Life Interrupted

by Kehoe, Kristen

  Do you know how many articles said that after Gracie came around? About as many as the coaches who called me to ask to pay for me and my daughter to come visit their university. Yeah, I’m lucky, I have a baby and parents (at least a mom, since my dad has the maturity level of a nineteen-year-old and didn’t even stick around to raise me) who help out. No one kicked me out or tried to force me to have an abortion, no one exiled me from the city, and as great as everyone has been, my biggest fear is that I’m not sure I’ll ever look at her, my daughter, and not see what could have been instead of what is. And that’s harder than looking at my sister right now knowing she may never get a baby. She can regret what she doesn’t have and I’ll listen, but I know more than she thinks because every day I look at my life and regret what may never be, for me and my daughter.

  Three

  “Absolutely not.”

  “You’re such a whore.”

  “False. I was a whore last year, I’m a teen-mom this year.”

  “Stop trying to be funny and look at me.”

  Resigned, I look up from the calculus homework that I’m trying to concentrate on and have no notes to help with, thanks to my latest session with Ms. Flynn, to cock my head at my friend Katie. At five feet four inches tall and maybe a buck ten, she’s the cutest sprite of a girl I’ve ever seen. She’s also the most terrifying, especially on days like today where she’s all biker-babed out in a nose ring, black skinny jeans with seriously spiked black heels that make her a good four inches taller, and a black tank top with some sort of Asian writing stenciled on it in red. Her hair, normally pale blonde to go with her sky blue eyes, is scarlet. This look is all thanks to the influence of her latest boyfriend, no doubt. The term “daddy issues” was invented for Katie.

  “You know Coach is going to flip if he sees you in those stilts. Not to mention your hair color.”

  Katie waves her hand in the air. “Like he can tell me what to do when I’m not on the court.”

  I ignore this because we both know he can, and does, as he’s the only one who keeps her in line. Her dad’s gone, her mom’s living with boyfriend number four since the divorce—who doesn’t happen to like teenagers—and Katie fills the gap by disobeying everyone in a position of authority and waiting to be brushed aside. Coach never does, no matter how hard she pushes.

  “Besides, Doug bought these boots for me.” Of course he did.

  “How is Doug the biker boy?” Her face lights up with the first week glow she has for every relationship. Next week will be the irritated eye roll for everything Doug does, and the week after that, if we stay on track, will be the constant complaining, the text arguments and the inevitable break-up. Katie is nothing if not reliable.

  “Amazing. We went for a ride last night and drove all the way to the coast. We got the bike up to 110. He bought me my own helmet.”

  “It must be love,” I say and try not to gag. Katie’s newest boyfriend is a twenty-year-old community college dropout whose current goal in life is to become a T Bird—John Travolta style. He has everything from the Chucks to the jacket and the comb which he keeps in his pocket and uses when he waits outside of school for Katie. But rather than Sandy, who Katie looks eerily alike, he prefers a more Girl Interrupted look, hence Katie’s overnight transformation.

  To put it mildly, he is a douche—a one hundred and fifty pound douche whom I’ve already assessed and know I can do some serious physical damage to if he hurts her. As I long ago recognized a pattern of idiocy in all of Katie’s boyfriends, no doubt a direct mirror image of her own sterling father who is currently a ward of the state for armed robbery, I always assess them at the beginning. Since most of her boyfriends are emo or some other shit that keeps them from growing and looking healthy, it isn’t hard to intimidate them.

  “All I’m asking is that you meet his cousin and consider going out with us. We don’t have a tournament this weekend and Doug told me Richie is really sweet and super good looking.”

  “Well, if Doug says.”

  “Don’t be a bitch, Flow.”

  “First a whore, now a bitch. Is this Doug’s influence or do you think of these pet names on your own?”

  A smile twitches at her lips before she sighs and sits down.

  “Doug doesn’t really like you, to be honest.”

  “Color me shocked,” I say and turn back to my homework.

  “He says you’re scary.”

  I can’t help my smile. “Imagine that.”

