“I don’t understand.” I walked over to her, put my hands on her shoulders. “Is everything alright?”
“Please,” she said. “I know you probably have a lot of questions, but I can’t answer any of them right now.” She drew in a sharp breath and made a wheezing sound. It worried me, I thought maybe she was having some sort of panic attack. But as I opened my mouth to say as much, Becca cut me off.
“She’s fine,” Becca said. “I’m going to take her back to the apartment. I’ll be back for her car in a bit.”
Kat looked down at her feet, not meeting my gaze. “Jonah,” she said. “I have to go. I’m sorry.” Then she took a step back, breaking away from my grasp, and turned around without another word. I stood in shock, my mouth agape, as the two women walked down the hall and out the door. I stood there until I heard the sound of a car engine starting and then the car driving away.
“What thehelljust happened?” I said to myself, alone now, in my big, empty house.
* * *
Kat didn’t answer any of my calls for the entire weekend.
I sent her countless texts, and left a handful of voicemails, but it was all radio silence on her end. When Monday morning rolled around, I did my best to try and calm my anger as I walked into the office building, but my efforts were in vain. When the elevator spit me out on the 6th floor, I found myself power walking towards her office, my indignation growing with each step. I spotted her through the window before going in, so I didn’t even bother knocking. Instead, I opened the door and started talking right away.
“Kat,” I said. “Tell me what the hell is going on.”
She looked at me with a cold stare. “Hello, Jonah. Good morning to you too.”
“I’m not joking,” I said. I closed the door. “You can’t treat me like this. I don’t deserve it. I get it, you got freaked out over spending the weekend with me, things were getting a little too serious, so you ran away. Fine. I mean, it’s very childish, but I think I could get over it if you would justtalk to me. Tell me what you’re feeling, please. It’s driving me nuts being shut out like this.”
Kat breathed in slowly and then let out a loud exhale. I watched her expression shift from one of anger to one of insecurity. I had never seen Kat look so unsure of herself, and it broke my heart a little.
“I’m pregnant,” she said softly under her breath.
It took a few seconds for the words to register, but when they did, I didn’t hesitate. I walked right up to her, took her hand, and got down on one knee.
“I will marry you tomorrow,” I said. “Hell! I’ll marry you this afternoon. No one has to know that you were pregnant before we got hitched, and we’ll just tell everyone that we’ve been together and in love since the day you started working here.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We can turn this scandal into a fairytale. It doesn’t have to be a bad thing!” I hadn’t realized before that moment just how badly I wanted this. I wanted to marry Kat, to have a baby with her. I loved her. Itrulyloved her, and I was going to provide for her, give her the greatest life she could ever imagine.
But then she ripped her hand away. “Jonah, are you insane?”
It was as if she had slapped me across the face.
“We can’t get married!”
“Why not?” I slowly got to my feet.
“Because—” She threw her hands up in the air. “Because this is just a fling! We’re just having sex, and sometimes sex leads to a pregnancy, but there are ways to get around that. We don’t have to uproot our entire lives just because I forgot to get my damn hormone shot.”
“What are you saying?”
She folded her arms and gave me an annoyed look. “You know what I’m saying.”
“But Kat, you don’t have to do that. There are other options. I for one think you would make an amazing mother and—”
She put her hands up. “Just stop. For the love of God,stop. Don’t you get it? I don’t want any of this. I have plans.” She slammed her fist down into the palm of her other hand. “Career goals, and visions of me traveling the world, none of which would be possible if I had a screaming baby on my hip.”
“They are possible,” I countered. “I can give you everything you want!”
“But that’s just it,” she said, her voice getting softer. “Thisisn’twhat I want. I don’t want to get married; I don’t want to have a baby. There’s nothing you can do or say to change my mind about this so maybe we should just… cut things off here.”
I frowned, felt my breath catch in my chest. “Are you ending things?”
She nodded. “I think it’s for the best. This pregnancy thing is my problem, I’ll deal with it. You don’t have to worry about any of it, okay? So, let’s just go back to work and forget that any of this ever happened.” She walked back around to the other side of her desk and sat down. “And you should find someone else to go with you to Japan. It’ll just be too weird now for me to go.” And as if that was the end of the conversation, she booted up her computer and got to work. I stood there like an idiot for a good thirty seconds, just gawking at her, but once I realized she genuinely was done talking about this, I took the hint and left.