by Amy Daws
I push my hair out of my face and scream, “She’s having your baby? That is most definitely not what I wanted, Brody!”
Brody sits back on his haunches and scratches his short curly hair, “She’s having our baby, Finley. You know this. Why are you acting so strange?”
What the hell is going on? What kind of sick joke is this?
“This doesn’t make any sense!” I scream, rubbing my hair like a mad woman.
“Maybe she’s still making up her mind, mate,” Liam announces, in his cool British dialect.
I swerve my head over to where his voice came from and see him standing there, fully dressed, arms crossed and leaning one shoulder on the frame of the door.
“Liam! How the hell did you get in here?” I ask, completely confused.
“Chill, Fin, it’s us!” Brody replies, as if that answer would tell me everything.
Liam saunters over to the mattress and squats down beside it. “Yeah, it’s us.” He smiles, knowingly. “How’s your under-carriage feeling, Finley?”
***
I awaken to the loud crack of a skateboard hitting concrete outside my window, and several teenage boys’ voices whooping in response.
I blink my eyes quickly, looking around the room, trying to figure out what just happened. Bright daylight fills the entire room and I glance at the clock to see that it’s noon already. I peek under the covers to see that I am naked. Holy shit! Why am I naked? I throw my legs to the side of the mattress and sit up quickly, my head screaming in protest at the change in angle. Oh God, my head. My head!
I can feel myself still aroused. I move slightly, to see if I can tell if I really had sex or not. Everything feels the same—I think. I rub my shoulder where I can still feel Brody’s teeth, but there is no mark from him biting and sucking.
“Oh my God, it was just a dream,” I say to myself as I take a huge gulp of air and sigh with relief. My eyes suddenly fill with tears and I let out a huge sob. God, what the fuck is wrong with me? That was the most fucked up dream ever. I pull the sheet tightly around my chest and stand up, unsure why all these tears are coming out.
I wrench my bedroom door open and dash over to the tiny bathroom. Just seeing the toilet, I begin gagging. I drop down to my knees and throw up the contents of my stomach, crying pathetically between heaves. I hate throwing up. I cry every time I throw up, and since I was already crying before I started puking, now I am really losing it.
“Morning, moron!” Leslie sings from the bathroom doorway.
I look at her from the corner of my eye and see she is dressed in a pair of red shorts and a black button-down blouse, buttoned all the way to the top with a triangle-shaped spikey necklace.
I dry heave two more times and breathe heavily, waiting for my stomach to calm down. “Screw you, Lez,” I spit out between gulps of air.
“Believe me, I’d love to screw myself, I’m happy with what I see in the mirror every day. But I’m not sure you’re feeling the same self-love these days,” she says, checking herself out in the mirror. “You seem to be in the middle of a quarter-life crisis or something. I’m too good of a friend to just leave you hanging, Fin!”
I fall backward onto my butt, roughly hitting my back on the wall behind me. I use one hand to tighten the purple sheet around my chest and the other to wipe my runny nose and tears. I turn to Leslie; she looks so clean and put together, it depresses me further. What the hell is wrong with me right now? My chin begins to tremble.
“Jeez, Fin,” Leslie says, sitting against the wall beside me. “What’s with the tears?” she asks, concern all over her green eyes.
“I don’t know,” I croak. “I just had the most horrible dream, I’m hung over, I just puked, and I have no clue what the hell I’m doing anymore. I just—I don’t know!” I cry, curling my legs up to my chest and burying my face in my arms.
Leslie’s small arm wraps tightly around my back and she leans her head against my shoulder. “You always cry when you puke, Fin-Bin. It’s fine. It’s no big deal. You’re probably still drunk. And contrary to popular belief, alcohol is actually a depressant, so you’re not going to feel happier by drinking it, ye know.”
I sniff loudly, “I know, but there’s more to it than the alcohol and the puking. I just had a dream about Brody. It was a good dream…amazing even. But then it all went so fucked up and… dark.” My voice rises to a squeak and I sob heavily into my arms.
