This Is So Not Happening (21 page)

“Dude. Back the fuck off,” Jake said.

“Maybe you’re the one who should back off,
dude
,” Will said sarcastically, his face reddening. “I was with her for three months. I was in love with her. Who the hell are you?”

“I’m the father, asshole,” Jake shot back.

And Chloe just stood there. Shaking. She looked like she was about to faint. Some people might have enjoyed this—might have enjoyed watching Chloe squirm after everything she’d done. Some people might have even relished it. But apparently that just wasn’t me, because all I could think about was that this was my fault. At least this part of it. I’d brought this awful scene—the whispers, the staring, the suspense—to life. And now I had to do something to make it stop before it got any worse.

“Chloe,” I said loudly.
“Say something.”

Everyone turned to stare at me. Everyone but Chloe. Chloe was looking at the floor. The questions, the fear, in Jake’s eyes nearly killed me. Slowly Chloe drew her arm away from Jake.

“No, Jake,” she said finally. “You’re not the father.”

“What?” Jake breathed.

Will brought his hand to his forehead.

“It was Will. It’s Will’s baby,” Chloe whispered, her voice catching.

“Holy shit.” Will sat down on the nearest chair, bringing both hands to his mouth. “Holy, holy, holy shit.”

“But you said …” Jake looked around at the practically drooling audience, then lowered his voice, leaning toward Chloe’s ear. “You said you two never—”

Will snorted. “You said that?” he asked Chloe. “And you believed that?” he said to Jake.

Jake went white. Almost gray.

“I’m not the father?” he said, stepping away from her.

“Jake, I am
so
sorry,” Chloe said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I wanted to tell you so many times. At that first sonogram, I almost did, but I—”

Jake backed away farther, his heel knocking into an old CD rack and rattling everything on the shelves. “I don’t believe this.”

“I’m sorry,” Chloe said again, quietly, looking at the floor. “I don’t know what to say.”

But it didn’t matter that she didn’t know what to say. Because Jake was already gone. He took the basement steps in two leaps and slammed the door so hard a dozen strands of beads slapped to the floor, bursting from their strings and rolling over the tile.

That was when I knew for sure I was right. Jake had wanted to be the father. His heart was broken. And there was nothing I could do to unbreak it.

I found my mother and father sitting in the kitchen with HGTV on the mini flat-screen, eating Thai takeout. My legs felt stiff as I walked in and tossed my keys onto the counter. My fingertips tingled. Everything looked dull, from the marble counters to the wooden cabinets to the glare of the lights reflected in the sliding glass doors.

I was not the father. It was over. I was free.

“Jake.” My dad drew my name out slowly, his fork suspended over his noodles. He looked at me like he thought I might crack. “You’re home early.”

“Everything okay?” my mother asked.

I pressed my fingertips into the top of the island. Pressed down as hard as I could. Gritted my teeth. My eyes felt like they were about to pop. I actually thought I might cry.

My mother and father exchanged a concerned look. She got up and came over to me. Her hand was on my hand.

“Jake, honey? What’s wrong?”

I just stared. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. What was wrong with me? This was not what freedom was supposed to feel like. In my pocket, my phone vibrated for the hundredth time since I’d left the party.

“I’m not the father,” I said. My eyes flicked to hers. I watched them flood with hope, and I wanted to hit something.

“What?” my father said, standing.

My mother’s hands fluttered to cover her mouth.

“I’m not the father,” I said again, the words like sour milk
in my mouth. I backed up from the island. “I’m not the father. Some other guy is.”

“Oh my God! Jake! Thank God!” my mother exclaimed.

“I knew it. I knew we should have forced that paternity test,” my father said, standing next to her now. “We could have known this so much sooner.”

Suddenly
he
was what I wanted to hit. Didn’t he get it? Didn’t he get that none of that mattered? I was not the father. The baby was
not
mine. That was all that mattered. I turned around and started out the door of the kitchen.

“Jake? What’s wrong? This is fantastic news!” my mother shouted after me.

I had a zillion comebacks on the tip of my tongue. Of course they thought it was good news. Of course they did. They never understood why I cared. Why I wanted to go to the doctor with her. Why it mattered. They never got it. They never fucking got it.

