Small Talk

"I was so ready to kill her."

"That's not a very nice thing to say."

"Maybe I should go back in there and kill her."

"It was an accident."

"I can make killing her an accident."

Jack rolls his eyes, but I know he's every bit as offended as I was. He has to be. It's in the best-friend code. If I'm going to understand his sudden need to jerk off in the middle of a Mario Kart game, then he's going to understand my sudden need to murder a bitch.

"I think she knew," I mention. It's already dark outside.

Jack gives me a blank look, something the Driver's Ed teacher would totally disapprove of, since his eyes are taken off the road.

"How the fuck would she know you're pregnant?"

I roll my window up, strange paranoia that those words might travel back to Baltimore and Matt would hear them.

"Not that," I say. "I think she knows I've been fucked with a dick. She might not know about the pregnant part, but I'm sure she'll figure it out."

Jack blinks slowly and dramatically. He often does this, as a way to say Alex, I am really done with your shit.

"Alex, please tell me that when you cheated on your girlfriend, who is more in love with you than anybody in the world and would never do anything to hurt you, you did it in private and not in the middle of a fucking party where anyone could find out, or where news could possibly travel back to said girlfriend."

I give him a nervous smile.

"For fuck's sake," he swears, then sighs, running a hand through his hair. "Who's the father?"

I lean back in my seat and stare out the window. "Idontknow," I mumble.

"What?" He looks at me again.

"I don't know," I say more clearly. I feel myself sink a little.

"You slept with a random guy?"

"No." I'm blushing now, but more out of shame than anything. "I slept with three."

Jack slams on the breaks, nearly causing a 3-way car crash, horns honking in every direction. He pulls the car to the side of the road.

It's quiet for a really long time.

"You're a horrible person," he says.

He says this with such firmness and sincerity that I start to cry.

"I know," I manage in between sniffles and half-sobs. "I know."

\\

Her fingers are tracing the veins down my arm. The house is silent, the only sound in the room being the quiet hum and hiss of her breath.

She is innocent. We have only been together four months, but it has felt like forever, and I'd like to think that I wouldn't mind forever. She's the night sky, and I am the dirt beneath our feet.

I don't want to hurt her. I really, really don't.

She looks at me like I've never done any wrong, like I'm safe, like we're safe together. And we are, but sometimes I don't want to be safe. I just want to be alive.

I don't see the big deal in sex. I have done it countless times. It's two people making each other feel good, the kind of good that only comes out of sex. It's the same as going skydiving for the first time, the instructor a stranger on your back.

Matt is not a virgin, no, of course not. She drinks as much as your average 80's kid, even though that era was almost 30 years ago. I've seen her high more times than she can count, and when she looks at you, courtesy of Jack, "she'll make you come in your pants."

She's innocent in the way that she believes in love. She believes it will wrap itself around everyone's soul and bring eternal peace. She believes this so much, a love so blind that when she kisses me, she does not taste the chapstick of Taylor or Lisa, whom I have made out with so much that I cannot even remember which one snuck behind the boy's locker room during 5th period.

I am a horrible person and I thrive in it.

I know she is not fragile, but I am so afraid that she will break. Everyone does, and I don't want to be the one to do it.

"Do you think it'll snow this winter?" she asks me, rolling over on her stomach.

"Why wouldn't it?" I ask, stretching.

She shrugs, staring up at the ceiling, which is lined with glow in the dark stars, the kind you beg your parents for when you see them at the register in the grocery store, the cheap ones, unwanted.

"I feel like something's going to change? This global warming crap's really getting to me."

"We'll be fine," I tell her. "You will be fine, I will be fine. The weather will be fine."

She looks at me, brown eyes searching. I start to panic, afraid she can somehow read my thoughts.

"Are you okay?" she asks.

"I'm feeling sick," I sort of lie.

She frowns, brushing the hair from my face. "You should go home," she suggests, hand on my forehead. "I guess you're a little hot."

"That's because your bed is always so warm," I say. It's true.

"Still," she sighs. "If you're feeling sick you should probably go home and rest. You don't want to be sick for homecoming."

I raise my eyebrow at such a notion, but she waves me off.

"Goodnight," she grins, kissing me on the nose. This is her way of kicking me out. I get up reluctantly, taking my backpack with me.

I blow her a kiss. On my way out, her dad only nods at me from the couch.

When I get home, my bed is cold.