“Are you sure being here is what you really want, Finley?” she asks, turning her head to face me, and resting her chin on my shoulder. “I mean, I want you here forever. I love having you here. But is this what’s best for you and Brody?”
“Yes,” I answer. “I can’t change things now. It’s too late, Lez. Brody’s seeing Olivia now, anyway.”
“Olivia?” Leslie questions.
“College Olivia, the one you called old. Remember?”
“Ick! Oldie Oli’? Gross! Why would he be with her? She looked wrinkly back in college, she’s got to look like a grandmother by now!” Leslie replies with disgust smeared across her face.
Leslie and I didn’t attend the same university but visited each other as frequently as we could. When she met Olivia for the first time, Leslie asked me how old she was because she thought Olivia looked like an alternative student in her thirties. I can always count on Lez to tell it like it is.
I smirk slightly at her bashing of a woman I truly hate.
“There’s pictures of them all over Facebook,” I offer meekly.
“I thought you deactivated your Facebook account, Fin!”
“I reactivated it,” I reply, shrugging my shoulders.
“Well there’s your first mistake,” she sighs dramatically. “What’s really going on, Finley? Talk to me. This isn’t you. You used to tell me everything. Even the cracks, remember?”
I smile to myself. Leslie and I used to say that to each other in high school when we were going through whatever sophomoric drama was happening at the time. “Empty out your brain, even the cracks.” It is so nice having someone know all my deepest, darkest secrets. Brody used to be that person for me. I told him everything. And now I’m keeping the worst kind of secret I can from him.
“You know how when I was a kid, I used to love babies so much? I always snuggled up with your little brother; he just had the sweetest wittle gushy face...” I begin.
She lifts her head from my shoulder and looks at me cheerily, “Yeah, I remember. Of course I remember. Mom used to be afraid that you’d baby-snatch him.”
I smile, “I can’t get over the idea that my body won’t ever give me something like that. It won’t do what it’s supposed to do and I can’t change it! I can’t fix it! Women are supposed to reproduce, make babies, be domestic, and live happily ever after. It’s the next step for most people. It’s for sure always been the next step for me. It kills me that I can’t do it. I feel…I feel…ashamed!” I cry. I know I look and sound terrible right now but I don’t care. This is Leslie; she can handle my ugly cry.
“There are other options, Finley,” she offers.
“Not for Brody and me, Lez. It’s Brody. It’s Brody!” I groan, holding onto my chest, not knowing how to release the ache thumping inside of it. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted, Leslie. A family. A forever. And when I found Brody, I thought the hard part of my life was over. I thought I’d been found! He was so incredible. Is so incredible. To think of delivering this news to him—this earth shattering, heart breaking, world-ending news—and watch him fall out of love with me,” I bawl, “It’s too much, Leslie. It’s too much.” I shake my head, my chin trembling wildly.
“I don’t think you’re giving him enough credit, Fin,” she says, lying her head back down on my shoulder.
“If he looks at me differently after he knows, I won’t be able to handle it, Leslie. I won’t be able to forget. I don’t think I can come back from something like that. And I refuse to beg him to stay with me. Refuse,” I say, sniffing loudly. “I’m in surviv
al mode right now.”
“I think you are all Brody needs. And he is all you need. And I think you are fooling yourself to think you can’t make a happy life together, just the two of you.”
I look at her, feeling my chest rise as her words blanket me with a shred of hope. But that hope needs to shut the hell up right now. Hope is too painful right now.
“You guys have something really special. Unique. To think you can find anything remotely close to that with Liam, or any other guy that crosses your path for that matter, is a fool’s errand, Fin-Bin. A fool’s errand.”
I watch her stand up off the bathroom floor and stretch. “You look terrible, by the way,” she says, smoothing down her auburn bob in the bathroom mirror.
“Why am I naked?” I ask.
“Ha!” she laughs loudly, “You really don’t remember?” she looks at me, her eyes wide and wild.