  “I know, right? That’s why I suggested the double date with Richie—so he could see how sweet you really are. I didn’t tell him about Gracie, though, don’t worry. I don’t want him thinking you’re easy.”

  A laugh escapes and I can’t help but shake my head. “Thanks for that, but my answer’s still no.”

  Katie groans and leans forward. “Come on, Flow, it’s just one night. Besides, you haven’t been on a date since…”

  I look up at her with a raised eyebrow. “Since I got pregnant? And that wasn’t even a date. Imagine if the guy bought me dinner first.” I shake my head. “I think my reasons for avoiding this one are clear enough.”

  “I was going to say since Tripp,” she says, and has me pausing in the middle of my equation again. “You haven’t been on a date since that night sophomore year when you went to the basketball state championship after party and hooked up with Tripp.”

  When I say nothing—how can I, I know she’s right—she lays her hand over mine in a quiet show of support. “I know you love him. Loved him,” she amends when my eyes flash to hers. “But he’s with Lauren, just like he was before the night you hooked up.”

  A pain shoots into my stomach with her words and I have to suck in a breath. Nope, I will not go back there. Not to that night, not to the night a few weeks later that was impulse which led to Gracie. I won’t go back to all the nights before when I felt exactly like this—aching and hurting and swamped with love for someone who has never really seen me. If it takes a date with some underfed hipster for me to prove it, bring it.

  “Fine, but I’m driving myself in case I feel the need to flee at any moment and I refuse to go anywhere that burns incense and plays bad live music all night. I want a real restaurant with real food.” Katie shrieks and launches herself at me and I laugh. “I’m serious, Katie. If I’m leaving Gracie with a babysitter, I want it to be worth it.”

  She laughs and nods her head. “It will be, Flow, you’ll see. I’m going to call Doug and tell him it’s on.”

  I watch her wiggle her cell phone out of her pocket as she walks toward the edge of the cafeteria near the windows to get better reception. When she passes the basketball table, the boys all hoot and holler at her good naturedly and she does a pirouette—a miracle in her icepicks—but I’m already ignoring her, my eyes automatically drifting to the buzzed blonde who’s sitting in the last seat, his broad shoulders hunched as he wolfs down what is no doubt his third sandwich in record time. He has a plain navy blue t-shirt on with jeans—nothing fancy or showy, which makes him ten times sexier. If I was sitting next to him, I might be able to smell the gentle scent of his Old Spice deodorant, the only scented thing he wears. I know that because I know him, better than I know myself at times.

  Tripp Jones—athlete extraordinaire, high school heartthrob, and the only person to ever break my heart. The shit.

  ~

  In fairness, Tripp doesn’t know he broke my heart and I would rather rip it out and stomp on it before telling him. All heartache where he’s concerned is of my own doing, although Katie can find fault in just about everything he does. I secretly think this has to do with the fact that Tripp dumped her after a three day relationship in the seventh grade because she wouldn’t let him put his tongue down her throat. I punched him for that, and again for dumping her in front of the entire cafeteria at lunch, but Katie’s not one to forgive and forget, so in a moment of weakness two years ago when I told my best friend that I slept with Tripp and things had happened, she prom
ptly warned me that wasn’t good.

  How right she was.

  Tripp and I met in the fourth grade when we were picking flag football teams at recess. He picked me, stating that even though I was a girl, I was big like a boy and probably better than most of his friends. That comment alone made me fall in love with him—finally, someone who understood and appreciated my size and abilities. The older we got, the more time we spent together, finding that we lived only a block away from each other, that our parents were friends from way back when, that we loved the same things: sports, video games, and Rom Coms. (Seriously, he feigns interest in the Stallone and Schwarzenegger stuff, but really all he wants is McConaughey. It’s hilarious.)

  Starting in the seventh grade, Tripp worked to maintain the legend his two older brothers left behind, dating as many girls as possible while holding a special place in the hearts of all of those he didn’t get around to. To say it bothered me would be a mild term for it. I fucking hated it.

