“What?” I ask, my instinct to stall and divert kicking in.
Ms. Flynn just smiles and repeats. “We never spoke about why you chose to have Gracie instead of terminate the pregnancy or put her up for adoption. Maybe now’s the time.” When I just stare at the pictures on her bookcase, Ms. Flynn asks again. “What made you decide to keep a baby when you were sixteen, Rachel, when you admittedly didn’t feel anything for the father?”
The words are there, without being conjured and thought, they’re just there on the tip of my tongue as if they’ve been waiting to be said. “She was mine.”
I stay where I am, looking at the pictures, the frames, the books on that shelf without really seeing any of them because all I can see is myself two years ago after I peed on that stick and realized that my life wasn’t my own anymore. Even if I hadn’t chosen to keep Gracie, she still would have been a part of me, still would have changed me. “I’ve never really done anything right. No matter how hard I try, I always seem to make a mess of things, like my parents. I was that baby that was supposed to complete the family and instead they broke apart. This is a trend that’s followed me my entire life, you know? I mean, I couldn’t even be promiscuous in the right way, for God’s sake. One time and there she was, my panda bear.” I turn away from the bookshelves and back to Ms. Flynn. “I was even more scared that day, looking at that screen and seeing her, and even though I didn’t tell anyone I knew then that I was keeping her, that this was my chance to do something right. The timing was wrong, the person was wrong, but not the baby. I knew if I had her, if I loved her, she would be the one thing in life I could be truly proud of.”
Saying it aloud I realize how selfish it sounds, how uncaring. I kept a baby because I wanted to do something right, not because I loved her. When I say this, Ms. Flynn just smiles.
“Whatever you think, whatever reasons you had for keeping Gracie, you do have something to be proud of, and it isn’t just her. Do you know that, Rae?”
I nod my head, but I don’t say anything. There are times I’m not sure, but I just can’t get into anything more with this woman. How do you go through the fact that you didn’t love your baby when she was born? How do you explain to someone what it’s like to know that you should feel something that you don’t feel? Ms. Flynn knows about my depression after Gracie was born, and she knows I’m working on accepting the fact that I ignored my daughter. She’s the one who knows it all—and still, how do you really explain to someone what it feels like to realize you didn’t love your daughter when she was born?
“Rae?” Ms. Flynn’s voice brings me back and I shake my head. I’m sinking and I don’t know if I’ll be ever to find steady ground again. Ms. Flynn sighs (an indication she’s tabling this for another time) and leans back in her chair, still looking at me. “So you have a baby, your life has changed, your dreams and your future are no longer just yours, something you’ve just said you knew and accepted when you realized you wanted Gracie, but now you have the boy you’ve admittedly loved your entire life telling you he loves you and wants to be with you and you don’t give him those feelings in return. Why?”
“Because he might leave.” Exhausted, I give in and sit again, tucking my hands under my legs. “I love Gracie, she was my choice and I know she’s my life now. But every time I look back to that night with Marcus and think about what decision I would make if I could do it over, I don’t know if I would make the same one, even knowing her and loving her like I do. How can I ask someone else to make that choice when I’m not sure I would if given the chance to do it over?”
Ms. Flynn is quiet for a moment and I’m grateful, grateful for her silence rather than her reassurance that I’m normal for thinking like this. Normal? Please. I surpassed normal and went straight into Toon-Town years ago. Maybe Katie’s not the only one with daddy issues.
As I ponder this new thought, Ms. Flynn reaches over and touches my shoulder. “Do you trust Tripp, Rachel?”
And there it is. The reason Ms. Fucking-Flynn is so goddamned effective. I shake my head. Tears begin to gather and I want to slap myself for the fact that I appear so weak. I survived being pregnant in high school and can pretty much beat up any person, male or female, I put my mind to—why am I such a crier these days?
Because I love my best friend but I don’t trust him to love me back. Rat bastard. These tears are his fault.
