Confessions of a Teenage Caffeine Addict

CHAPTER 1: Pregnancy Tests and Polkadot Socks

JAKE

DECEMBER // WEEK 1

My phone rang, flashing across the screen JULES, a tall, pretty blonde, who was presumably my girlfriend, and she sounded way past keeping it together, moving onto the world is ending: "Jake, we have a problem."

She did that a lot.

Jules was the type of girl you would call 'high-maintenance,' which is to say, as a girlfriend, she was extremely demanding. I didn't really mind it though. I'm all for high-maintenance, because they pay back generously, if you know what I mean.

I ran through the list of things I always did for her in the mornings, trying to think of what I'd forgotten this time. I'd picked up her little, rat of a dog at the groomers, drove three towns over and booked her a stupid manicure, and brought her coffee this morning, just the way she liked it: skinny, medium, French vanilla and hazelnut macchiato with no foam. God forbid there was foam. Jules hated foam. She claimed it made her bloated... whatever that meant. I took a sip one time and she nearly clawed my face off.

Yeah, love you too, Darling.

"What is it, Babe?" I sighed.

This was like the four-millionth time she had called today. On call #3,999,999, I thought Coach was going to make my phone the puck at practice. See, it was ironic that she was calling me right then, because I had been about to call her. I was growing tired of being her trophy boyfriend, and I was actually about to break things off, branch out, find a girl who washed her own dog, and let me drink her coffee. Maybe I would get lucky, and not in the usual, metaphorical sense. I was hoping that maybe... just maybe, she would do it first, but from the sound of her voice, something wasn't right.

Still got a girlfriend. Dammit.

"I-I'm," she paused, and then began to stutter. That was when I should have known something was wrong, because Jules never stuttered. EVER. She was the most confident girl I had ever known. "I-I think I'm p-pregnant, Jake." She said the last part so softly, I almost didn't hear her.

"What do you mean, 'you think you're pregnant?'" I rolled my eyes.

"I'm late," was all she said and that was enough for my heart to skip about forty-seven and a half beats.

When her words finally registered in my brain, my world stopped moving. I dropped my phone onto my bed, where I was supposed to be doing my AP Calculus homework. My first thought was, she has to be joking. Why in the world would she ever tell me that over the phone? Of all the things she could tell me over the phone... I closed my eyes and tried to make sense of what was happening.

After my voice was steady, I brought the phone back up to my ear. No you're not, I wanted to say to her, but held my tongue. Instead, I lowered the phone, tapped END, and then proceeded to hurl my phone as hard as I possibly could at the wall. I heard a comforting crack as my phone hit the wall, and looked up just in time to see it drop into my laundry basket. That would have been the fourth screen installed in my phone this year, but I had a very valid reason this time.

How could she do this to me? No—not how—why? Why the hell did she do this to me? Leave it to Jules to screw my life up. She had been doing it since freshman year. Another reason to break up with her: she ruined literally everything.

She's not pregnant.

She can't be pregnant.

Fuck. What if she's pregnant?