27. Ava

Chapter 27

Ava

T hree days. That was all it took for me to start feeling antsy about not having seen Adrian in person.

The hold he had on me was intense, and although we'd been texting, he'd wanted to spend the weekend with Lucas after barely seeing him all of last week. Of course I understood, and I didn't dare question it or push him on it.

But the palpable relief I'd felt when Adrian had texted me to meet him at the cafe across the street from the Darkwater building for lunch today was…significant.

The chill in the air had gone from bitter to downright freezing, and as I clutched my jacket shut and held my scarf in place for dear life while walking along the front of Darkwater, I nearly ran directly into him as he stepped out of the building. It took him a moment to register it when his gaze was focused intently on the cafe opposite, but after a couple of seconds, recognition flickered across his face.

The face that looked nearly ten years older from stress.

"Hey," he said, wrapping his arms around my waist and pulling me in tightly. He picked me up and moved us closer to the wall of the building and out of foot traffic, setting me down only once I'd loosened my grip around his neck.

"Hi," I grinned. "Lunch?"

————

The silence that hung between us felt…uncomfortable.

We ate our food with small talk in between, him giving me little updates about the sheer amount of damage canceling the conference partway through had done, and me telling him about how we'd finally gotten the walls painted in my little office block back in Dad's building. But something about it felt wrong, like there were things left unsaid, like we were walking on eggshells.

I couldn't put my finger on it directly. But it made me feel smaller than I already did, and that was fucking horrible.

"So," Adrian sighed, resting his head on his knuckles as he leaned onto the table. "Lucas knows."

Oh, shit. "You…told him?" I didn't want to ask the unspoken questions— what does this mean for me? I've barely come to terms with potentially being a parent to him and I have to start that now?

His jaw ticked. "No. He saw us on the couch last Thursday." He reached across the table with his free hand, lightly dragging his fingers along the tops of mine. "He asked me directly. I couldn't lie to him."

I nodded, but I was fucking reeling. I wanted to ask him why, but I wouldn't question his judgment on this. He was the parent, not me. For now. "Okay," I said. "What the hell do we do about that?"

"I…have no idea," he huffed. "He's happy about it, for the record. The kid fucking loves you. But I think we need to take a step back and give it a little more time before confronting what that could mean for him."

A step back? What the hell did that mean?

"I think we should wait to tell your father," he said softly. "At least a little bit longer. I'll keep Lucas away from him in case he lets anything slip. I just need time to figure this out."

The relief from the idea of not confronting my dad was soured from whatever this meant. "What do you mean by taking a step back ?"

He shook his head. "Nothing major. I'm spending a lot of time at work right now and I need to allocate some of my time off for you, but mostly for Lucas," he explained. "I barely got to see him last week and he's noticed. He's begging me for time that I can't produce out of thin air."

"So…" I blinked as I tried to arrange my scrambled thoughts. I couldn't help but feel slightly defeated, rejected, even—but I knew he had good reasons. I couldn't and wouldn't expect him to put time with me over Lucas. But after the chaos of the last few weeks, it felt like we were hitting the pause button, or even worse, erasing the whole tape. "I'm sorry, for my own peace of mind, I just need to make sure…you're not saying we're done, right?"

His hand wrapped around mine and squeezed the living daylights out of it. "No, Ava. I'm not saying we're done. I'm just saying we should take it a little bit slower until I can figure things out."

————

I didn't know why, but I didn't quite believe him.

He hadn't invited me over after Lucas went to sleep, but he had texted me at five-thirty in the morning telling me that he couldn't get me out of his head, so that was a positive. He hadn't been expecting my reply so early.

But I'd barely been able to sleep.

My anxiety over the situation had turned into never-ending nausea. I'd spent half the night next to the toilet, scrolling through my phone for a distraction. His texts hadn't helped abate the bile, but it was enough to keep me occupied for a little while until he had to wake Lucas up for school.

But the handful he'd unexpectedly sent a couple of hours later as I pulled myself up from the bathroom floor had made me feel miles better on the anxiety front. Not so much the nausea, though.

Adrian: I can bring some soup over to your place for lunch if you want.

Adrian: Or some anti-nausea meds.

Adrian: Or both.

