Three Weeks, Nine Months, A Lifetime

Chapter 14

“Tissa, hey, what are you doing out here?” Paul asked.

            I was lying on the living room couch—a place I was rarely in, unless I was watching television—admiring a few tapestries on the wall. When my brother walked in, his usually-perfectly waxed hair flat from the rain, I glanced at him with a shrug. “Just hangin’,” I told him.

            “Missing Matt?”

            I sighed. “It’s obvious, isn’t it?”

            I sat up and scooted over as Paul moved forward to sit next to me. “Missing someone you love… Well, I don’t have a lot of experience with it. I mean, it’s me.” He laughed at himself, and then seemed to realize I was still here. “You just have to keep going.”

            “It’s been a week and a half. I think I’ve been handling it pretty well.”

            “So then, why are you out here?”

            When I sighed this time, it was loud, long and exasperated. “For a completely different reason. I’d rather not talk about it.”

            “Is it the pregnancy?” Paul asked, suddenly concerned.

            “No!” I rolled my eyes. “You’re so quick to come to conclusions; it’s so annoying.”

            “Jeez, I’m sorry.” Paul stood up shaking his head, although I knew he wasn’t really that upset. He turned to face me. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay? We can talk if you want.”

            I pressed my lips together. “No, thanks. I’m just waiting.”

            Something dawned in Paul’s eyes, and he suddenly looked scared. “Right. Damn. Mom and Dad come back tonight. And didn’t you have, like, a three-week deadline or something? To tell them?”

            “You’d be out here trying to calm yourself down too if you had to tell them something like this.”

            “I’ll leave you to it,” said Paul, and he disappeared up the stairs as fast as he could. I wasn’t sure why he kept running, but I decided to put that out of my mind and meditate some more.

            I laid back onto my back and started counting. I only got to a hundred before the fear finally got to me, and I sat up, panting, so afraid of what I had to do that I simply wanted to run into my room and hide.

            Any minute, any second, and they would come through those front doors with smiles on their faces, probably already reminiscing about a good time away from home, and then I’d be waiting here, me with the bad news. To my parents, this would be a sort of nightmare.

            What was I doing here?

            What am I doing here?

            For a second, I seriously, seriously considered an abortion.

            The thought of destroying a baby’s life made me feel sick, though; maybe it was all the lessons I’d learned in church, when I used to go, or maybe it was a video I’d once watched in biology about abortions, but I knew I would never be able to go through with it.

            This would be like… a new adventure. I remembered my parents once talking about adventures, saying that their lives were boring. They wanted something exciting anyway, didn’t they?

            That was why they traveled so much.

            But their adventure in Bangkok was over, and a new one was about to begin. I fumbled with the edges of the couch, twisting the cloth every so often. They were due to be home any minute. Unless their plane had been delayed, or they had decided to stay longer… Or maybe they had decided to get dinner.

            Maybe this could wait. Maybe I should busy myself and do something else. Besides, they didn’t have to know now.

            But then Diane will call. Right, right, right. Diane. I licked my lips and made myself comfortable, lying back with my eyes closed.

            At one point, the doorbell rang and I stood up, startled, but then Paul came clambering down the stairs with money in his hands, and I realized he had ordered in pizza. He gave me a weird look as he headed back upstairs, and my eyes didn’t leave him until he disappeared.

            At another point, my phone vibrated in my pocket, and I stood up again, startled, but it was just a text from Melissa, and that could wait. Not wanting to be startled again, I sat up and started fumbling with the edges of the couch again. At least this way, I was fully aware of everything around me.

            The door didn’t open again until half an hour had passed, and by then, I was feeling so exhausted that I didn’t have the energy to be scared.

            “You’re always right now, aren’t you?” my mother was saying, and I heard the front door slam. “I wasn’t trying to make us take longer. You know what? You need to learn to get some patience! Why isn’t there any patience around here?”

            They both passed by the living room at that point, my dad on the verge of saying something.

            But then they saw me, and their fighting stopped.

            “Hi,” I said.

            “Tissa,” Mom said, her hand faltering on her suitcase. “I— I didn’t know you were there.”

            I stood up and brushed my hands on my jeans. “Here I am,” I told them, smiling weakly.

            They both just stared.

            Well, this was intimidating. “Um…” I started. “I just need to tell you something. It won’t take long.”

            “Speak up, Tissa,” Dad said.

            “I need to tell you something,” I said, louder, slower. And then I crossed my arms. “You guys might want to sit—“

            “Just make this quick, Tissa, we have work to do,” Mom said.

            Man, being attacked by both of them. They were not in a good mood tonight. So I sat down instead, to steady my legs, and I just said it.

            “I’m pregnant.”

***

A/N: this is the end of part 1! I hope you guys have enjoyed it. Please leave a comment to critique it or just tell me what you liked it about! And votes and fans make me really happy too. I have this entire story finished already, but I may not continue posting until I see that people actually want to read this. And also, I'm in the middle of editing. Anyway, thank you to those of you who have read this far. It means a lot:)

Bye now <3