Page 47 of Misadventures with a Professor
“I meant,” I say slowly, “that just because I love you doesn’t give me permission to be reckless. In fact, because I love you, I don’t want to be reckless. Not with your future.”
Something softens in her face, and her lip quivers again. “What if my future’s already changed?” she asks.
“You don’t understand what I mean, sweetheart. I mean—”
“I’m pregnant,” she blurts out. “I just found out yesterday. I’m pregnant.”
There’s a kind of static buzzing in my ears, like the air itself has come to life to hiss the truth at me, but it doesn’t matter because I find myself groping clumsily for both thoughts and words.
It doesn’t make any sense is the first real thought that surfaces, coupled with, but I was so careful.
So careful to use protection every single time, so careful to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. So careful not to ever put myself in that hideous situation again.
I hope it isn’t yours.
Pervert.
My silence hasn’t gone unnoticed by Zandy, and her face and voice are just on the edge of crumpling when she says, “It must have been in London. I’m not on birth control, and if your condom broke…”
Didn’t I think it was all too wet that night when I went to take it off? But who could blame me for not thinking about it when I was still reeling with the fact that she’d been a virgin? Yes, the condom was old, but it wasn’t so old that I thought twice as I rolled it on, and holy fuck, what were the damn odds? That the night she lost her virginity was also the night she got pregnant?
And it’s that more than anything that makes the blood drain from my face, that makes my body cool and grow rigid with self-loathing.
I’m no better than the pervert Rosie thought I was, impregnating some innocent like a fucking caveman, no matter how accidental it was. I pull my pants closed, fumbling for an apology, for anything to convey the sheer fucking horror I feel about what I’ve done to her, but I’m coming up with nothing, and it’s only as I look up at her again that I realize the damage my lack of response has caused.
My silence has cost me something important, although I’m not yet sure what it is.
Because the trembling lip is gone. The tears have dried up. In their place is an expression of blazing determination—not unlike her face the night we met, but there’s something heartbreakingly grim in her look now, like she’s resigned herself to a future so cold that it’s already making her numb.
I sit up, about to say something, anything, just to forestall whatever is about to come out of her mouth, but she speaks first.
“I’ve already found a flight home,” she says clearly, “so I don’t want you to worry about me lingering here when I’m unwanted.”
Unwanted?
But her reasoning slips by me as I face the reality of what she just said.
She’s leaving me.
Not only is she leaving me, but she’s already made the plans, which means she’s been thinking about leaving me for…bloody Nora, maybe since she found out. Maybe since the moment she realized she was pregnant.
The thought chills me down to my core.
Just like Rosie. She can’t stand the idea of carrying my child.
“…a spreadsheet,” Zandy is saying, still standing in front of me like she’s delivering the bleakest presentation of all time. “And I’m keeping the pregnancy. I’ve thought about it within both rational and emotional parameters, and it’s the decision I feel the happiest with. I know, obviously, you aren’t happy and that you won’t want anything to do with me or the child, and I promise I won’t bother you for anything—”
“You don’t know anything,” I say, and the cold words cut through her presentation like a sword. It’s the first thing I’ve said since she’s revealed this to me, and I’m vaguely aware that my first words should have been kinder, more understanding—but how can she just stand there and announce that she’s leaving like it means nothing? Like it’s not going to kill me?
Like I don’t love her?
And how can she think I wouldn’t care that she’d be taking my baby with her?
“I know enough,” she says, lifting her chin in that brash assertiveness that I love and that also drives me crazy. “I know you don’t want this. I know you don’t want us.”
Us.
She doesn’t mean me and her. She means her and the baby. My baby.
