Noah
After we finished talking to my Mom, I drove Elle home, promising her that I would see her in the morning. My Mom told us she would call us off school and give us a day to figure our shit out about our future (my words not hers) before we had to tell everyone the news. The plan is that I'll pick Elle up like normal and bring her back to my house, which is also normal for us, although I didn't tell my Mom that. Then we'll figure out our plan and how we'll tell our Dads. Plus, we can't forget about telling Lee. As if Elle hasn't been worried enough about breaking the news that we're dating to Lee, I can only imagine how he'll take the pregnancy news. I'm sure telling my little bro that I knocked up his best friend isn't going to go over so well.
I've been laying on my bed throwing a nerf football at my ceiling since I got home. I've pretty much been running on autopilot since Elle told me the news. This is the first time I've given myself a chance to think about anything other than the next thing we have to worry about, the next steps we need to figure out. This is the first time I've had a chance to stop and think about how I actually feel about all of this.
Elle is pregnant. We're having a baby. I'm going to be a Dad. Those thoughts have been running through my head for the last 24 hours. They still don't feel real but they do scare the shit out of me. I know neither one of us is ready for this. I have been working my way towards Harvard for the last four years. But right now, I don't even know if Harvard is still a possibility. The unknown is the part of this that is driving me crazy. The part I'm happy about is the thought of doing this with Elle. I realize there isn't anything about this situation that will be easy but I feel like the two of us actually could make this work. At least with her, I'm willing to do everything in my power to make sure it does.
The next morning, I turned off the alarm on my phone as soon as it started going off. I had been awake for hours. I'm not sure if I even slept last night. Pretty much like the night before. After picking up Elle and bringing her back to my house, things between us seem awkward. Elle is obviously still upset and I understand that. I had to wonder if she blamed me for this. I just wanted to pull her onto the couch with me and kiss her like this was any other morning but I knew that wouldn't help anything. There was a lot we needed to get figured out before we have our big talks with everyone tonight.
We spent the morning having the hard conversations. As soon as we sat down, Elle pulled one of the notebooks out of her backpack to start the first of what I'm sure would be many pros and cons lists. I don't know how many of these I had seen Elle make through the years. When Elle's Mom was sick and they knew she probably wasn't going to get better, Elle was devastated at the thought that her Mom wouldn't be there to help her make all of the big decisions coming up in her life. Joni's solution was to get her started making pros and cons lists to help her feel more confident in making decisions on her own. After that, she used a pros and cons list for everything, to the point that I used to make fun of her every time she pulled out a paper and pen when in the middle of making any decision. She even showed me the pros and cons list she made after the night of our first kiss to decide if she wanted anything to do with me. This was the process that worked for her. These were probably going to be some of the most impactful decisions of our lives so far, so I knew I couldn't give her any grief this time.
First question, did Elle want to go through with the pregnancy and have this baby? Yes. Second, did we want to keep the baby? Yes. Maybe we were being naive but we were young and in love and although we knew we weren't ready, neither of us could imagine not keeping a baby that was part of both of us. Once we had gotten that far and knew that we both wanted to keep the baby, we relaxed a little. We still had a lot of big things to figure out, huge things, like dealing with school and living arrangements and all of that. But, knowing we felt the same way about where we were heading, made the earlier awkwardness between us melt away. Elle was in my arms again and we were talking like normal to each other. We threw out some thoughts and ideas and Elle took notes about things we needed to look into and ideas that we had. We didn't get too far on any of those decisions because we knew that what we really needed to figure out was how we were going to tell our Dads and Lee about this. Mom wanted us to talk to our Dads first but we both knew that Lee needed to be the next to know. We would talk with him right after school, then we would each talk to our Dads on our own when they got home from work.
By the time my Mom stopped in to check on us, we both felt like we had made some progress. When Mom started talking to Elle about scheduling a doctor's appointment, I realized how glad I was that she was involved with helping us. Somehow it didn't all feel so overwhelming now. Like the weight of both of our futures wasn't balancing on my shoulders anymore.
