A little too late

Chapter 62

Jack holds my hand as we walk in to my house. For some reason, even though it is my house, I feel like a stranger walking in. My entire family is sprawled around the house. I don’t know who to tell first. And to be honest, I don’t think Jack knows either.

We both look at each other and try to decide.

“So, who do you want to tell first?” Jack asks me.

“None of them” I tell him. He gives me a little smile but waits for me to make up my mind.

“Jack, seriously, I mean it. I don’t want to tell any of them” I repeat to him.

“Stella” He warns me. I shrug at him and give him puppy dog eyes. He puts his head back in frustration.

“Fine, we’ll tell them in a couple of hours. Lets go chill first. Maybe pack some of your stuff?” He suggests. I nod in agreement and lead him to my room.  

Sitting in my room already is some packing boxes. My parents put them there the other day when they were planning to ship me back to Australia. So either way, me packing up my stuff isn’t going to look weird for them. They just don’t know that I’m packing my stuff to move to Jacks and not to go to Australia. Oh well.

I pull out a box and start going through my draws one at a time. Jack takes the top draw and I take the second to the top. He starts fumbling through my junk, putting an empty piggy bank and an unused hair curler in a box.

“Why have you got a hair curler when you have naturally curly hair?” He asks me.

I snatch it off of him and put it in the box, “It was a gift and I didn’t have the balls to throw it out”.

He puts his arms around me and hugs me while saying “that’s my Stella, always so nice and caring”.

I snuggle up to him and we stay there hugging for a couple of moments.

Slowly I pull away and swat him, “Stop distracting me, we’ll never get all this done if you keep touching me”

“Touching you where?” He comments cheekily. Once again, I swat him in his chest. Not hard of course, but enough for him to let out a little flinch.

I point to the half empty draw and shout, “Pack!”

He laughs at me and then continues to rummage through my stuff. Just as I’m about to start on my draw, he interrupts me once again.

“I’ve always been curious as to how these things work” He says as he dangles a tampon in front of me. In embarrassment, I quickly pull the tampon away from him.

“Hey, don’t be shy. It’s natural. Nothing to be ashamed of” He tells me in support. I still cover my face and take the packet of tampons out of the draw and away from Jack.

When I don’t talk, he continues to discuss the topic, “Think about it like this, sometimes I will wake up with a little morning wood, but I can’t help that. It’s just natural. Just like periods”.

I look at him strangely. Did he just compare an erection to a period? And how is he so comfortable discussing this topic?

“What?” I ask him.

“Just let me give you a lesson about the male body. You see sometimes, we have dreams about certain people, like you, and we wake up and find a little surprise down there. But –“ He continues to tell me before I interrupt him.

“I know what an erection is Jack” I say simply. He laughs at my reaction and I laugh back at him. His little grin is so cute that I just want to pinch his cheeks.

I think he’s about to touch me but he reaches past me and grabs the tampon, “So do you really shove these things up you?”

“Oh my gosh Jack. Seriously?” I ask him. He gives me a nod and a cute face, indicating that he is being completely serious.

“Yes, and for your knowledge, I shall be doing it soon too” I tell him informatively. Well I think soon anyway. In fact, now that I think about it, it hasn’t come in a while. I start to go through dates in my head and I start to panic. This can’t be happening.

“What’s todays date Jack?” I ask him. He shrugs before pulling out his phone. He flashes his phone at me. My first reaction is to smile when I see that his background is a photo of us kissing on our wedding day. But then I look at the date and practically faint.

“Fuck” I say out loud. Jack looks at me confused, still not catching on. I constantly repeat fuck to emphasise my panic.

“Stella?” He asks me, trying to figure out what I just did.

“Fuck” Is all I reply back to him. I look away from him and tears start streaming down my eyes.

“What’s wrong Stella?” He says as he cuddles up to me.

I take a deep breath and look at him, “I think I’m pregnant”.

His eyes go wide in shock. He leans back from me a little like I have some kind of disease.

“What?” He barely manages out.

“I’m late. Really late” I spit out in fear.

“How much?” He asks me. He keeps pulling away from me as I tell him more answers.

I lift up my hands to my hair and run my fingers through it in frustration, “I don’t know. Like over a month and a half”

He looks as scared as hell but doesn’t seem to get what that means, “So how often do you get these things?”

“28 days Jack! It’s been a good forty five to fifty days” I let out in a panic.

“Fuck” Is his reaction. Finally we are on the same wavelength. He looks stressed as hell for another moment as he looks away from me. His eyes eventually meet mine and he must see the panic in my own face because not long after his expression completely changes. His face becomes neutral and he stumbles over to me.

“Hey, we’ll sort this out Stells” He says as he tries to comfort me. I shake my head in disagreement. How the hell are we meant to sort out the fact that I’m seventeen and pregnant. Fuck my life. Why did we have to have sex?

As I have that last thought, my mind goes mental.

“Sex. We had sex” I mutter out.

He nods his head and tries to stay calm even though I can tell on the inside that he is freaking out.

“Yeah, Stells, that’s usually how kids are made” He states the obvious. I look at him with narrow eyes and wait for him to catch up to what I’m thinking.

When he doesn’t, I decide to spell it out in plain words.

“No Jack. You’re not getting me. We had sex. You and me. Finn and me. And Sam and me. We all had sex” I say over to him.

“What are you trying to say?” He asks me curiously.

“I don’t know who the baby belongs to”