But I stopped, my finger hovering over the call button.
If I told him, he’d be on the next plane here, that was for sure. To do what, I didn’t know. We had not talked about the future. Children.
He was old enough to have them if he’d wanted them.
He did not have them.
And I was too young for a child. I still had at least two more semesters left. Likely a lot longer, depending on how well I functioned while pregnant.
Already, my stomach roiled in the mornings, and I could barely keep down dry toast. I was asleep at my laptop before ten when before, I’d be up until the wee hours either partying or working on assignments then up at seven the next morning.
My mood was all over the place, and I constantly had constant. That scared me until I saw the on-campus doctor who told me that it was perfectly normal for early pregnancy. Basically, I got PMS with the added bonus of morning sickness.
It was too early for an ultrasound, but they did blood tests, and they all came up pregnant as fuck.
Well, my doctor didn’t use that term.
I’d walked around campus for hours, my purse full of pamphlets and prenatals, in somewhat of a daze.
There were options, of course. I could deal with this alone and never tell Elden, but just the thought had me vomiting into a trash can. I got a couple of sideways looks, but it wasn’t outside the norm to see such things on a college campus.
I sat on a bench, staring at the brick buildings that stood like monoliths. The buildings that people put blood, sweat and tears into to gain acceptance to. Parents saved for eighteen years. Students put themselves into lifetime's worth of debt.
There I was, debt free, without having exerted any of the blood, sweat or tears, with all the privilege in the world and all the opportunities, financial and otherwise, to study here. Yet I was lamenting that fact. Resenting it.
If I wanted to get a job at one of the big firms, I’d need at least another three and a half more years of study. If not more.
That was the plan when I started.
BeforeI even started. My father and I had sat down and planned it all out. I’d mentioned taking some time after my initial few years to volunteer, travel some more, take a breath. He’d gotten that stern look on his face and told me that there would be time for volunteer work after I got my degree. After I was married. His tone brooked no argument. He told me he would be very disappointed in me if I did that.
And despite my resistance to following what I was ‘supposed’ to do, I didn’t want to disappoint my father.
But my father was dead.
He had been for almost a year to the day.
My brother’s birthday was in three days.
The anniversary of my father’s death.
My mom said it was acomplicatedday for me. She tried to talk to me multiple times over the phone, multiple times when I’d been home last. Caroline tried to talk to me. Freya tried to talk to me. They were worried, I guessed. Because they saw what they wanted to see. That I was still at college, getting good grades, not lashing out, not wallowing.
They did not see the partying or the arrest, likely because the club shielded my mother from that. Swiss had taken me aside when I got home and spoke to me about the arrest. He did not chastise me nor yell at me. He kissed me on the head and told me he was proud of me.
It occurred to me that my father had never been proud of me. He’d said it, but he was only proud of me when I did the things he expected me to do. When I acted like his daughter should’ve. He was not proud of the person I was, merely the person he expected me to be. The person he made me into.
So I’d never felt warm and comforted like I did when Swiss told me he was proud of me. For getting arrested. For standing up for a friend. For being rash, a little irresponsible and violent. For being imperfect but myself.
It felt nice. And complicated. Because of the guilt I was carrying over the secret.
I almost told Swiss then. About me and Elden. Just so I wasn’t hiding anything anymore. Also so I could finally live the life I wanted.
But I held back. Because it would’ve tainted the moment. Soured it. There would be no more pride. There would only be Swiss’s overarching fury.
At Elden.
Not me.