The Girl Next Door

3

I spent most of the morning arguing with Bridget about why we had to cut so many cake bits every morning and explaining a million times over that everything was made the night before so it had the chance to chill or freeze. She spent it working her ass off to make things as irritating as she possibly could for me.

By the time I got home, I was ready to take a couple Advil and take a nap, almost all of the frustration I'd had about having sex with Bridget, was practically gone.

But when I walked through the door that afternoon, my mom wanted to talk.

"Hey Casen!" My Mom chirped when she saw me, "Do you want some lunch?"

"Not really. I'm not hungry."

"Well, at least come sit with me! I'd like to talk to you."

My mom is the one person I could never say no to. She's like my best friend, which may be weird for a seventeen year old guy to say, but she knew more about me than anyone else did. She was always there, never judged, and always offered her own words of wisdom.

I sat down at the table, across from where she was basically bouncing up and down in her seat.

"How was work?" She asked.

"The new girl is a pain in the ass."

"Oh I'm sure it'll get better, she's probably just anxious and still learning."

"Nah. I think she just likes to annoy the shit out of me."

"I'm sure that's not it." She looked like she was ready to burst at the seams. "But anyways, I have something to tell you!"

"What's up?"

Without saying anything, my mom reached under the table and pulled out two weird looking sticks. She slid them across to me, smiling the whole time.

"Holy fuck! You're pregnant?" I couldn't even hide the shock in my voice.

It wasn't really all that weird for my mom to be pregnant, she was only thirty-three. She had me at sixteen and then a miscarriage when I was twelve, but as far as I knew they never even talked about having another baby.

"Yeah! I'm actually fourteen weeks, we've known for a while but we wanted to wait to tell you until we were sure everything was okay." She was actually beaming, apparently she wanted this more than I ever knew.

"I don't even know what to say."

"You're not mad are you? Dad and I have been talking about another baby since my miscarriage, we just didn't tell you because we didn't think you'd want to know and we weren't sure it was going to happen." My moms happy look started to drop and get replaced by one filled with worry.

"No! Mom no, it's not that! I'm just surprised!"

"What are you thinking Casen?"

"I think it's awesome mom! Really. Kind of weird that the baby will be less than a year old by the time I go to college though."

"We thought about that, but I don't think it's that bad. You'll still see him or her whenever you're home, or whenever we video chat."

"I know." I smiled and stood up to hug my mom. "I'm happy for you mom. Really." I kissed her cheek.

After talking to my mom for about a half an hour, I went upstairs, ripped off my ice cream and cake covered shirt, and finally got to face plant in my bed and take the nap I'd been looking forward to all day.

When I woke up, it was already five o'clock, the smell of lasagna was wafting through the house and my headache was completely gone.

I went to the bathroom and changed into my grey sweatpants, splashed some water on my face to wake me the rest of the way up, then went back to watch Netflix until my mom called me for dinner.

But when I got back to my bedroom, Bridget Banks was sitting quietly on my bed scrolling through her phone.

"What the fuck are you doing?" I demanded.

"I was waiting on you, obviously." She shrugged, stuffing her phone into her pocket.

"How the fuck did you even get in here?"

"I've opened that window before. I was best friends with the girl who had this room before you moved in."

"But why the fuck would you come in here like that? That's so fucking weird."

"I wanted to talk to you."

"What?"

"I just wanted to make sure we were still on the same page about last night. It didn't mean anything. Right?"

"You keep saying that, but I already agreed."

"Yeah, but you were acting weird today so I just thought I'd double check that you remembered."

"I was acting weird today because you gave me the headache from hell with all your bitching and complaining." That headache was starting to make its reappearance.

"Oh." She looked at the ground sadly. "Sorry."

My voice softened, "Whatever."

"Well Fuckboy, I'll leave you alone. See you at work." She stood up, tossed me a small wave and then disappeared, leaving me wondering what had just happened.