I sank into the shitty swivel chair I desperately needed to replace. I wasn't going in to work today, but I could at least try to get some shit done at home.

Me: That's really sweet, but if I have a stomach bug I'd rather not give it to you.

Me: Let me see how I'm feeling in a little while. I'll let you know.

I shot a text to Emily, too, to let her know why I wasn't in the office this morning as I flicked open my planner and booted up my laptop.

Tuesday…

Tuesday. Complete Tori's, Adam's, Cypress', Hilary's, and Daniel's profiles. Tax calcs. 3 pm appt with Heather. 4 pm appt with web maintenance. 5 pm appt with Angela…

Perfect. Completely doable.

But that red star on the previous Tuesday's date was glaring at me, and I wanted to throw up all over again.

I must have used the wrong color marker. That can't be right.

I flipped the calendar back one month, and there it was, twenty-eight days before last Tuesday.

The month before?

Twenty-eight days before.

Twenty-eight days before.

Twenty-eight days before.

Twenty-eight days before.

I was never late.

I was up and moving before I'd even decided. Jacket around my body and wearing nothing but pajamas that smelled of vomit and a pair of old Crocs, I ran out of my apartment with my keys in hand, out into the freezing, wet morning. Ice had formed on the tops of the cars, and as the little droplets of rain fell, it slowly melted away.

The bodega was quiet at this hour. And I was counting on that.

————

I threw up again when I turned the test over and two pink lines stared up at me.

I took four more of them.

Eight more pink lines.

With shaking hands, I shot Adrian a text. So many fucking typos.

Me: Def a bug. Don't come over. Gonna try to sleep.

I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think. I left my phone abandoned on the bathroom counter amongst the discarded pregnancy tests, barely registering Adrian's reply as panic, and panic, and panic set in.

Adrian: Shit, I'm sorry. I hope you feel better.

Adrian: Text me when you get up so I know you're okay.

How the fuck was I supposed to text him later when right then, in that goddamn moment, I didn't feel like I could even say a word to him without breaking down?

How did this happen?

I'd been careful. I'd taken my pills. I'd been so fucking careful about doing it at the right time every single day. If for a single second, I thought something had gone wrong—if I'd taken it an hour late, if I'd forgotten—I would have run to a goddamn pharmacy for the morning-after pill.

But here I was.

Twenty-five, sleeping with and seeing a man who was both twice my age and my father's closest friend, a failed art student with a stupid fucking career that my father had funded, and pregnant.

Porcelain chipped my nails as I threw up again.

I was screwed. Horribly, utterly screwed. I'd known since I was little that although I had no problem with others exercising their right to choose, I wouldn't be able to pull the plug if the time came that I needed it. That's why I was so careful, down to the fucking minute. And even now, even faced with the reality of it instead of it being a hypothetical, I knew I couldn't. I couldn't do that. I didn't have it in me.

I hadn't realized I was crying until the salt hit my tongue.

I had to tell him.

But I couldn't tell him.

How the fuck was I supposed to tell him when he'd literally just told me yesterday that he needed to slow this down? How the fuck was I going to tell him when he already had one kid to worry about?

How were we going to handle this when we couldn't even tell my father?

And to think that Adrian was already dealing with stress upon stress from work, from Lucas, from me — to add another thing to the mix would be insanity. Pregnancies were among the most stressful things to go through. I could have sworn I'd read that somewhere once.

One more stressor and he could drop dead from a heart attack for all I knew.

But how was I going to keep this from him? How could I lie to him, how could I hide it and push it down until the time was right? I was falling for him, completely, totally, unabashedly, and dangerously— was too far in this to not be damaged forever, and now he was a permanent part of my life without my choosing. I wanted to love him, felt like I could love him, and probably already did. And I wanted to crawl in a fucking hole and die.

I was spiraling there on the bathroom floor, the cold tile biting through the jacket I still had around my shoulders. I shucked it off. I took everything off.

I reached up and turned on the shower, setting it as hot as possible. Waiting for it to warm up felt like personalized torture from the old pipes, but as soon as steam started billowing up, I dragged myself through the glass shower door.

I sat there, naked and scalding on the floor.

And all I could fucking do was sob.