by Ali Parker
Damn it. “I didn’t say that.”
“Exactly,” Katie said pointedly. “I don’t want to tell you what to do. But you need to seriously consider this, Jack. Who do you want to spend the most time with? Who do you want to call when something good happens? Or something bad? Who is that person who is on your mind more than anyone else? Who do you dream about?”
Katie was watching me like a lioness watched her prey. She’d backed me into a corner and she knew it.
“The girl I met last week was fun.” I was lying through my teeth. Lacy had been anything but fun. “We had a good time.”
“You’re being evasive.”
I stared into my basket of fries and half-eaten burger. Hailey was the girl that lived in my mind. I’d thought about her throughout the entire course of my date with Lacy, hadn’t I? Hell, I’d thought about her when I first woke up this morning because birds were chirping and rain was pattering against the window and I knew those were the kinds of sounds Hailey loved most.
“Holy shit,” I breathed.
Katie smirked and rested her chin in her palm. “What?”
“Am I in love with my best friend?”
Katie plucked a fry from her basket and threw it at me. It hit me square in the nose. She laughed and gave her head a shake. “Yes, Jack. You absolutely are.”
Chapter 27
Hailey
“How about Tuesday at eleven o’clock?” My doctor’s receptionist had a warm, friendly voice. She’d been working for him since I was twelve years old. Aside from my sister, she was officially the only person who knew I was pregnant.
I put the call on speaker and opened my calendar app to confirm I could make that appointment work. I could take an early lunch break and get there in time.
“That works for me, Cheryl,” I said. “I do have to work that day. Can I call half an hour before my appointment to make sure Dr. Davies is on schedule?”
“Of course, dear.”
“Thank you.”
“Congratulations, Hailey! We’ll see you at eleven o’clock on Tuesday.”
“Thank you,” I said again. This time, my voice sounded hollow and thin.
Congratulations. Was that what people were going to say to me now? Were they going to celebrate something on my behalf that still felt like a burden—and might always feel that way?
The thought made me feel ill. Or maybe that was just the morning sickness. There was no way to tell really. All I knew was my mother had endured a rough pregnancy with both me and my sister, so I could only imagine what nonsense there was in store for me over the next eight months.
Nausea, heartburn, sciatica pain, swollen ankles, and a thirty-eight-hour-long delivery that ended in a caesarean.
I gave my head a shake. There was no sense ruminating on all the things that were entirely out of my control. I had to remember what Hannah had said. I had to take this thing one step at a time. Slowly but surely, I would get through this thing.
I had to.
With a tired sigh, I extracted myself from my sister’s sofa and padded barefoot into the kitchen, where I opened the fridge and stared into the depths of the shelves. I was hungry but didn’t want anything.
This had been a trend for the past week.
I was hungry but food remained unappealing. Disenchanted by all my options, I closed the fridge and opted for a banana from the fruit bowl on the counter instead. I’d eaten half of it when there was a knock on the front door.
Assuming my sister had a delivery coming, I went and opened it with my hair a mess and still dressed in my most unappealing pajama set, a washed out, oversized, armpit-torn, hanging off the shoulder, maroon Christmas-ornament-patterned atrocity that I’d owned for six years.
I called them my sad jammies.
But when I opened the door, it was not a delivery driver standing on the other side.
It was a tall, messy-haired, stubble-jawed handsome man.
And the father of the baby growing in my belly.
“Jackson?” My voice fluttered in my throat.
What was he doing here?
Had he found out about the baby?
Was he angry with me?
Jackson smiled. “Hey, can I come in?”
I rubbed my tongue on the roof of my mouth to try to restore moisture that had been zapped to dust when I saw him. Panic had a tendency to do that to me. Despite my uneasy stomach and my sweaty palms, I let him in.
Jackson stepped out of his sneakers and looked me up and down when I turned around. “The Christmas jammies are usually a bad sign. You okay? This isn’t because you’re still pissed at me, is it?”
“Erm,” I stammered. Where did I start? How did I explain this away?
He smiled. “It doesn’t matter. I have something I want to talk to you about.”
“You could’ve called,” I said.
“This is important. In-person kind of important.”
Important? It must have been important for him to fly all the way here. My heart started racing in my chest. I played out every scenario in which he might have found out about the baby but realized that was impossible. The only person who knew was Hannah, and there was no way she’d tell a single person about this until I was ready.
He didn’t know. This was about something else.
Whatever it was, it wouldn’t be bigger than me being pregnant. I knew I should sit him down and tell him before he said whatever it was he came here to tell me.
My head started spinning.
What will he think?
What will he say?
Will he want this? Or will it scare the hell out of him like it’s scaring me?
I didn’t even know how I wanted Jackson to feel about this, let alone how I felt.
“I made a mistake,” Jackson started. “I never should have left things the way they were after we slept together for the first time. I should have—”
“Jackson, wait. I need to tell you something too.”
He held up his hand and shook his head before reaching for me. He caught my hand in his and pulled me forward so we were standing about a foot apart. He gazed down at my hand and ran his thumb over my knuckles. The sensation was warm and gentle and intimate.
