Finding Cinderella

Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

Sometimes when I’m almost asleep, I’ll hear something that pulls me right back into a state of high alert. I’ll listen closely, wondering if I actually heard a sound or if it’s just my imagination playing tricks on me. I’ll hold my breath and be really still, and I’ll just listen quietly.

I’m quiet.

I’m still.

I’m holding my breath.

I’m listening.

I’m concentrating really hard while my head rests on her thighs. I don’t know when I lowered it here, but my hands are still gripping her waist. I’m trying to figure out if those words are going to hit me and completely knock my heart around like a punching bag all over again, or if it was just my imagination.

God, I hope it was my imagination.

A tear hits my cheek that just fell straight from her eyes.

“I didn’t find out until I was already in Italy,” she says, her voice coated and laced with sorrow and shame. “I’m so sorry.”

In my head, I’m counting backward. Counting the days and the weeks and the months and trying to make sense of what she’s saying, because she’s obviously not pregnant now. My mind is still churning, crunching numbers, erasing errors, crunching more numbers.

She was in Italy for almost seven months.

Seven months there, three months before she left and one month since she returned.

That’s almost a year.

My mind hurts. Everything hurts.

“I didn’t know what to do,” she says. “I couldn’t raise him by myself. I was already eighteen when I found out, so . . .”

I immediately lift up and look at her face. “Him?” I ask, shaking my head. “How do you know . . .” I close my eyes and blow out a steady breath, then release my grip on her waist. I stand up and turn around, then pace back and forth, absorbing everything that’s happening.

“Six,” I say, shaking my head. “I don’t . . . are you saying . . .” I pause, then turn and face her. “Are you telling me you had a fucking baby? That we had a baby?”

She’s crying again. Sobbing, even. Hell, I don’t know if she ever even stopped. She nods like it’s painful to do.

“I didn’t know what to do, Daniel. I was so scared.”

She stands up and walks toward me, then places her hands delicately on my cheeks. “I didn’t know who you were, so I didn’t know how to tell you. If I knew your name or what you looked like I never would have made that decision without you.”

I bring my hands up to hers, and I pull them away from my face. “Don’t,” I say as I feel the resentment building within me. I’m trying so hard to hold it back. To understand. To let it all soak in.

I just can’t.

“How could you not tell me? It’s not like you found a puppy, Six. This is . . .” I shake my head, still not getting it. “You had a baby. And you didn’t even bother telling me!”

She grasps my shirt in her fists, shaking her head, wanting me to see her side of things. “Daniel, that’s what I’m trying to tell you! What was I supposed to do? Did you expect me to plaster flyers all over the school asking for information on who knocked me up in the maintenance closet?”

I look her directly in the eyes. “Yes,” I say in a low voice.

She takes a step back, so I take a step forward. “Yes, Six! That’s exactly what I would have expected you to do. You should have plastered it all over the hallways, aired it on the radio, taken an ad out in the motherfucking newspaper! You get pregnant with my kid and you worry about your reputation? Are you kidding me?”

My hand covers my cheek a second after she slaps me.

The pain in her eyes can’t even come close to matching the pain in my heart, so I don’t feel bad for saying what I said. Even when she begins to cry harder than I knew people were capable of crying.

She rushes back to her car.

I let her go.

I walk back to the swing and I sit.

Fucking life.

Motherfucking life.

Daniel: Where are you?

Holder: Just left Sky’s house. Almost home. What’s up?

Daniel: I’ll be there in five.

Holder: Everything okay?

Daniel: Nope.

Five minutes later Holder is standing on his curb waiting for me. I pull onto the side of the street and he opens the passenger door, then climbs inside. I put my car in park and prop my foot on the dash, then look out my window.

I’m surprised at how pissed I am. I’m even surprised at how sad I am. I don’t know how to separate everything I’m feeling in order to get a grip on the core of what’s upsetting me the most. Right now I can’t tell if it’s the fact that I didn’t have a say in whatever decision she made or if it’s because she was even put into that situation to have to make that kind of decision to begin with.

I’m pissed I wasn’t there to help her. I’m pissed I was careless enough to make a girl go through something like that.

I’m sad because . . . hell. I’m sad that I’m so mad at her. I’m sad I have to know something this overwhelming and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it now, even if I wanted to. I’m sad because I’m sitting here in a parked car and I’m about to have a breakdown in front of my best friend and I really don’t want to do that but it’s too late.

I punch the steering wheel the second I begin to cry. I punch it several times, over and over, until the car begins to close in on me and I need to get the hell out of it. I open the door and climb out, then turn around and kick my tire. I kick it over and over until my foot starts to go numb, then I collapse against the hood onto my elbows. I press my forehead against the cold metal of the car and focus on burying this anger.

It’s not her fault.

It’s not her fault.

It’s not her fault.

When I’m finally calm enough to return to the car, Holder is sitting quietly in the passenger seat, watching me closely.

“You want to talk about it?” he asks.

I shake my head. “Nope.”

He nods. He’s probably relieved I don’t want to talk about it.

“What do you want to do?” he asks.

I wrap my fingers around the steering wheel, then crank the car. “I don’t care what we do.”

“Me neither.”

I put the car in drive.

“We could go to Breckin’s house and let you get your aggression out on a video game,” he suggests.

I nod, then begin to drive toward Breckin’s house. “You better not fucking tell him I cried.”