“I have no recollection. If I had to guess, I would say Brody found out where I was, flew over the ocean and seduced me in the middle of the night.”
Her jaw drops. “You had a sex dream?” she questions.
I nod.
“You brazen little minx! I want details!” she squeals, while jumping and clapping like a child on Christmas morning.
I shake my head slowly, “No. No freaking way. It was way too strange to relive.”
“Oh, come on! I’m not getting any action over here, I need to live vicariously through you. Even if it’s just in your pretty little messed up head.”
I look up at her and smile, figuring the least I can do is throw her a bone after the pep talk she just gave me.
“I’ll tell you one thing and that’s it. You have to swear on your life that you won’t ask me for any more details,” I bargain.
Her eyes turn wide, “Yes! Tell me, tell me, tell me!” she pants like a dog.
“I mean it, Lez. No more details,” I chide as I stretch out my cramped legs in front of me.
“I got it, I got it!” she kneels down on the floor beside me.
I take a deep breath and say, “Brody wasn’t the only one in my dream last night.”
She tilts her head in thought.
“One word...Liam.”
Her expression goes blank as she sinks further back on her feet tucked under her butt. She looks straight up to the ceiling and falls directly on top of me.
“Ow!” I cry, laughing. “Get off of me, you fat ass!”
“I can’t. I’ve just died of a fascination stroke. I fascinated so fast and so hard about those two dreamboats that I came in my panties and died happy.”
I shove her off of my lap and she flops onto her back, eyes closed. Suddenly she sits back up, “Seriously, you’ve given my vibrator material for the next year.”
“TMI!” I shout.
“TMI?” she questions, “What about the cracks?”
Oh God, the cracks.
“Fine, fine. Thanks for sharing, Lez. Happy to help,” I struggle to get up off the floor without stepping on my sheet.
“Seriously though, why am I naked?” I ask her one last time.
“You said—and I quote, I want to feel the breeze of the house-air on my skin as I walk up three flights of stairs. I’ve never done that before. Bucket list! Unquote.” Leslie looks at me with a straight poker face.
“I didn’t!” I scream, jostling the ache in my head.
“I’m afraid you did, my dear. You are so freaking lucky Julie and Mitch weren’t here.”
“What about Frank?”
She laughs hard and then tries to compose herself, “You might have been passing by his floor just as he was exiting his room with a magazine. He took one look at you, screamed like a girl, and ran back into his room. He hasn’t been out since!” she laughs, obnoxiously kicking her feet and hands on the ground.
Poor, poor Frank and Beans.
CHAPTER TWELVE
After sleeping it off for another hour, I feel tons better. It has been a while since I’ve been hung over so bad I threw up the next day. I hated it then and I hate it now. Couple being hung over with the internal monologue constantly screaming in my head, and you have a recipe for upchuck.
However, I can’t stop myself from popping on Facebook one more time to confirm the images I saw of Brody and Olivia yesterday. The date stamp is clear. The pictures are from a couple nights ago and it looks like they were at a bar or party of some sort. Together. Brody barely knew Olivia back in college. I wonder where the hell he bumped into her after I left. She sure as hell wasn’t his type, but then again, I know Brody is a different guy since I left him.
It feels like a personal attack; he’s always known about my distaste for Olivia. I explained the situation to him in the early days of our relationship. I watered down the parts about my crush on Jake. Brody and Jake had a history of conflict from our senior year because Jake tried to kiss me at a party shortly after Brody and I started dating. I wouldn’t call Brody possessive, but Jake was a sensitive subject I always treaded lightly around. Brody hated the idea that I had unrequited love with anyone. He couldn’t believe any guy wouldn’t want me. Jake and I were always just friends, though. I did my best to assure Brody that I only had eyes for him after we met, but, when it came to me and my past with other guys, it was definitely a subject I avoided as much as possible.