Jackson’s brow creased and he lifted his gaze to look at me. “I should have told you what I was feeling, Hailey. But I didn’t know at the time what it all meant. Now I have clarity. And I want to try.”
“Try?”
“This. You.” He cupped my cheek with his free hand. “Us.”
Us?
I bit my bottom lip and resisted the urge to pull my hand from his and step back so I could create a safe, familiar distance between us. Why did this feel so good and so terrifying all at once? This was what I wanted, wasn’t it? It was what I’d been pining over for weeks. Months, even.
But I couldn’t tell him yes. I couldn’t jump all in. Because I knew things he didn’t.
The baby. Our baby. The baby I didn’t even know if I wanted.
“Hails?”
I swallowed hard. “I—I think I need to sit down.”
Jackson didn’t let go of my hand. He guided me into the living room and sat me down on the sofa. He crouched down in front of me as I leaned forward and rested my elbows on my knees and plunged my fingers into my hair.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “This isn’t going the way I thought it would. I thought… well, I thought you would want this too.”
I do want this. “It’s more complicated than that.” I tried to find the right words. I didn’t want to hurt him. But I didn’t want to scare him off either and I was about to drop an atomic bomb on him—a bomb I wasn’t even sure I should drop.
Should I make up my mind about what I wanted first? Should I sit in the quiet of nobody else knowing for a little longer until I found clarity?
“Jackson, I’m—”
The front door opened.
Hannah came inside in a whirlwind of shopping bags and her head down so she could kick off he
r work shoes.
“Hailey?” She started talking before I had a chance to answer her. “I wasn’t sure what you’d want, so I called Vanessa and asked what her favorite pregnancy snacks were. She said she loved all things sour and deli sandwiches. So I whipped up a turkey sub at the cafe before I left and stopped to get some of those sour gummies we used to eat when we were—”
Hannah froze when she saw Jackson.
My whole body felt numb. Shit.
Jackson was staring at me. I could feel the heat of his gaze but I didn’t dare meet his eyes.
Hannah let out a nervous laugh as she set the grocery and shopping bags down on the kitchen island. “Oh. Hi, Jackson. I didn’t realize you were here. This is um… awkward.”
Awkward? This was a thousand times worse than awkward.
At least the cat was out of the bag. The truth was out there. All I had to do now was get through this conversation one step at a time.
First, I had to meet Jackson’s eye.
Why did that seem so damn hard?
Chapter 28
Jackson
“Pregnant?”
The word fell from my lips and hung in the air between Hailey and me. What did she mean, pregnant?
Is it mine?
My heart thundered in my chest. How long had it been since we had sex the first time? A few weeks. Almost a month? Something like that. What did that mean? How long had Hailey known she was pregnant? How long had she known and said nothing to me about it?
I leaned back on my heels and Hailey’s hand slipped out of mine.
Hannah crept back toward the front door. “I think I’m going to duck out and give you guys some time to talk privately. Text me if you need anything, Hailey.”
Hailey’s mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. Hannah didn’t wait for her little sister to answer. She left the apartment with her shoes in her hands—she didn’t even want to hang around to put them on. She wanted to escape.
Slowly, I turned back to Hailey. “Hails, how long have you known about this?”
She scooted back on the sofa and pulled her knees to her chest, making herself as small as possible. “I didn’t find out until I got back from New York.”
“You’ve known for a week and you didn’t tell me?”
Ouch. That hurt. Hailey and I were best friends. We told each other everything. It had been that way since the beginning of time for us both. No problem was too big for us not to be able to solve together. Why would she intentionally keep this from me?
Hailey buried her face in her hands. “I didn’t mean to hide it from you, Jackson. I just needed time. I needed to figure out how I felt and—”
“How you felt? What about how I felt?”
“Jackson,” she pleaded. Her voice cracked and her hands fell from her face. I could see the tears she was trying so hard to hide from me. “Please. This is a lot to hear. Believe me, I know. We were safe. We used protection. I’m on birth control. This shouldn’t have happened. But it did and I don’t know what I should do.”
“You’re not in this alone,” I said firmly. “You could have let me in. I could have helped. I could have picked up snacks and sandwiches and shit and held your hair back while you were sick. I could have been there. I should have been there. But you took that chance from me and made my decision for me, Hailey. That’s not fair. You didn’t give me a chance to show up for you.”
Her tears flowed more freely. She wiped them from her cheeks and shook her head.
I put my hands on her knees. “Why are you keeping me on the outside?”
A baby. This was bigger than us. It was bigger than how I felt and what I wanted with her. This changed everything.
Everything.
And she had chosen not to let me in on that. I felt betrayed. And angry. I felt like everything I thought I knew about me and Hailey half an hour ago had suddenly been shaken loose like leaves from trees in the fall and now I was left standing under bare branches wondering where the hell everything went.