“Why not?” Ms. Flynn asks and I shrug. She waits, because it’s a bullshit thing to do and we both know I’m using it as a stall technique. “Why can’t you trust Tripp when he tells you he loves you, Rae?”
I don’t want to answer, don’t want to give her any more than I have. I’m drowning as it is, drowning in the idea that Tripp may really love me, that he may want to be with me, and still, my mouth opens and the words are there before I register them. “Because he’s already walked away. If he loved me, why did he do that?”
“Is he still with Lauren?”
I hesitate and then shake my head. “They broke up Saturday night.”
“Did he tell her why?” I nod. “So, he admitted that he’s been unfaithful to her because he loves you.” I shake my head. “He didn’t admit to her that he was unfaithful? Or did he not tell her it was because he loves you?”
“He broke up with her before he came to see me, before we had sex.”
Her eyebrow shoots up on one side. Of course this would get a reaction, but when I mention orgasmic sex she takes it without batting an eyelash.
“So, he’s already shown his commitment to you by eliminating a relationship that previously kept you apart. He showed his desire to be faithful by doing this before he came to see you.” The brow arches higher. “What makes you more nervous, Rachel? The fact that he’s already tried to show he loves you, or that he might just mean it?”
As was her goal, Flynn’s words stay with me all day. I go through the rest of my classes in a fog because as much as I want to skip, I need normalcy, however annoying it is. And if I skip, I’m going to go and see Gracie and I’m not ready to see her until the fears from this morning are washed away. It doesn’t feel right to go and play with her after I admitted what I did to Flynn, that I don’t know if I would have sex and have Gracie if I was allowed to go back. However normal it might be, however acceptable, I won’t have her feeling any of it.
When the final bell rings, I walk to my car to grab my practice gear even though every part of me wants to call coach and bag out. I’m tired, and as much as I hate to admit it, I’m a little emotional and I know if coach so much as yells at me I’ll embarrass us both by bursting into tears. I’d rather be staked to an anthill than be a girl who cries at practice.
I’m pulling out my cell phone to text him and Katie when I hear my name. I know who it is before I look up and see Tripp sitting on the hood of my car, his feet propped on the bumper, his elbows resting on his knees. He’s only wearing a hoodie against the freezing wind that’s already starting to spit rain, but in the muted overcast light I can see his eyes through those beautiful lashes, and they’re piercing as they look at me.
The girly part of me wants to keep walking until I’m in front of him, to put my arms around him and rest my head on his shoulder, to ask him to take care of me, to help me, to let me lean. She might also want to crawl into his lap and make out with him. But the other part of me, the stronger part (who still wants to make out with him), knows that I need to stand here on my own, that giving in to my desire will be bad for both of us.
So I shove the girly part face first in the mud and tell her to eff off before I stop a good foot in front of him and shove my hands into the pockets of my North Face after brushing at the tendrils of hair the wind has whipping around my face. “Waiting for me twice in one day, whatever will people think?”
He doesn’t smile, just sits there staring at me, his eyes never leaving mine as he pushes off of the hood and closes the distance between us. The war inside of me begins again, the twin urges of desire and rejection battling. I stand still, r
esisting both, staring at him as he stares at me.
“We need to talk,” he says and reaches for my hand. Before I can react, he has my keys and is walking around to the driver’s side door. Without another word, he gets in and starts the engine, sitting there, staring at me through the windshield as the rain starts to come down. I want to tell him no, to grab my gear and stalk away to the practice I didn’t want to be at two minutes ago just to show him I can, but as if he knew it wouldn’t be, my anger just isn’t there. Instead, I walk to the passenger side and throw my bag in the backseat before settling down in the front. Neither of us says anything as he drives out of the parking lot.
Sixteen
I stay silent when he parks on the curb outside of his house. The rain is falling harder now, a steady drum on the roof that cocoons us as we sit there, both staring straight ahead. The windows start to fog and still we sit, listening to the rain and wondering where to begin.