I wouldn’t call myself promiscuous, by any stretch of the imagination, but I was experienced. In high school, I had about four semi-serious boyfriends, and I ended up having sex with all of them. I was a young, wild teenager and extremely curious about sex. So when I had my first official boyfriend at sixteen years old, it was only a matter of time before I willingly gave him my v-card.
Connor Nelson. He wasn’t anything special in the looks department but he was a senior, two years older than me. That gave him a definite cool factor. He was also one of the best players on the varsity football team, so even if he wasn’t super attractive, all the girls wanted him. I felt like the queen bee when he singled me out from all the sophomores. We had a good relationship but had no fireworks or passion between us. It lasted until just before his senior graduation. Surprising everyone, I broke it off because I didn’t want to be tied down to a long-distance relationship when he went to college in the fall.
My other three relationships only lasted about six-to-nine months each. One being just a summer fling, and the other two I ended before they became too serious. My sexual curiosity had been stirred with Connor; so having sex seemed like a normal progression of events in any relationship.
In college, I experienced my first one-night stand. It wasn’t something I was proud of, but I was a freshman enjoying my newfound freedoms, a bit too much, and a football player caught my eye. Sure enough, he promised to call and never did. I hated running into him on campus because I felt like such a fool for sleeping with him the first night I met him. I told Cadence about it and she chastised me for weeks. Nobody needed to yell at me though, I knew I was an idiot and felt horrible about myself afterward. Thankfully, I was smart enough to use a condom. Back then I was terrified of getting pregnant; little did I know, it wasn’t even in the realm of possibilities. Still, football players have nasty reputations, so I’m glad I wasn’t a complete moron.
After that, my girlfriends called me the make-out bandit. I made out and got hot and heavy with quite a few guys after parties and stuff, but I never went all the way with them. That college football player scared me off from opening up like that, and the alternatives were just as fun. If I did find a halfway decent guy, he never seemed to hold my interest for very long; I would end things before they got serious. At the time, I seemed to care more about hanging out with my friends and going to parties than finding a boyfriend.
That was, until I met Brody. When I met Brody, all bets were off. I had never really found a guy I could be completely comfortable and at ease with. That’s what made Brody a breath of fresh air to me. He was hot, funny, kind, and interesting. He was the total package for me. I noticed him for the first t
ime when I was dancing at a bar. I had heard his name around campus before but never spoke to him. After the whole Jake thing fizzled out, I found myself trying to figure out what parties Brody was going to and who his friends were. I couldn’t believe we had been going to the same college for three whole years and our paths never crossed.
After we started getting serious, he admitted he’d seen me around campus before, and had always regretted not talking to me. He rectified that situation when he saw me two months into our senior year, walking in the parking lot of our apartment complex. I can’t help but smile when I picture him standing there in a pair of jersey shorts and no shoes with a half-empty bag of trash. He later told me he only grabbed the trash as an excuse to come out and talk to me. It seriously felt like fate when it dawned on us we’d been living in the same apartment complex, just two buildings apart.
After that, Brody and I got super hot and heavy, but we were good about not being one of those couples that fall off the face of the earth when they fall in love. We both had really solid groups of friends and wanted our senior year to be the best it could be, so we tried hard to separate ourselves occasionally and be with our own friends. However, we managed to combine our groups of friends together a lot so we could have the best of both worlds.
I sighed at the thought of simpler times when our only worries were upsetting our friends for hanging out too much.
After showering, shaving, and dressing in a pair of denim Daisy Dukes and a hoodie, I begin to feel like myself again. I trot down the steps, preparing for a good session of groveling to Frank for flashing him last night.
I repeatedly thump on his door for a good five minutes, begging him to come out.
“Come on, Frank. I promise I have clothes on now. I’m not naked and I’m really sorry, okay?” I whine at his door.
“Seriously, Frank. I’ve been banging out here for almost ten minutes now.”
I hear a muffled laugh from inside his room. Was he laughing at me?
“Frank, I’ll bang for a whole hour if I need to,” I reproach.