  I loathed every girl he took to a dance or walked home or pushed against the wall outside of homeroom and kissed, but I loved him, so I continued to be his best friend, secure in the knowledge that one day that girl—whoever she was that week—would be gone and I would still be there.

  That didn’t stop me from punching Tripp on a regular basis, however, or abusing one of his girls in P.E. class when presented with the chance. Our relationship was volatile, always ending up in a shouting match at which point I would end it by putting my fist into some part of his anatomy before storming off. He always came after me a few hours later, bearing some gift (usually food) and we would laugh off whatever it was that had ignited us. No matter what it was, Tripp never let us stay apart for long.

  I comforted myself with this knowledge all the way through our seventh and eighth grade years and into summer. He might kiss other girls and hold other girls, but he never chased after other girls. Only me. Until freshman year. Until Lovely Lauren.

  I knew the minute Lauren Daemon stepped into the cafeteria at freshman orientation that I was in trouble. Tripp, normally so loud and out there, stopped talking the moment he saw her, and after an hour and no comments, the only thing he said was her name. She refused him the first few months, never saying anything more than no when he asked her out to the movies or dinner or a party. Undaunted, Tripp continued, ignoring all of the other available girls who threw themselves at him daily, including yours truly.

  Lauren became Tripp’s mission in life. She refused him, yet he went back for more until finally, the day before Homecoming she agreed to be his date. They’ve been together ever since, only separating that one time, the time I took him home after their blow-up at the basketball state championship after party. The time that he reached for me and kissed me. The time that he touched me and held me and told me how beautiful I was, sliding his body over mine and making me weak for the first time in my life.

  It began when he called me, his voice angry and somewhat slurred as he asked me to take him home.

  “Rachel, I’m outside.” Despite the fact that everyone else—my mom included—calls me Flow (because unlike a normal, supportive mother she found my public period incident hilarious), Tripp has never used anything other than my real name. It brings goose bumps to my skin every time. Even that night, when I could hear the alcohol in his voice.

  Just his name on my cell phone’s readout was enough to make my heart race. We hadn’t spent as much time together since Lauren and he began dating, and honestly, I just missed him.

  “Tripp, what are you doing outside? It’s a party, your party. You won.” Tripp was one of the only sophomores to make the varsity team and start. He was a star and he should be celebrating.

  I slapped at Jason Metz’s hand, which was trying to find its way to my ass while we played pool. “I don’t care, I can’t be in there. It’s Lauren.”

  I shanked my shot and dimly heard the hoots from the guys I was playing, but I didn’t care. My heart was beating too fast, like I had just gotten done with a long run, and I held my breath thinking that this was it, this was the moment he was going to tell me he made a mistake, that he shouldn’t have ever dated Lovely Lauren with her long strawberry-blonde hair and flawless skin.

  “What happened, Tripp?”

  There was silence on the other end of the line but I could hear him breathing, hear the rain coming down on the tin roof of the overhang. I was already walking outside, already ignoring Jason Metz and his friends who were calling after me. Tripp needed me, finally, he needed me again.

  “She says I’m not possessive enough, that I’m too friendly with other girls when we’re together.”

  Bitch. This is Lauren’s greatest skill, and the reason I hate her. (Well, the second reason. The first is because she’s small and petite and sleeping with the boy I laid claim on when we were eight, so in fairness, I was going to hate the bitch no matter what she was like.)

  Outside, I spotted Tripp sitting on the step under the overhang, his forearms resting on his knees as his head hung. He looked so dejected in that moment that even my hardened heart broke a little for him. When I walked over, he looked up at me and a small smile curved his lips, his lids heavier than normal, his beautiful blue eyes a little glazed from the beer and the shock of no more Lovely Lauren. I didn’t care, though, not when he took my hand and we walked to my car together.

  As we drove away, I asked again what happened. “I don’t know. The whole night was fucked up. She got mad when I said I would meet her here because I wanted to celebrate with the guys first, and then she took forever to get here so I’m already half pissed when she does, and then she starts complaining that I pay too much attention to other girls, that I don’t make her feel special anymore.”