As is par these days, Tripp breaks the silence first. “I need to say some things to you, things you didn’t let me say this morning. I brought you here because nobody’s home and I don’t want to do this with an audience.” He turns to me and my breath catches at the sight of those eyes, so strong, so deep as they look at me and I can see everything he’s feeling in them. “I need you to listen to me, Rachel, and if when I’m done you need time, you can have it and we can go back to being friends and just be for a while, but I need you to listen first. Can you do that?”
For a minute I just watch him, noting his eyes never leave mine. I think of what I feel, if I have anything left for another freaking conversation. I’ve talked more about my feelings in the past two days than I have in my entire life. I’m fucking tired, I’m wrung out, I’m in no mood to rehash something that I know I don’t really understand. And still I nod, knowing that for Tripp I’ll always find more. It pisses me off to realize that, but there’s nothing I can do about it.
So to show him I mean it, I take the first step and open my car door, stepping out into the rain and jogging up to the porch where he’s suddenly beside me, opening the door and pushing me through before he closes it. Brushing a hand over his head, he scatters raindrops and I can’t help but watch him, as mesmerized by this serious and gentle side of Tripp as I am by all others. This should scare me considering I wanted to get over him, but right now I can’t think about that. Instead, I think about how beautiful he is, everywhere, inside, outside. Tripp, my Tripp, who takes my hand to lead me down the hallway and into his bedroom, closing the door behind me. I stand in the center, thinking back to the last time I was in here. Maybe our freshman year before school started? After Lovely Lauren it just didn’t feel right to be in here, not even to hang out.
I look around and note that not much has changed. His bed is still pushed against the corner wall next to the window and covered with a dark blue spread. A corkboard with photos and ticket stubs from concerts or basketball games still hangs over it. A bookcase sits on the wall perpendicular to his bed, filled with books of all kinds, from action to how-tos and car magazines. Across from his bed is a desk, and on the left hand side is a picture of us from when we were in the fifth grade. We’re filthy, our arms around each other, our smiles glowing through the mud on our faces. Our first flag football championship game. Tripp campaigned to get me on the team and we led them to victory. The same photo sits on my dresser at home.
I turn in a circle, taking in the small details, some that are new since I was here last, some that are old. A poster that runs the entire length of one wall with some sort of race car on it, a flat screen and game console in the middle of the bookshelf. Tripp watches me and when I meet his eyes, I try a smile.
“I like your new poster.”
He smiles, but it’s a small one before he sits on the edge of the bed. I take his desk chair and swivel it around to face him, tucking my hands under my legs.
“I’m sorry.”
We’ve already covered this, but I still raise my brow at him. “For what?”
“Take your pick?” He smiles again, a half smile, and then he leans forward. “I’ve thought about what you said this morning, about how it looks to you, how you feel, and I can’t ever tell you enough how sorry I am. Even if I didn’t feel the way I do about you, I would never want to hurt you like that.” He looks at me and I can tell he means it, but I don’t say anything. What’s there to say when it’s over and done with?
“I didn’t know how to be with you two years ago. You’ve always been Rachel, and I’ve always thought of you as mine…just mine. It’s not that I didn’t think about being with you, I just didn’t think I should. I mean, you’re my best friend, you know everything about me. If we got together and I messed it up, who would I have?”
“So your solution was to hook up with me every few years and then act like it didn’t happen?” I ask, but there’s no sting in my words and a smile ghosts around his mouth again.
“Brilliant, right?” His face sobers and he stares at his hands, as if working out what to say.
“That night of the party two years ago, I saw what it would be like if I had you, really had you. It felt so right, but it was also so big. I was both thrilled and terrified and then the next morning I woke up to a text from Lauren apologizing for our argument, telling me that she didn’t really want to take a break. She asked me to meet her and I used that as an excuse to leave, to escape without talking to you.”
“Why?” I ask even though I’ve told myself over and over I don’t want to know. “You keep saying you didn’t know how to be with me, and fine, I might think that’s bullshit but it’s yours. But you couldn’t pick up the fucking phone and call me, text me, tell me that you weren’t ready, that you wanted Lauren?” I almost choke on her name.
