A New Kind of Denial

I pulled my lighter out of my pocket as I stuck the cigarette between my lips ad lit it, inhaling the tangy smoke, blowing it out through my nose slowly, feeling the nicotine flooding my body. I leaned against the brick wall of the story, looking in my peripheral vision to see my best friend Meredith walking towards me. I smiled as I took another drag of my cigarette before putting it out on the bricks behind me, sliding it back neatly where it was in the pack.

“You ready hon?” Meredith asked, linking her arm in mine, causing me to turn on my heel and follow her to her car that was parked a little ways away.

“You bet,” I smiled, thinking of where we were about to go. “D’you think Matt’s going to have any cute guys over tonight?”

“I don’t know he might. But isn’t it still a bit early?”

“Early? Girl what are you talking about?”

“It’s only been a few weeks since you and Gavin spilt up. isn’t it a bit early to be on the prowl again?”

“Okay, first of all, on the prowl? Really? What are we; wolves? And second, it’s been weeks and he’s in Canada for the summer – nowhere near here – so why can’t I have a little fun tonight? It’s not like we’re together anymore and it’s not like we were together very long anyways.”

“You were together long enough to have sex. More than once, I might add,” she chuckled, somewhat sarcastically.

“You, of all people, should know that that’s not all that special of a thing to me,” I scoffed, buckling my seatbelt and looking at my best friend with an amused look.

“No, but it was to him,”

“It must not have been that special to him; he didn’t try too hard to stay with me,”

“Maybe he just got sick of pussy,” she shrugged. I couldn’t help but look at her incredulously, my mouth wide open. “What? Don’t’ look at me like that. Everyone knows he’s bi; it’s not like it’s that big of a deal. You never had an issue with it before. Why do you keep looking at me like I made a black joke in the middle of KFC? Okay, sorry…I couldn’t help myself. But seriously – what’s so wrong with what I said?”

“I – well, I guess nothing. I just…I just never thought of it like that before,” I admitted. “What if you’re right? What if he just got sick of being with a girl? I bet he’s up there in Canada parading around with another boy.”

“So what if he is, Tans? Like you said – you’re not with him anymore. What happened already happened and whatever happened anyways can’t be changed. It’s done; whatever it is,”

“I know…but still. I mean, I know he’s liked guys longer than he’s liked girls, but it almost feels as if I turned him off girls,”

“Well, maybe you did,”

“You are so not helping, Meredith!”

“I'm just sayin’, hon,”

“Yeah, but you ain’t sayin’ nothing to help me feel any better,”

“Well I'm sorry, but I'm just telling you what’s on my mind,”

“Maybe you should keep those things on your mind instead of out’cha mouth,” I snapped, not meaning for it to come out as nasty as it did.

“Ooh, ain’t you in a mood today?”

“Sorry, sorry,” I mumbled, turning to look out of my widow as we drove through the lighted cityscape. “I don’t know what’s going on with me right now, but you know I'm not usually like this.”

“Yea, you usually only get like this when you’re on your spot,” she shrugged, referring to what she and I have nicknamed being on your period.

“But I'm not,”

“Should you be?”

“What do you mean?”

“is it about time for your spot?”

“No…I don’t think so,”

“Um, hon?”

“Um, what, Meredith?”

“Do you think maybe you’re, you know…pregnant?”

“I’d better not be fucking pregnant,”

“Well, could you?”

“I don’t know,”

“How don’t you know?”

“I just don’t know,”

“Well, you gotta know,”

“No I don’t,”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t know,”

“Alright, I'm getting confused,”

“You always get confused,”

“I know, but this is worse than normal,”

“There’s no way I can be pregnant,”

“So you do know!”

“What?”

“I don’t know…just go on,”

“How can I be pregnant, though?”

“Well, when I thing called sex happens –“

“Shut up Meredith! Again, I state; you so so not helping!”

“I'm sorry, hon, but I couldn’t help it,” she chuckled.

“It wasn’t funny,”

“Sorry,”

“You know, I'm really not in the mood for a party tonight anymore,” I sighed, rubbing my forehead and running my fingers through my hair. “Could you just drop me off at home?”

“Of course, Tans,” she smiled sympathetically, patting my leg and slowing down so that she could pull into some driveway and turn around.

“Thanks,”

“No problem,” she smiled again, heading off for my house this time.

When I got there, I dropped my bag in my room and walked to my sister’s, knowing what I was looking for, but having no clue where to look. I guess I took a lucky guess, because the first place I checked – her box of makeup – I found it. I knew she kept one in her room and one in her purse, because she was always paranoid that she’d end up pregnant. Yes, I'm talking about pregnancy tests here people. I left her room and went down the hall to the bathroom, closing and locking the door behind me. You know, everyone always says that waiting for the results are the longest moments of your life, but they really aren’t. While you’re waiting, your mind wanders all over the place. The worst thing that I thought of is that if I actually was pregnant, I wouldn’t have known who the father was. It could have been Gavin, but it also could have been Trevor’s – my rebound after Gavin. I know, it makes me sounds like a slut, and a lot of people like I am a slut, but it’s not like I try to come off like that. I don’t try to sleep with so many men. I don’t try to be hit on by half the male population. I don’t try to come off as I do, I obviously do. but I guess I do exaggerate a lot of things. I mean, Meredith seems to think that Gavin and I slept together multiple timesbecause I told her that, when in reality, we were only intimate once like that. I mean, it’s not like I didn’t want to do it again with him – I did – but it was him that didn’t. he was really shy about it before and after it happened. Sometimes I think he didn’t even want to do it in the first place. And that just baffles me; I mean, usually gay guys are all for sex, even on first dates, but Gavin is just so conservative about it. That’s probably the only thing he’s like that about, though. He curses like a trucker, has a mind so far in the gutter that a professional gutter cleaner couldn’t remove, and is quite open about his sexuality. Really, it doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense; he talks about and jokes about sex all the time, but he’s super shy when it comes down to the actual act of it.

Once I was done freaking the shit out of myself, I realized that the test was done loading, or whatever it is that it does. I looked down at it and then looked back at the box to see what the symbol actually meant. “Oh, God,” I breathed.