I tore up the stairs and into my room, slamming my door as hard as I could. Staring at me from the center of my classic sports car calendar was the date of Chloe’s next doctor’s appointment. I ripped the calendar down from the wall and hurled it across the room. I whipped my coat off and threw that, too. What I wanted to do more than anything was go back to Annie’s house and find Chloe. I wanted to find her and shake her and ask her why she’d done this to me. How long had she known? Why had she made me be there for her, made me care about this? What the hell was she thinking?

I covered my face with both hands and tried to think. I tried to see this how my parents saw it. I tried to focus on what was supposed to be positive.

The baby wasn’t mine. So what? It was never going to be mine anyway. It wasn’t like I’d been planning on taking it and raising it and being its dad. The second it was born, those people we’d met this afternoon were going to take it away and I was never going to see it again anyway. So who the fuck cared?

And now … now I wasn’t even going to have to be there. I wouldn’t have to be at the hospital, I wouldn’t have to hold Chloe’s hand, I wouldn’t have to see her cry. I was off the hook. That was Will Halloran’s problem now. That baby in the sonograms, the one I’d seen roll over that day, the one I’d wondered about being a soccer player like me …

It wasn’t going to be. Because it had nothing to do with me.

My phone vibrated again. I took it out of my pocket and threw that across the room too. Then I flung myself down on my bed face-first, covered my head with my pillow, and tried to breathe.

Tried as hard as I could not to be the pussy who cried at being let off the hook.

On Sunday afternoon, Chloe was curled up in her bed, half under the covers with graham cracker crumbs scattered across her chest, watching
The Vampire Diaries
on DVD with the drapes closed. She looked over at me and squinted as I opened the door.

“Can you please close that?” she said, her voice whiny. “It’s too bright.”

This was very not good.

I closed the door behind me. She lifted a remote from the bed, paused the picture on a highly flattering half-naked shot of Damon Salvatore, and let her hand drop again. Crumbs bounced off her pink flowered comforter and onto the hardwood floor.

“So are you in training to
be
a vampire?” I joked lamely.

Chloe sighed and brushed more crumbs off her belly. “I think I shouldn’t go to parties anymore. Parties and me don’t mesh well.” Pressing her hands down at her sides, she shimmied her way up into a sort of half-seated position.

I swallowed hard, my guilt trying to choke off my air supply. “It’s my fault, Chloe. I told Will.”

“I know. He told me,” she said, averting her eyes.

“I’m so sorry—” we both said at the same time.

I stopped talking. She laughed ruefully. “Me first?” she suggested, raising her eyebrows.

“Okay.”

I sat down at the end of her bed. A small amount of light peeked in from a crack between two curtains and emanated from the TV screen behind me. I felt tense. Like I shouldn’t get comfortable. I was so shocked she had let me in that it was like I was afraid to make any sudden movements—like I might startle her into recalling that I was the enemy. So I just sat there, half-turned toward her, my legs dangling awkwardly toward the floor.

“I’m sorry for what I did to Jake … and to you,” she began, picking up a crumb and crushing it between her thumb and forefinger. She kept her eyes on the bedspread. “It was wrong. I know it was. I just … didn’t know what else to do. Will and I had broken up already when I found out about the baby, and Jake … he’s a good guy. He’s a friend. He’s … I
don’t know … safe? It felt safer than … the alternative.”

The alternative being the truth
.

But I didn’t want to get angry again. I was tired of being angry. I wanted to give her a chance to explain. I did. Because I wanted a chance too.

“And then, all of a sudden, the whole thing was out of control,” Chloe continued, her eyes filling rapidly. “And everyone was talking about me. Everyone had an opinion. Everyone had something to say—most of it horrible. And meanwhile my back hurts and my ass is, like, huge, and I’ve got gas
all the time
, and my boobs? My boobs started leaking last week! Right in the middle of French class!”

My jaw dropped. Leaking boobs? What the hell was that about?

“I know!” Chloe said off my expression. “This whole thing is disgusting and I just want it to be over.” She covered her eyes and sniffled. “But at the same time, I keep catching myself talking to it—to the baby—like it’s in the room with me. And sometimes I think … I can’t wait to meet him or her. And then I realize I can’t. Because everyone says if I do, I’ll want to keep it and I can’t … I can’t … keep it.”

