My words seemed to hit him like the pile of bricks I felt earlier. He cringed, just for a moment, and sucked back on that cigarette like it was the only thing keeping him sane. It might have been.
“I know. And I thought…I thought maybe it wouldn’t have to.”
“She was going to have an abortion?”
He nodded uneasily, maybe unsure of how I would react. It was a hard topic to talk about in this divided country.
“We had decided that if she was pregnant, she could just take the…abortion pill, I guess. I don’t know the name. Or we would just go to a clinic. She didn’t want a kid screwing up her career, or her body, I should say. As much as I didn’t want one screwing up our relationship.”
Huh. He was more worried about a baby screwing up their relationship than anything else. That was interesting. I wasn’t sure in what way yet.
“And then…”
“I don’t know,” he shrugged with effort. “Something happened. She told me last night when she found out that she wanted to keep it. And that if I didn’t want to have any part in it, I didn’t have to. She didn’t need me. If I’m not 100% in it, then I am not needed.”
We both seemed to mull that part over.
“And you told her you still wanted the abortion?”
“Well. Yeah. I mean, I’m not pressuring her. It’s her body, she can do what she wants. I will support her no matter what she chooses. But you know…I just don’t know why she changed her mind. I would have thought finding out for sure would have, you know, cemented her fears even more. But then she just…switched. Just like that. One extreme to the other.”
“An abortion isn’t an easy thing to deal with,” I offered quietly. “It can ruin you in ways you never thought.”
“Mmhmmm, and how would you know?” he said asked, pursing his lips defensively.
I wasn’t sure if I should say the truth right now or not, but I had nothing to lose. Dex had everything to lose here.
“Because I had one.”
The truth felt like it was laden with iron. And it was something I had never told anyone else. I never told Ada, had never told my friends, never told my boyfriend, never told my parents. It had been inside me all this time, tucked away deep.
Dex’s eyes widened, and then softened at the vulnerability I knew I couldn’t help but exude. There was no hiding it now.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know.”
“No one knows.”
He swallowed hard and put out the cigarette on the table. We watched the ash spew out from the twisting butt.
“When was this? Sorry if I’m being too...”
“No, it’s fine. I think…I think it would be good for me to talk about it. It was with Mason, ironically.”
“The jackfuck who cheated on you?” he asked, holding out the bottle for me.
“Yeah,” I said grabbing it and taking a sip. I coughed. “The one. And only.”
“Only guy as in only jackfuck who f**ked you over, only love or only guy you slept with?”
“All three.”
“Sorry.”
“Anyway…I was careless. I was on the pill too but it was during a time my stomach was acting up…I was throwing up sometimes because of this and that and you know. I guess one day it didn’t stick in time.”
I felt weird to talk about it because to talk about it was to remember it. I told him about the day I found out. This was before I found out Mason was cheating on me, as if that made a difference in the long run. I had missed my period, which was abnormal since I was on the pill, and it came as regularly as a clock. To the hour even. Naturally, my first thought was to freak out. I didn’t tell Mason, even after I took three at–home pregnancy tests, different brands. I hid the used sticks with their stupid plus signs deep in the toilet paper rolls in the wastebasket so no one would know. I didn’t want to tell him in case he thought I planned it or blamed me somehow.
It was just too big of an issue for my life to handle. Already I could barely handle going to class, I could barely handle living in a dorm, away from home, even with my roommate Gemma. I had dreams, the same dreams I still had. To have a baby would f**k everything up. I had plans. And deep down inside, as much as I knew I was in love with Mason, part of me knew that we weren’t going to be together forever. It’s like I already knew he was going to cheat on me. I wasn’t going to be like one of those girls who has a baby just to keep the guy. I knew enough of those girls in high school.
I guess that was one reason to find Jenn’s decision commendable. She was going to go through with it no matter what Dex said or felt.
I told Dex about booking the appointment by myself and being so scared to death about it. I mean, so scared. I didn’t for a moment doubt my decision, as drastic as it was. I didn’t think that what I was doing was wrong. I knew where my morals were. That wasn’t the problem. I just didn’t want to go through such a scary, painful procedure alone. The fact that I was alone said so much. Even though I could have brought a number of people to come with me, I needed to keep this to myself. I was too afraid of what others might think.
It was horrible, to say the least. I’ve blocked out most of it, or maybe time has gotten rid of the feeling. It’s like when you break your arm or something. You know you were in pain and you remember the feeling of being in pain but that actual feeling is gone. This was the same kind of thing. I know it was painful beyond words and kept me doubled up in the bathroom for a week straight after. Gemma just thought it was my stomach, so she didn’t suspect anything. If she had asked, I was pretty sure I would have caved in and told her, just to get it off my chest. But she didn’t and then it became a thing of the past. Another ghost to be locked away, along with the drugs, and the accident and the family psychologist.
And then the dreams would come. I dreamed about the baby, what it would have and could have been. About maybe finding some essence of happiness in my life, about having something there to love unconditionally, something that may have validated myself. I wondered what he or she would have looked like and what they would have done with their life.
There was a lot of guilt. Sometimes it would sneak up on me. I didn’t feel like God was judging me but that I was judging myself without even realizing it. That my subconscious, my soul, was tallying this act up for some future retribution. Maybe I’d fail a test, maybe I’d get cheated on, maybe I’d feel alone for the rest of my life all because deep down inside, I thought I should be punished.