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Elle and I were both so nervous by the time Lee made it home from school. Elle didn't want me around when she told him. Instead of being by her side, I was sitting in my room trying to eavesdrop, to get an idea of how things were going. The first time I heard Lee's raised voice, I wanted to run in there but I knew she would be upset with me for interrupting. Even if my brother was being an jerk to her. Instead, I sat there in my room feeling helpless.
After what felt like forever, I heard Lee storm out and Elle walked back into my room looking drained. Her eyes were red and puffy but the fact that she smiled when she saw me made me think things may have gone better than we expected. "How did it go, Shell?" I asked as I pulled her onto my lap so I could hug her to me. "Was he a dick to you? Do I need to go kick his ass?"
Elle laughed but the humor didn't quite make it to her eyes. She shrugged her shoulders before leaning in closer to me and answered, "He said he needed some time to process it all. He went to Rachel's. You may want to steer clear of him for awhile."
I shook my head, thinking to myself how little I care what my brother thinks of me. "That's no problem. Are you okay? He wasn't too hard on you, was he?"
"He didn't take the news of us being together very well at first, but once he found out that I'm pregnant, he was much more sympathetic towards me but even more mad at you." I stayed quiet as I pull Elle in closer, kissing her on the forehead. This wasn't the time to say any of the things I'm thinking about Lee right now. If he's going to be pissed off at me for this that's fine but I don't want to put Elle in the middle of us. She's spent too much time trying to keep the peace between us ever since we were little. I'm actually relieved to hear that Lee is blaming me for everything instead of taking it out on Elle. Elle was quiet for a minute before she murmured, "I'm glad that talk is done. I can't believe I have to go through this whole thing again tonight with my Dad though."
I felt so bad with how stressed Elle looked, I started kissing her, trying to make her forget about all of it. She kissed me back for a minute before pushing me away. "I'm not sure we should be doing this right now, Noah."
I pulled my head back so I could look into her eyes but I didn't let her push me away from her. "Relax, Shelly. I'm not trying to start anything, I just want to make things feel normal between us for a bit. Can we forget about all of this for a few minutes?" She smiled then as she put her arms around my neck pulling me in for a kiss this time.
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Since my Mom knew everything, I had hoped she would take care of telling my Dad but instead she insisted I needed to do it. I tried to tell her she shouldn't have to keep the secret from Dad, she could go ahead and tell him, but for some reason she wasn't going for that. Although Elle offered to come with me, I opted to talk to him alone. I honestly wasn't sure what my Dad's reaction would be but I knew I didn't want Elle to hear about how disappointment he was in me. My Dad and I had always had a somewhat rocky relationship. Although I knew he was proud of my accomplishments on the football field and in school, I spent too much time getting in trouble to stay on his good side for long.
Dad had come in late tonight, awhile after suppertime. Not that we had a normal family supper tonight anyway. Lee was still out sulking and I had grabbed a sandwich before returning to my room to pick at it. My stomach was already in knots between worrying about Elle's talk with Lee and the upcoming talk with my Dad. I waited a little while after he got home from work, hoping he would be in a better mood, before I walked into his office. I caught him just as he was finishing eating and was turning his computer back on for a little more work. As a kid, I always thought my Dad was somewhat of a workaholic. Although now that I was older, I realized that working as much as he did may have been less of a choice and more of him just trying to keep ahead in a competitive workplace. Before he could get engrossed in his emails, I asked him if he had a minute to talk. He grunted a yes, without turning away from his computer. I shut the door behind me, sitting in the chair across from his desk, clearing my throat. At that point, I think my Dad finally realized it was something important and turned to look at me. As much as I was trying to hold things together, I imagine he could tell how worried I was about this conversation by the expression on my face. "What's going on, Noah?"
Taking a deep breath, I asked, "What do you want to hear first, the good news or the bad news?"