Chloe hiccupped and then started crying in earnest. My heart felt like it was tearing to pieces, and not in some neat, ordered way. More like some animal was going at it with its claws.

“It was so much … I just couldn’t deal,” she said through her tears. “I couldn’t deal with Jake and Will and the truth. I just couldn’t.”

“God, Chloe, I had no idea,” I said. “I mean, I knew it had to be hard, but I had
no
idea how bad it was.”

She started to say something but couldn’t get it out past the crying. Her nose was swollen and her eyes were like slits, but I found myself staring at her belly. That big mound where her flat abs used to be. It must have weighed a ton, or at least felt like it did. As guilty as I’d felt when I walked into the room, that feeling was suddenly compounded eighty times over. I had never considered how Chloe was feeling. I’d had fleeting thoughts about it, sure, but most of my focus had been on Jake. How unfair this was to him, how it was affecting his life. But clearly it was affecting Chloe’s a hell of a lot more. Just because she couldn’t resist a hot guy one summer night.

I was never having sex. I decided right then and there. Fit me for a chastity belt, stat.

“Can you … I need a tissue….” Chloe said, catching her breath.

She was reaching toward her side table but couldn’t quite grasp the box. I jumped up, grabbed it, and handed it to her. She blew her nose spectacularly and let her hands drop again.

“I’m sorry. Crying is, like, my number one pastime lately,” she said, attempting a sad smile.

“I think you have the world’s greatest excuse,” I replied.

She toyed with the crumpled-up tissue and sniffled loudly. “Do you hate me?”

“No,” I said truthfully. “I don’t hate you.”

“Does Jake hate me?”

She looked up through her lashes hopefully. I took a steadying breath.

“Honestly? I don’t know. He hasn’t answered my texts or calls since last night. I was thinking about going over there next, but—”

“Well, if you see him, just tell him I’m so sorry, okay? I didn’t mean for it to go this far,” Chloe said.

I looked down at the floor and nodded. For some reason I suddenly didn’t want to go over to Jake’s. All I wanted to do was go back to Gray’s, curl up in a ball, and not uncurl till morning.

“Okay,” I said.

There was a knock on her door and it opened a crack. Will Halloran stuck his head in, blinking in the darkness.

“Hey,” he said, looking between the two of us warily. “Can I come in?”

“Um, sure.” Chloe suddenly sat up straight, swiped under her eyes with her fingertips, and brushed the crumbs off her shirt. I handed her another tissue and made a wiping motion at my nose. She blew again and gave me a grateful look. Gross as it was, I swiped her snotty tissues and shoved them in the pocket of my peacoat, which I’d never taken off.

“Hey, Ally,” Will said as he awkwardly stepped toward me. He had a box of Entenmann’s chocolate chip cookies with him—Chloe’s favorite. “Hey, Chlo.”

“Hi,” she replied.

“I guess I should go,” I said. As I turned around I saw Damon’s chest glistening on the screen. I grabbed the remote and hit the power button, then opened one of the curtains a bit so Will and Chloe could see each other. “I’ll see you guys at school.”

“Hey, Ally?” Chloe said.

I paused with my hand on the doorknob.

“Thanks,” she said. “For being so cool.”

I blushed, embarrassed. I felt anything but cool. I felt like an immature jerk who really needed to stop being so self-involved.
But Will and Chloe were looking into each other’s eyes now and this was clearly not the time to bare my soul.

“You’re welcome,” I said.

But I don’t think either one of them heard me. They had already started whispering to each other when I closed the door.

Monday morning I faked a stomachache. Then I stayed in bed until noon. Around two thirty I went over to my dad’s home office, which had the only window that looked out at Chloe’s front door. I could see her driveway from my room, but once a car got behind the hedge, nada. And I wanted to make sure I saw Chloe come home. I had to make sure I didn’t miss her.

So I sat there in his ergonomic chair and waited. And waited. I squeezed on his stress-ball thing. And waited. I crumpled about a hundred pieces of paper and launched them at his trash can. And waited. Then it was three thirty and it was clear Chloe hadn’t gone to school either. Or if she had, she wasn’t coming back at a normal time.