Julie grimaced and sighed. "I know, I know, this was not in the plan, but… I've had lots of time to think this over, I really have, and—"
"That slimy little bastard," her mother interrupted. "Did he leave you when you found out you were pregnant?"
Frowning, Julie faltered, and then she realized her mother would think Jack was the father. Shuddering a little at the thought, Julie said, "No, Mom, I left him. But that's not how it happened. It's complicated, but I left him before I got pregnant."
"And proceeded to get yourself knocked up despite breaking up with him? Great job."
"No, the baby isn't Jack's, Mom. I met someone else, that's why I left Jack."
"You met someone else? At school?"
Even though she had been given plenty of time to think it through, that was the part of her story that kept coming up fuzzy. What exactly did she tell her mom? She didn't really want her mom to know that she had left her loser boyfriend for a married man—it wasn't really the step-up that she wanted it to be, and as she contemplated telling her mother, she realized she was completely ashamed to admit it.
It was funny how she hadn't thought of that before she slept with him.
However, she was saved from having to 'fess up when Aaron walked in a bit noisily, allowing her to use him as an unsuspecting prop.
"Oh, honey, you're here. Listen, Mom, I'm going to have to call you back, I promise I'll explain everything a lot better later. But I just wanted to wish you a merry Christmas, give Richie a hug for me."
"Wait, you're not even going to tell me—”
"I really have to go, sorry Mom! Love you! Bye."
And then she hung the phone up very quickly and let out a long, sigh of semi-relief.
Aaron stood there staring at her. "Honey?" he questioned.
"Sorry, it was my mom—she didn't know I was pregnant yet, and I kind of just blurted it out, but… then came the time to explain how that happened, and I didn't feel quite ready to explain… because I haven't actually decided what to tell her," she said, grimacing.
"The truth?" he suggested.
Sighing, Julie sat down on the couch miserably, shoulders slumped. "I know, but I just can't bring myself to tell my mom that her only daughter is an adulterous whore at Christmas time!"
Wouldn't you know, that made Aaron crack a smile. "Yeah, your delivery might need a little softening," he admitted.
"I just… don'
t understand," she said, burying her face in her hands. "I don't understand how this happened, how I did this. I really don't. I mean, sure, if I'm in an isolated little bubble where there are no consequences and no explanations…I don't have to own up to it. But I knew I didn't live in that world—what the hell was I thinking?" Then, without pausing to let him answer, she answered herself. "Well, I was thinking that I wouldn't get pregnant, that's what I was thinking. Some fucking luck, the one time that you skip the condom…"
He waited for a few seconds, and she really didn't expect much of a response from him, given his feelings toward her, so she was a little surprised when he said, "Well, you know, if you really don't want the baby there are other options. I'm not talking about abortion, so don't think my brother recruited me, but… I mean, there are people who can't even have kids. If you don't want the baby, why not put it up for adoption and let it have a family?"
Shaking her head, Julie said, "No, Poppy—I mean, the baby…I want. I hadn't planned on wanting a baby yet, and I'm sure I wouldn't have wanted one yet if I wouldn't have ended up pregnant, but I do now. It's not the baby I don't want, it's just… I mean, the poor kid. For the rest of its life it's going to be stuck paying for my poor decisions. It's going to be pretty much fatherless because of me. It's going to have a disjointed family because of me. It's going to have the stigma of 'love child' even within its family because of me. Even... Anna. I mean, my kid will have at least one half-sibling, and do you think that they're going to get to play together growing up? No, because of me, because of stupid decisions that I made, and even though this is all my fault, my baby is going to be the one that's going to have to live with it. I am a completely selfish asshole. I never even considered the possibility that what I was doing would hurt some innocent little person. I know Anna seems like the obvious victim, but… I love Anna, I didn't think she would suffer from it. Honestly, I didn't think anyone would suffer…"
Aaron merely watched her, and she found that she couldn't meet his gaze for two reasons. One: she was sure he would have some look of impatience or disgust with her, and she couldn't bear it, because of two: she could feel foolish tears burning behind her eyes.
"I guess that sounds…really naïve now that I say it aloud," she admitted. "But I really didn't. It was one decision that I just… didn't think about at all. I acted without thought, and once I crossed the line… there was no going back, you know? I couldn't go back and make a pro and con list, there's no rewind button… Granted, if I would have used my brain to begin with and thought it through then I might have been able to stop the whole thing before it happened, and then I wouldn't have ended up pregnant…but would I still be living with Jack? Would I still be acting like I didn't smell the perfume on him just because I didn't want to upset my meager existence? Would I still be smelling those disgusting breadsticks every day as I continued to plod my way through my day-to-day life? Would the neighbor with the Angelina Jolie lips still be smirking at me every damn time I went to check the mail?"
If he surprised her before, he really surprised her when he sat down next to her and asked, "Who's Jack?"
Raising her face from her hands she peered at Aaron, just realizing that he didn't know anything about her life before he met her.
"Oh… Jack was my boyfriend. He's actually the reason I transferred—No, that's a lie," she amended, shaking her head. "I was having issues with an ex, and Jack was a guy I dated when I was younger, but we never worked out because he's terribly faithless, he parties too much… he's just not really my type, our personalities clashed constantly. But he offered an escape. Jack lived in Chicago, so when he suggested we give it another try and I move here with him… I opted to run away from my problems and I moved here.
"Unfortunately, moving in with Jack brought on a whole new set of problems," she went on. "It's one of those hindsight things—I've concluded that I must have been intentionally not paying attention, because looking back…there's no way in hell he didn't cheat on me, and probably pretty often. He cheated on his girlfriends before me—I don't know that I really expected him to be different with me, because I'm not that dumb, but… I never let myself love Jack, because I knew I couldn't possibly trust him. That's who I was living with when I met Matt and he offered me the nanny job. Then, as I started spending even less time at home—not because of Matt," she added quickly," but just… Emma was never home, and I had to be with Anna a lot of the time, and I had school, too. There just wasn't a lot of time for Jack, and he is incredibly high-maintenance—you have to lavish him with attention every single night or he's going to look elsewhere, and he doesn't care if you have midterms or a research paper due."
"He sounds lovely," Aaron remarked dryly.
"And I'm painting him in a nice light," she said ironically.