate?”
“Both of us?” my mom squeaked.
“Yes, it would be the three of us,” my father said, his voice just the slightest bit sarcastic. “Mel, I know you’ve moved on, and I’ve accepted that. At least, I’m working on accepting it. But something tells me that Ally might like it if the three of us could be alone together without a fight breaking out. I’m willing to give it a shot if you are.”
My pulse raced as I waited for my mom to answer, and I knew my face looked like a hopeful puppy’s. My dad was right. I would pretty much kill to spend some regular family-time with my parents, and with the wedding planning and Gray always being around, I was starting to think it might never be a possibility.