The Baby Project

Chapter Seven

            I paused, turning and bending down to meet his gaze from the drivers’ seat. “Yeah?”

            His lips parted, but, as if they’d got stuck somewhere in his throat, no words found their way into the open air. Instead, after a moment’s pause, his mouth clamped shut again and he shook his head dismissively, like he’d changed his mind. “Don’t worry.”

            “What?”

            “It doesn’t matter,” he said quickly. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

            I couldn’t help but frown a little at his odd behavior, but nodded. “Um, okay. See you.”

            He smiled at me before pressing down on the accelerator and pulling the car away from the curb. I stared after it for a moment, until he reached the end of my street and took a left, disappearing from sight. I briefly wondered what Andrew had wanted to say before changing his mind, but, remembering the pile of homework I had yet to do, shook it off and started up my front path.

            When I stepped inside and closed the front door behind me, the house was quiet. I dropped my bag in the hall and headed for the kitchen.

            “Hi, honey.” As I walked through the doorway, my mom looked up from her laptop. Her blonde bob was looking a little flyaway, and her work glasses were perched on the end of her nose. For a brief moment, her eyes flickered to the empty space behind me, returning to my face a few seconds later. “No Andrew today?”

            “He doesn’t come over every day,” I pointed out, frowning slightly. “Why do you ask?”

            “No reason,” she said, in a tone of voice that made it plain there was definitely a reason, “I just thought he might come over today. You know, if you had something to tell me, or…”

            “Mom.” I dropped into the chair opposite her, reaching over to close the lid of her laptop and effectively forcing her to meet my gaze. “What did you hear?”

            “Oh, not much.” She took off her glasses and looked at me, the ghost of a smile tugging at the edges of her lips. “It’s just that I bumped into Jessica’s mom at the grocery store on my way back from work, and she told me a very interesting story about you and Andrew.”

            “Oh, no.”

            “So when exactly were you planning on telling your mother you two are dating?”

            I put my head in my hands, already feeling the blush creeping onto my cheeks. I couldn’t believe this was happening. When I’d initially blurted it out, I’d only intended for Darcy to know – or, if it did lend itself to gossip, at least be contained within our school. My mom thinking Andrew and I were now romantically involved, however, had not been part of the plan.

            “Mom, no,” I groaned. Even without my eyes on her, I could see the self-satisfied smile she’d be wearing as clear as day. “That… no, we’re not dating. It was just this whole thing with Darcy and it all just happened and… no. Seriously.”

            Maybe it was my imagination, but I could swear I saw her face fall. “You’re not?”

            “No,” I said firmly. “Just friends. Like always.”

            So why do you feel so disappointed? an internal voice asked, which I did my best to ignore.

            “And yet… everyone thinks you are?”

            Mom, to say the least, looked thoroughly confused. Still, you couldn’t really blame her – to an outsider, I suppose it didn’t make a great deal of sense. All I’d done was tell Darcy a white lie to throw her off Andrew’s tail, and in the space of two days we’d gone to being the school’s hottest topic. I could barely follow, and I was the source of the problem.

            “It’s… complicated,” I explained vaguely, lifting my head. “It was just something this girl said, and I kind of blurted out that we were dating… and it just went from there.”

            “Right,” she said slowly. “And there’s nothing romantic between you and Andrew at all?”

            “Nope.”

            “So why are you blushing?”

            I slapped my hands to my cheeks, as if this would somehow make their color less obvious. Unsurprisingly, my attempt didn’t achieve much success. “I’m not,” I said quickly. “It’s just hot in here.”

            “Uh huh.” Mom nodded, smirking. “Of course.”

            “Honestly,” I protested, “there’s nothing going on. We’re just friends.”

            “Okay,” she answered in a sing-song tone, reopening her laptop. “I totally believe you.”

            Groaning internally, I rose from my chair and shot a look at her over the tabletop. Although her eyes were focused on the screen, there was an unmistakable glitter present that assured me her thoughts were other places than work. “I’ve got a lot of homework,” I told her. “I better get started.”

            “Have fun.”

            I mumbled something vague in response before crossing the threshold into the hall, heading for the stairs. For some reason I suddenly felt exhausted; obviously, the drama of the past couple of the days combined with seeing to a plastic baby multiple times every night had taken its toll. As I was debating whether to abandon the plan of homework completely in favor of a nap, there was a vibration from the pocket of my jeans.

            I made it home, Andrew’s text read, and it hasn’t cried yet.

            Laughing out loud, I punched in the words Good job and a smiley face, hoping I sounded encouraging. Knowing Andrew, I’d be getting text alerts every five minutes whether something happened or not. As I entered my room and collapsed backwards onto my bed, I wondered about the likelihood of having my night’s sleep disrupted by my despairing best friend. For me, it hadn’t been too bad; although I’d been woken a couple of times, coaxing it back to sleep hadn’t proved too difficult.

            I just hoped it couldn’t sense fear.

            Otherwise for Andrew (and probably me too), it was going to be a long night.

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Hello! Sorry about the filler chapter, and also about the slightly crappy writing. I know I could probably do better, but I literally have no plan for this story and I'm just focusing on getting it done before the deadline. And then it'll be time for NaNoWriMo! I'm really excited for that :D

So yeah, hope you liked it anyway! Bet you almost fell off your seat in surprise when you saw I hadn't taken weeks to upload, haha :-) The next chapter will be more interesting, I promise. Until then!