Love Me Back

Ch. 10

Ch. 10 // Dacre

It's been 2 weeks since the Halloween party and Deja has been avoiding me since that night. At first, I thought nothing of it since this is a busy time of the semester, but then I noticed patterns. Whenever she sees me in the hallway of our apartment, she'll rush into her unit or the elevator. We still sit next to each other in class, but our conversations are short and one-sided. The same with our texts.

We don't even walk home together after bio anymore, because she keeps making excuses. One day it's that she left her water bottle in a different classroom and another day she has to return a book.

I know I was super drunk at the Halloween party, but I don't remember doing or saying anything offensive to her. I really hope I didn't because I like our friendship and I thought we had a good thing going.

My worries are suddenly interrupted by a sharp pang of hunger in my stomach.

Damn, I need to eat something

I decide to enter the nearest chemistry building to buy something from the vending machine. As I near the vending machine in the back of the building, I see a familiar Black girl with long ombre brown box braids in front of the machine. She's wearing a white crop sweater and those high-waisted blue jeans that make her ass stick out.

Isn't life funny?

"Deja," I sing her name as I'm a couple of feet away from her. Her head whips towards me, eyes wide as saucers. When I look into her eyes, she immediately looks away.

"Hey Dacre," her voice is slightly strained, echoing the grimace on her face. Then she bends down to pick up a blue package from the machine. Chex mix.

"You've been avoiding me," I say to her as she stands up.

"Excuse me?"

"You keep avoiding me," I repeat, "You keep running away from me. You don't want to talk or text. You don't want to walk together."

I inch closer to her, "I thought we had something good going on."

"We do."

"Then why have you been avoiding me? Did I do anything wrong at the party? I know I was super drunk and I-"

"You didn't do anything wrong," she says, placing her hand on my arm, effectively cutting off my ramblings. That gentle touch was enough to stir the butterflies in my stomach. It doesn't help that her sharp brown eyes are finally holding my gaze. "I shouldn't have been avoiding you, but... I've been embarrassed."

I wait for her to say more, but she doesn't. "Embarrassed about what?"

"I... I don't want to talk about it," for a second she looks away, "but I'm so sorry for avoiding you and making it seem like you did something wrong."

Nothing about this is overtly sexy, for goodness sake, she's just apologizing, but I can't deny the hot blood rushing down my body. I don't know why I'm turned on, maybe it's her hand on my arm. Maybe it's her soft gaze. Maybe it's the way she bites her cherry-strain lips. Whatever it is, damn.

"No worries," I croak out, hoping my voice didn't sound as dry as it felt, "I'm glad we're all good."

~

After Deja and I say our goodbyes, I enter my apartment and there's my roommate, Jay, sitting on the sofa with a bowl of popcorn on his lap.

"Where have you been?" I ask him as I lock the door. Similar to Deja, I haven't really seen Jay around lately. I'd message or call him and he'd keep things vague or wouldn't respond.

"Did you fix things with Deja ?" Jay asks, ignoring my question for him.

"Yeah, I just came back from lunch with her," I say as I place my backpack on the floor and take off my jacket. "So where have you been?"

"At Maxine's"

"Oh, how is she?" I ask as I walk towards Jay.

"Maxine is Maxine," Jay cautiously says, which is very strange.

"The fuck does that mean?" I take a seat right next to him.

Well," he starts, "we've been on a break for a week now."

"Oh shit, I had no idea."

"Yeah, I know. I've been meaning to tell you, I just didn't know how."

"Really?" I ask as I grab some popcorn.

"Yeah," he pauses for a second, "we had a pregnancy scare,"

As soon as my brain processes the words coming out of his mouth, I'm put into a state of shock, "P-Pregancy scare?"

He nods, "Yeah, it was scary as hell. Like 3 days after the Halloween party she texted me to come over ASAP. I don't think much of it, but when I get to her place she's bawling her eyes out. She tells me that her period is about 3 weeks late and my heart drops because she wasn't on birth control and there were a couple of times when we were caught up in the heat of the moment.

She hadn't taken a pregnancy test so I rush over to CVS and buy 8 different tests. She takes the tests and we wait for what feels like an eternity. The whole time, I'm trying to keep calm and calm her down at the same time. 3 of them were positive and 5 of them were negative, so we set up an appointment at the health center. It was in 3 days so I stayed with her until then. We go to the appointment together, she gets a blood and urine test done, and both are negative."

"Wow, that's crazy," I say in shock, not really sure what else to say. Pregnancy scare? Honestly, those are two words I never expected Jay would ever say together. I don't even know what I'd do in his situation and, for whatever reason, Deja's face pops up in my mind when I try to.

Our babies would be cute though, a voice says in the back of my head.

"Yeah, I still can't believe this shit happened," he softly says, sinking back into the couch, "and because of all of that, we decided to just slow things down and take a break."

"Damn Jay, I'm sorry you guys went through that."

"Yeah, thanks, Dacre. But when I saw those 3 positive tests, words can't even explain the fear that I felt. 2 college students having a baby? We don't have money, we don't have stable jobs, we don't have a place. My family is close but Maxine's family isn't..." His voice starts wavering and breaking at the end and for the first time I see tears streaming down Jay's face. My heart breaks into pieces because Jay's a happy goofy guy. He always finds the silver lining. I've never seen him angry or upset even when he should be. So I lean in a pull him into a hug.