A Night to Last a Lifetime

As soon as Jeff said he was coming to Florida my stomach started turning into knots. I wasn’t ready to see him. I wasn’t even expecting him to even think of coming here – I was honestly expecting him to run in the opposite direction, if anything.

Sophie woke me up the next morning when he arrived and I headed out to the living room, looking like crap I was sure. I was happy to see he wasn’t looking much better and clearly hadn’t slept the whole night. But, I also couldn’t help but notice that he WAS kind of cute… Clearly this hadn’t been based solely on the alcohol.

I sat down next to him on the couch and Sophie excused herself to go take a shower. Clearly I was expected to do this part on my own.

“Hey…” I said cautiously.

“We really didn’t see this coming, did we?” he replied, leaning back into the couch and shaking his head.

“Well, nope. Not exactly how I saw us turning out. I’m sorry. I was really stupid. I should’ve just listened to you when you said you didn’t have anything with you and we wouldn’t be in this fucking mess.”

“Tori, you can’t only blame yourself. I’m equally at fault. This is a problem we both have to deal with – together. That kid’s both of ours, so, we both have to be in on the decisions.”

“If that’s what you want,” I replied, really looking at him for the first time. “I’m just surprised you want to be involved, I guess. Most guys run away screaming when this happens and the girl is left pregnant and alone.”

“Well, I’m not most guys, Tori. I take responsibility when I fuck up and I fucked up. So, what do we do?”

“I have no idea. I guess I’m having it – I can’t even bare to think about getting an abortion. I just don’t think that’s for me.”

“Alright. I didn’t really want that either, to be honest. Are you thinking adoption? I mean, that’s my kid. I don’t know about giving it away to some random couple and never seeing it again. That really doesn’t sound good to me…”

“So, what? We raise it? With you in North Carolina and me God knows where? Jeff, you’ll see this kid every like, 3 months. I really don’t want to be that teenage single mother going nowhere. That’s not what I want.”

Just then Sophie ran into the room talking on her cell phone. She mouthed “Dad” at me and I immediately started shaking. Jeff noticed and put his hand on my knee, nodding his head. He understood that it was time to tell my parents. It was better to get it done now than later. I nodded my head at Sophie, letting her know I was as ready as I’d ever be for this
conversation.

She put our parents on speaker phone and was trying to explain everything leading up to the situation we were in. I was annoyed – and pretty sure my parents knew how making a baby worked – so I just blurted out, “I had sex with Jeff Skinner and now I’m pregnant.” This time, I didn’t regret being blunt because to my parents, there was no sugar coating this stuff. They knew I had a tendency to fuck up so I decided to get it over quickly – ripping off a band-aid sort of thing.

It felt like there was silence forever. Sophie finally spoke up to ask if they were still there. Mom cried and begged us to actually tell her it was Sophie that was pregnant – because that was excusable. Even though we were exactly the same age, they had been together forever so who cares if she gets knocked up. Dad, ever practical, asked me if I had told Jeff. By this time, I was sobbing and couldn’t speak so Sophie explained that he was there with us. The worst part was that my parents decided that they were going to fly to Florida and help us deal with the situation – this was hard enough figuring out between Jeff and I and what we wanted, let alone my parents who were surely going to pressure me into ending the pregnancy right there.

As soon as Sophie hung up the phone I starting babbling about planning out the next 18 years of my life. Sophie was trying to calm me down but was getting nowhere so Jeff started to mumble stuff about “figuring it all out” and it being “our choice” and that slowly started to make me feel better. Sophie left soon after so we could start talking again – the pressure was on to make some decisions considering my parents could arrive whenever.

“You know, I don’t expect you to do this on your own,” Jeff said, picking up where we had left off. “Like I said, this is my kid too. I want to be a part of their life, more than every few months. I mean, you could move to North Carolina… Obviously, I don’t want you to move in with me – that sounded harsh, I’m sorry.”

“That’s fine. I don’t want to move in with you either. That’d be stupid; we don’t even know each other. But, I’m leaning towards keeping it anyway. I can’t imagine having a kid and then just handing it to someone else to raise. I mean, that’s my kid biologically. They should be with me. But, I was also thinking of going back to Canada, so I don’t know how that would work… Like, I can’t afford to even HAVE a baby here, health care wise. At least there, I’m covered by my parent’s insurance.”

“That makes sense…” Jeff whispered. “That’s just so far away. How would that work?”

“Well, I’m not even due until like, June or July. I obviously don’t have a set date yet – it’s way too early for that – but, that’s what 40 weeks works out to. It’s 40 weeks right? Is that how long a girl’s pregnant? I don’t even know this stuff.”