  He scrubbed his hands over his face and leaned his head back against the seat. “I had no idea what she was talking about, and when I told her that she got mad and said she wouldn’t dance with me when I’m like this so she went and let Henry put his hands on her. When I pulled him off, she said I was being irrational and told me to leave.”

  Lauren’s greatest weapon is being a girl—she knows exactly how to aim and hurt someone simply by manipulating them. Unlike me, she didn’t just punch Tripp when she got mad at him. She manipulated him, worked him into a jealous rage until he conformed to what she wanted. Not this night, though, I thought as I felt Tripp’s warm hand in mine. Instead of chasing her like he’d been doing their entire relationship, he came running to me. I held this revelation tightly like I did his hand while I drove him home, my excitement growing more when he asked if he could go to my house so he didn’t have to deal with his brothers.

  We snuck through the back door and into my room as we had countless times when we were growing up, times when he needed a place to get away from the ever present pressure of his family, times when he’d messed up with his parents and needed a place to hang out until they calmed down. Times when we were just friends and wanted to be together.

  But this time was different. We weren’t Tripp and Rachel, best friends. We were Tripp and Rachel, scorned boyfriend and the girl he’d run to. I sat down on the bed, scooting back and leaning against the pillows and instead of taking his normal side, Tripp sat down on mine, scooting until I had to curl my legs up to make room for him, staring at me while I stared at him. And before I could think or breathe his hands were in my hair and his mouth was on mine, his tongue sweeping inside to stroke my own, his lips taking mine so firmly, so thoroughly, so familiarly, it was as if we kissed every day. In the back of my mind I worried over the fact that I could taste the beer on his breath, and then his hands swept under my t-shirt, pulling it up and over my head in one move, and all I could think of was him.

  His hands possessed every inch of me that night, taking me to places I had never been with anyone else, his mouth making the same journey, and when he lay on top of me, his bare chest pressed to mine, he framed my face in his hands and looked down at me as if seeing me for the first time. This was it,
I thought. He finally felt as I did. I gave him everything I could that night, stopping him before he could search for a condom. I wasn’t ready, but it was okay, because now that we were together I would have time to be ready. He didn’t say anything when I made him stop, he just continued to kiss me and stroke his hands over my body, loving me in the way I always dreamed he would.

  In the morning after what felt like hours of kissing, I lay in my bed, Tripp next to me as he had been countless times in our childhood, but this time it was different. He’d seen me without most of my clothes on, he’d touched me and kissed me like I was his girlfriend, and then he’d held me all night. Stars clouded my vision and I snuck out of bed to use the bathroom and brush my teeth. When I returned, he was gone, a small text on my phone saying he had to go take care of something.

  Something inside of me broke, left me feeling hollow and empty. I waited for him to call all day, and when he never did, I told myself not to panic, but on Monday morning when he walked into school with Lovely Lauren, I knew.

  Two weeks later Katie pressured me into going to Brooke Wilkins’s spring break party and when I walked in and saw Tripp in a lip-lock with Lovely Lauren, I got drunk and hooked up with Marcus Kash, secretly pleased when Marcus kissed me right in front of Tripp, even more so when he took my hand to lead me upstairs and Tripp tried to stop me. I stood on the bottom stair, my hand in Marcus’s, my vision slightly blurry from my last drink, and I looked down at Tripp as he laid his hand on my arm.

  “Don’t do this, Rachel.”

  In the background I heard Marcus say “Who’s Rachel?” but I ignored him and yanked my arm from Tripp’s. “Lauren’s waiting for you.” With that, I turned and walked up the stairs behind a guy I hardly knew, hoping that being with him would erase the memory of being with Tripp. It didn’t, and six weeks later when that stick blared the words PREGNANT at me, it wasn’t Marcus I ran to, but Tripp. We had barely spoken in the two months since we’d spent the night together, but one look at my tear stained face and he left class, taking my hand and walking to my car with me, promising me everything was going to be all right as I sobbed on his shoulder.