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A buzzing sound filled my ears as I pushed past him and shut myself in the bathroom. I leaned against the door for a second, wondering what I should do. Grabbing some toilet paper, I wiped his seed out of me but quickly realized that would be too little too late. Turning on the shower, I let the water pour over me, hoping that I might wash this reality away.
“Jazz, you okay?” Shawn asked, knocking on the bathroom door. I didn’t answer him. I was too busy trying not to be pregnant. Though, with my luck, that is exactly how I’d get pregnant. Having sex with a one-week fling.
“Jazz...” I heard the bathroom door open, but I kept scrubbing. “Talk to me,” he pleaded.
Dropping my shoulders, I turned off the water. When I opened the curtain, he was holding a towel for me.
“Thanks,” I muttered, stepping out to dry off.
“Are you okay?”
“I need to get dressed. Find the nurse’s station.” I shoved past him to search for some clothes. He was close on my heels, but I didn’t stop. After unzipping my case, I yanked out a sundress from bag 4 and pulled it over my body. Once it was over my head, however, I realized something.
“Wait.” Relief flooded through me. “I forgot. You said you can’t have children. I don’t need to stress about being pregnant.” I plopped myself on the bed. “Thank God.”
When he didn’t say anything back, I glanced up at him. He rubbed at the back of his neck. A gesture he seemed to do when he was nervous. I sat up. My eyes were wide.
“You can’t have kids, right?” I asked. My heart started to beat fast.
“Morally, no. I can’t have kids. I’m an alcoholic. Which can be hereditary. I don’t want to pass such a curse on to anyone. But technically, I can have children. Sorry. I should have made that clearer, huh?”
“Fuck. So, I could be pregnant?” I whispered.
“Are you not on the pill?” His eyebrows pinched together in worry.
“I was, for most of my life. But Dwayne had a vasectomy, so I got off it a few years ago.”
“He had a vasectomy? Then why did you pack condoms?”
A logical question with a ridiculous answer. “Dwayne hates the mess. He’s a total neat freak. I was being a tad hopeful with packing so many, knowing realistically we might get in two rounds before the week was said and done.” I ran my hands over my face and stared at the wall in shock.
“So, you could be pregnant.” The tone of his voice was clear. He was scared. He didn’t want this.
“To the nurse’s station, it is,” I said, standing up. “Maybe they have Plan B.”
“Whoa, Plan B? You want to terminate it? You don’t want to talk about this at all?”
I slipped into my sandals as he followed behind me. “Talk about what exactly? Having a baby with a man I have known for all of two days? A man I’m not technically married to. A man who explicitly said didn’t want kids? What’s there to talk about?”
I grabbed my bag with my wallet inside and tried to pass him to get out, but he blocked me with his still-naked body.
“Jasmine, look at me. I know our situation isn’t textbook, but it’s no less real. So that means this decision is one we should be making together.”
I glanced at him with a blank look on my face. “Are you saying you suddenly want to be a dad? Do you seriously want to give up the next eighteen years of your life to raise a child you were forced into taking responsibility for?”
“Forced? No one is being forced into this. Look, I know you’re freaking out. I am too. I am terrified I’d have a kid who is just like me, which trust me, no one wants. But I don’t know. This is a new reality for me. I’m not saying Plan B isn’t an option, okay? All I’m asking is that we talk about this like two rational adults before we rush into anything we might regret.”
I shook my head. “No. No, I won’t do this to you. I will not force you into staying with me just because you might have knocked me up. I won’t be that woman.”
“Jazz, I don’t think your that woman. But if you are pregnant, I think we should discuss that, not cap the discussion before we even know for sure. Let’s just wait to see if you are before we start talking about Plan B.”
I let out a slow breath so he would stop and listen to reason. “Shawn, you can’t test for pregnancy until your first missed period. Which is like a full week from now. By then, it’s too late for Plan B. There is a ridiculously small window in which that pill works. Beyond that, you’re talking about a full-on abortion. Maybe that’s not a big deal to you, but it’s a very big deal to me!” I shouted.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I hadn’t considered that.”
“No. You haven’t. As a woman, we have to think about this shit all the time. Kids aren’t only life-changing, relationship-squashing, body-destroying machines. They’re also expensive! Dwayne’s cousin Shanna had a baby a few months ago, and it cost her almost twenty thousand dollars, just to deliver the thing! I don’t have twenty thousand dollars to push a kid out of my uterus. Do you? Hell, now that I’m not marrying Dwayne, I won’t even have his decent health insurance, which was one of the major reasons for marrying him in the first place!”
“Jazz, please don’t worry about the money aspect. We’re in this together. We’re a team.” He took my hand in his.
As soothing as his words were, they weren’t the truth. I looked at the floor. “Except we’re not. We’re not married. We’re not even dating. We’re two impulsive strangers who have been reckless and foolish in an attempt to avoid reality. We aren’t a team. And we certainly aren’t ready to be parents.” I slid my wedding ring off my finger and put it in his hand.
“Jasmine, what are you doing?”
Tears clouded my vision as I looked up into his sea-blue eyes. If I didn’t know better, I’d almost say they looked hurt.
“Doing what I should have done back at the church. Setting you free. It was selfish of me to drag you into this mess. You have your own life. You don’t need my baggage dragging you down. I need to stop this charade now. It’s gotten out of hand. I refuse to ruin your life any more than I already have.” Squaring my shoulders, I put my hand on the door.
“Jazz, can we talk, please?”
I took a deep breath. There were two paths laid out in front of me. One path told me to cut and run. The other told me to stay, talk this all out. Figure out a plan together. It was a tempting path, but I knew where it ended. Him trapped in a relationship he didn’t want to be in. But when he left this time, I’d have a kid to figure out how to care for on my own too. That was something I knew I wasn’t ready for. It was better to cut him free and deal with the loss of him instead. Better for him. Which was all I cared about at the moment. I would not drag him down this path with me.
“There’s nothing left to say.”
With eyes fully blurred with tears, I ripped open the door and ran out of the room and down the hall, knowing he wouldn’t chase after me. Not only because he was still in the buff. It was more that I wasn’t the sort of girl men chased after. I was the one they let go of. Exactly like Dwayne had, and Jake, and Mathew, and all those before. Each relationship had the same point in the timeline: the moment where they left me.
Except this time, I was the one leaving. And somehow, that made it hurt so much more.