“I don’t know either but I think it’s something like that. And that’s the off season. I’m planning on going back to Canada then anyway until like, late September. That could work! I could just move to wherever you are! I don’t even have any set plans right now so my summer is actually wide open. I could even be there when the kid is born! You know, if you want. If that’s okay.”

“I guess that’s okay… I mean, you’re the dad. I think you’re supposed to be there,” I said. “So, what? Did we just decide that we’re having a baby?”

“Um, I think it was kind of decided for us but, well yeah. I think so,” he replied.

“Well then…” I said slowly. “Wow. Now we have to prepare ourselves for my parents… They’re not gonna be happy with that decision I can tell you that.”

“Speaking of parents, I should probably call my mom…” Jeff said slowly.

“Can you do that now? It feels better once it’s done, trust me.”

“Yeah, okay,” he said, pulling out his cell phone. “Can you stay though? I mean, she might have questions and stuff…”

“Um, sure,” I said nervously. Telling my parents was bad enough. Now I was gonna have to tell his, too?

He dialed the number and put it on speaker phone.

“Hello?” said a woman on the other end.

“Hi mom!” Jeff said cheerfully. “What’re you doing?”

“Oh, nothing. Home from work on lunch… Why are you calling me?”

“Oh, you know… Um, I have something to tell you actually,” he looked at me nervously. I mouthed, “Come on!” to him and he turned back towards the phone. “Um, I’m actually in Florida! You see, I, uh, met this girl a couple of months ago and got a little carried away and I – “

“Oh, Jesus Jeff. You’re not gonna tell me you knocked up some fan girl are you?”

“Well… I wouldn’t exactly call her a puck slut but, yup, yeah she’s pregnant…”

“Jeffrey fucking Skinner,” she yelled. “You idiot! You better not think you’re getting out of this one. What were you THINKING?! You’re taking responsibility for this, you know. You’re paying for an abortion if that’s what she wants or you are helping her in any damn way you can! You best believe that. How could you be so stupid?”

“I know. I’m really sorry,” Jeff said as his voice began to shake. “I wasn’t thinking and I know it was dumb but I’m already working on the responsibility part. I’m here with her now and we’re trying to figure out what we’re going to do. She doesn’t want an abortion though – and honestly, neither do I.”

“She’s there now? Oh that poor girl. Is she okay?”
“She’s doing okay. I mean, we’re both kind of stressed out and stuff…”

“I mean, is she okay? Like, morning sickness and stuff? Oh, for God’s sake. Let me talk to her.”

Jeff looked over at me. “Go,” he mouthed.

“Um, hi, Mrs. Skinner. Hello,” I stuttered.

“Hello, uh, honey I’m sorry I didn’t even ask for your name.”

“Oh! It’s Tori! My name’s Tori!” I exclaimed, simply happy to get an easy question.

“Okay, Tori. How are you doing? Are you feeling okay?”

“I’ve thrown up a bit, you know. Nothing major except the whole morning sickness is a whole lotta false advertising seeing as it’s the whole day…”

“Yeah, I don’t miss that aspect of being pregnant,” she replied. “Have you been to a doctor? How far along are you anyway?”

“I went to a doctor yesterday. I’m a little more than two months.”

“Well, two months. I’d hate to tell you but it’s going to get worse and you’re going to feel worse so be prepared. Do you have any family there in Florida?”

“Well my sister flew in from Colorado to help me deal with this and my parents are on their way.”

“Okay, honey. Well you put Jeff back on okay? I’m sure we’ll be in touch.” Clearly the woman hadn’t yet realized she was on speaker phone so Jeff quickly spoke up, “Hey, it’s me.”

“Well, she sounds decent I guess. I would like to meet her though. We’ll figure that out. Anyway, you get back to figuring out the little situation. I have to get back to work anyway. I’ll call you tonight and we’ll talk about this again. Don’t think this is me being easy on you. I just need to process.”

“Okay, Mom. I love you!” Jeff said, trying to save face.

“I love you too honey,” she replied, somewhat sadly. He hung up the phone and turned to me. “Well, she took that better than I expected.”

“She was in the calm stage. Don’t worry, you’ll get a frantic phone call tonight. Now, we just have to prepare for my parent’s arrival… I don’t even know where everyone is going to sleep in this damn apartment. Anyway, for right now, I am going to take a nap. You look like you need one too. The couch is a pull out. We’ve got a few hours yet. Get some sleep.”

“Alright,” he replied. “That actually sounds like a really good plan.”

He started setting up the couch and I turned and went to my room, shutting the door behind me. “Oh man,” I thought to myself. “This is going to get interesting…” My stomach was already in knots anticipating my parent’s arrival.