“You didn’t call me either,” he throws back and I glare. He blows out a breath and scrubs his hands over his face before looking at me again. “You were everything I’d ever wanted and it scared me to realize that at sixteen, because I knew I wanted you but I didn’t know if you wanted me. I thought I would go and talk to Lauren, wait and see if you called. When I got there and I told her that I’d been with you she said it was okay, that she had made a mistake in trying to make me jealous, that we could work it out. I wanted to call you, to ask what to do, but then I realized that you hadn’t called me and I wondered if you wanted to forget it. When I walked in with her on Monday and you didn’t say anything, I figured I was right.”
You know the saying curiosity killed the cat? What it omits is that curiosity killed him because the fucking cat never learned that the more you ask, the more you know and the more you can hurt.
“Let me get this straight: you left my bed to go and talk to your ex-girlfriend, then you got back together with her because I didn’t call you and you figured it was because I wasn’t interested?” He eyes me and nods. “You asswipe. You left me, you texted some lame thing to me that morning, and then you walked in with Lauren and pretended it never happened the next day. What was I supposed to do?”
“I said I was sorry.”
“That’s not enough,” I say and stand to leave.
“Jesus Christ, I was a kid, Rachel, a scared kid because somehow what I wanted and what I had weren’t lining up and I didn’t know how to make them.” He blows out a breath and I hear the frustration in it. “I’ve loved you my entire life, Rachel. I fucked up and thought it was best to just take the punishment, and then when you got pregnant I thought all you needed was a friend, someone to be there and take care of you. To make sure no one ever hurt you again, especially me.”
“Well, you failed at that, and I can take care of myself.”
He nods and stands so we’re face-to-face, but he doesn’t close the gap between us. “Doesn’t change that I want to take care of you, and when I saw you with Dean I realized that I don’t care if it’s selfish, if it’s unfair, if it’s asking too much because I want to be with you, more than I want anything else in this world, I want to be with you.” When
he steps toward me this time, I take an instinctive step back, too many emotions swirling inside of me for it to be safe. If he touches me, I’m going to hold onto him and I’m not ready for that. He doesn’t stop though, not until my back is pressed up against the wall and he’s in front of me.
I shake my head. “It’s not that simple anymore, Tripp. You have Lauren, I have Gracie. Things are complicated.” And you broke my heart. Again.
“I told you, I broke up with Lauren. I told her about you, you know,” he says and takes my hand in his. “I told her that I just can’t get past the feelings I have for you, no matter how much I try to convince myself that she’s the better, safer choice. I cared about Lauren, and I liked that when I was with her things were easy, and that even for just a minute I could convince myself it was right. But I can’t do that anymore, Rachel.” His voice is low and a shiver runs through me as he reaches his other hand up and brushes at the hair that has escaped my rubber band to float around my face. His eyes never leave mine as he steps closer and presses his body to mine.
“Why not?” I ask, but I know, and it terrifies me as much as it thrills me.
“Because she’s not you.” Leaning forward, his lips a whisper from mine, he waits patiently, not pushing me, but not letting me go, either. “I’m not a kid anymore and I know how to work for what I want. You’re it for me, Rachel. You always have been.”
When his lips brush mine, they’re so soft, so gentle that I can hardly speak. It’s not like the other times is all I can think as his hands reach up to cup my face, his thumbs tracing the underside of my jaw. Before, it was heat and pressure, a whirlwind of feeling as we raced to that final edge, but now it’s sweet, tender, as if he wants to remember every breath, every move.
Pulling back, my eyes are wide as I stare at him, his steady as they stare right back. I hate that I understand what he means, that I can’t grasp onto his relationship with Lovely Lauren and throw it in his face. Isn’t that the reason I held onto Dean, a guy who made me happy and didn’t make me hurt like my feelings for Tripp did? But it’s not just about those feelings, it’s about who we are right now.
Life Interrupted Page 12