“I’m not ready for this,” Hailey whispered. “I can’t do this, Jackson. Look at me. I’m a mess. And you have your whole career just getting off the ground. I don’t want to ruin that for you. You’ve worked so hard. Neither of us have wanted to settle down like this. It isn’t in our plans, especially so soon. I don’t want you to give up on your dream because of an accidental family you never wanted in the first place.”
“Is that what you think?”
Hailey hiccupped and her bottom lip trembled.
I shook my head. She didn’t know me as well as I thought apparently. “I can’t believe you would think I wouldn’t want to be there. You seriously don’t think I’d want to do this with you?”
“I—”
“Hailey.” It was difficult to keep my anger at bay. “You’re putting words in my mouth and you’re making choices for me that I would not make. You’re making wrong assumptions and telling yourself an inaccurate story in your head. Don’t you know me well enough to know I would never leave you to do this alone?”
“Because you’re a good man,” she said. She moved to the edge of the couch and stared into my eyes. “Not because you want this. Or chose this. It just happened. Just like we did. We didn’t sit down and talk about it. We just started kissing and now we’re here. Neither of us decided we wanted this, Jackson. We fell into it. And I refuse to let falling into something like this be what the rest of our life becomes.”
“Jesus.”
“What?”
I pushed to my feet and pinched the bridge of my nose.
How could I have been so far off base? I thought I was going to show up here and tell Hailey how much I loved her, how much I always had, and that things would be different. Better.
But things definitely didn’t feel better. The moment of elation I’d had when I heard the word “pregnant” was long gone. I felt hollow and deep, like my soul stretched down into a spiraling pit of darkness.
I could handle betrayal. But one of this magnitude at the hands of my best friend?
This was a special kind of hurt I hadn’t felt before.
I turned my back to her and faced the fireplace.
“Talk to me, Jackson. Please don’t shut me out. I don’t know how to handle this. I don’t know if I’m doing or saying the right things. I just don’t want to make a mistake and throw our lives away over this.”
“Over this?” I breathed. “How can you say it like it’s nothing?”
Because she doesn’t want it. And I do.
“Fuck,” I hissed.
“Jack, please. I didn’t mean to make you upset. I just… I needed more time.”
More time. More time to decide if she was going to tell me at all. ”I should go,” I said.
I moved across the living room and through the kitchen. Hailey was hot on my heels. She caught my elbow when I went to put my shoes on and pulled me back to her.
“Don’t go. We can talk about this. I know I’m a mess and I know this is a lot to process. There’s no right way to handle something like this.” Hailey searched my eyes desperately. “It’s okay if we’re on different pages right now. I don’t want you to leave.”
“No right way to handle it?” I asked. A bitter laugh left me and I shook my head. “No, I suppose you’re right. But there are wrong ways. And this feels pretty fucking wrong to me.”
Her bottom lip trembled and fresh tears sprang to life in her eyes. “Jack, please.”
I pulled my arm free. “I need to leave.” If I didn’t walk out, I was going to say things I couldn’t take back. I didn’t want to hurt her the way she’d hurt me. There was no sense in that. She was vulnerable and hurting already for all her own reasons.
I could have helped her with that if she’d given me a chance.
Stop. I shook my head. It wasn’t fair of me to assume I could fix things for her. It wasn’t fair for me to be mad about this. But damn it all to hell was I ever mad.
“I never meant to make y
ou feel like this,” Hailey whispered. “I was going to tell you. I just didn’t know how. Or when. And I wanted to decide what I was going to do about the baby first.”
I nodded but didn’t say a word. What could I say? It was her decision to make. Not mine. I supposed I just assumed she and I were close enough and she trusted me enough to share this with me. It wouldn’t have happened without me, after all. I didn’t want an opinion or control of the situation. I just wanted to be in the know.
I wanted to hold her hand. I wanted to drive her to her appointments, no matter what kind of appointments they were.
I wanted to be her best friend, like I’d always been.
“I get it,” I said. “I get it. Okay? But I need to leave. I need to process. This doesn’t feel right to me, Hailey. This doesn’t feel like us.”
“We haven’t felt like us since that night. Don’t spin this around and make me the one who ruined everything when you were the one who hit it and quit it and then got on a plane in the morning like nothing ever happened.”
My temper pulsed at the sides of my skull. Turn around and walk out. Don’t say a word. Don’t hurt her.
I put my shoes on, turned to the door, and wrenched it open. I paused in the hall to glance back at her. Hailey was standing there with her arms wrapped around herself. Her nose was pink from crying and her eyes were glassy.
If she’d asked me then and there to stay because she needed me, I would have. If she’d asked me to hold her while she cried, I would have. If she’d told me she loved me like I’d wanted to tell her, I would have kissed her and promised everything would be okay.
But I didn’t know if that was true.
So I left, and I didn’t look back as she sniffled behind me.
Chapter 29
Hailey
The turkey sub my sister had brought home from her shift at the bakery was delicious. She’d opted for Dijon mustard, my current obsession, and loaded it up with pickles, spicy bell peppers, and avocado. It was a messy feast and sauce dripped out of the bottom of the sandwich as I crammed it into my mouth to try to fill the void in my gut.