52

LAURA
You’re pregnant.
Two words.
That was all it took to change my life.
The doctor’s words still echoed in my head even well over thirty minutes later.
I was pregnant. Pregnant as in with child. As in there was a minuscule human living inside of me. A tiny life growing inside of me.
A life I had taken part in creating.
While my thoughts were in utter chaos, I had to give it to myself; I was taking this quite well. I mean, I’d just found out that I was pregnant-something that had not been in my plan even in the furthest future. Hell, something that I wasn’t even sure I’d given much thought to before. And I wasn’t screaming or yelling my lungs out or raining curses on Alex for my current predicament.
The truth was, I couldn’t do either of those things because what good could come out of it?
I would only end up with a sore throat at best and a hurt Alex at worst.
I know. I know. Since when did I start caring about how he feels?
Since that night at his house when I confessed to him something that I’d never told another soul, not even my best friend. Since he looked me in the eyes and told me that he loved me.
Since I finally pulled my head out of my ass and admitted to myself that pretending I didn’t care about him was a great deception, a lie to myself and to him-and I wasn’t one to delude myself.
I was pregnant. Fuck.
In a few months, my usually flat stomach was going to grow a bump and everyone would put two and two together. One didn’t have to be a mind-reader to know what they would all be thinking.
A month ago, you couldn’t catch me dead going on a date with a man. But look at me now. Very much pregnant and with the one man I’d told myself that I was going to stay the hell away from.
The universe must be laughing at me right now.
I didn’t realize the car had stopped moving until the door to my side was wrenched open and my eyes fell on Alex, his expression both careful and tender at the same time.
I looked around, disoriented. We were at his place, I noted, taking in the familiar surrounding.
Turning back to him, I placed my hand in his and allowed him assist me down. He shut the car door for me, and when I moved to get my things from the backseat, he stopped me. “I’ll come back for them after carrying you inside.”
“I can walk.”
His eyes dropped to my legs as if he just now realized I had them. His brows furrowed and that worried look deepened like he was not entirely convinced I could. “Are you sure?”
I fought back the urge to roll my eyes and say something sarcastic or insensitive like ‘It’s my head that suffered an injury, not my legs’ because even I knew just how stupid that would be. Plus, it was obvious he was still shaken by the accident.
Perhaps it had not fully dawned on me yet that I’d just survived an accident that would have proven ghastly if not for the quick action of the driver in the second car, which was why I was acting so nonchalant about it.
Or perhaps it was because I’d received a news so unprecedented and shocking, that it had overridden every other incident and now stood at the forefront of my mind.
Whatever it was, it didn’t negate the fact that the accident had happened and sarcasm was an absolutely terrible idea right now.
Suddenly irritated with myself, this situation and… well, everything, I nodded and made another attempt to open the backdoor but again, he stopped me. He carried my things in one hand and placed the other hand around my waist, anchoring me as we walked up to his front door in slow, careful steps that I didn’t necessarily need.
The climb upstairs was strenuous, for lack of a better word. I may as well have been walking with my head because that was where I felt the effect of each step I took. It felt like my brain was being dislodged from my skull everytime I moved and smacking against the opposite side.
I hissed and gritted my teeth with every step we took, and Alex wasn’t faring off well beside me either. I swore when my big toe collided with a step and apparently, that was the last straw for him because he shifted his hand higher on my back, placed the other one at the back of my knees and snatched me off the ground. The whole thing happened in the blink of an eye and before I could open my mouth and protest-because apparently, I loved to argue more than I loved to live-we were already standing in front of his room.
I knew it wasn’t a figment of my imagination that his hands seemed to tighten around me for a fraction if a second before he set me down carefully. Again, his hands seemed to linger before he withdrew them.
He didn’t seem to be aware of the fact that he was still carrying my bag and I wasn’t about to tell him just yet.
The air felt pregnant with something. Our eyes met and held, and if the depth of emotions swimming in his eyes was not enough to tell me that there were a lot on his mind, then the tense lines of his shoulders did so. I probably looked the same, but I couldn’t address anything right now.
I was too tired. Too raw. And I didn’t trust myself to not say anything stupid.
“Laura, I-”
“I can’t talk about it right now,” I cut him off. When I realized how harsh I sounded, I shook my head, digging my fingers into my eyes. “I just-I need to rest, Alex, and I know we have to talk but not now, please.” A heavy sigh escaped me, and it felt like it came from the very depths of my soul. “I need time to process this. All of it.”
Hurt flashed in his eyes and I felt an answering tug in my chest.
He looked lost and sad, and I couldn’t bear to look at him. There was a raging battle inside me, stemmed from conflicting emotions. I wanted to wrap my hands around him, talk this out, and do everything I could to erase that look from his face. But at the same time, I wanted to process this the Laura way–which involved hiding inside his room and settling on the available option, the one that didn’t increase my heart rate and blood pressure.
Alex blinked back the hurt, nodding. “I understand. Take all the time you need.”
I didn’t move; He didn’t either.
For what felt like forever, we just stood there, staring at each other, as if we were waiting for the other person to say something.
When it became abundantly clear that we were just wasting each other’s time, he handed me my handbag. I collected it with a barely audible ‘thank you’. He nodded once, then twice, before turning and going back down the stairs.
I watched him until I could no longer see him, then with shoulders slumped, I walked into the room, shed my clothes, and turned the shower on, waiting for it to turn hot before I stepped under the spray.
No matter how much I tried to prevent it, the band-aid on my head got wet. I had to change it later anyway.
I slid between the sheets and closed my eyes to sleep, with every intention of thinking the current situation to death when I eventually woke up. Except that twenty minutes later, I was still staring at the ceiling wide-eyed.
The thing was, as it turned out, I couldn’t hurt Alex without hurting myself in the process-which was why I tossed and turned in bed and couldn’t get a wink of sleep.
Sighing into the pillow-which smelled like him and therefore contributed in making it impossible for me to get him off my mind-I swung my legs off the side of the bed and padded downstairs in search of the man in question.