How To Live

Chapter Fifteen

Wesley's words hit me hard and the world around me begins to change. Suddenly it feels like I am watching a film in slow motion. His mouth seems to move before his voice catches up and his sentence is dragged out matching the long stream of confusion and denial that has begun to filter into my mind.

There is no way that Jenna Marshal is carrying Tommy's baby. It is not possible. My brother is dead, he is gone and this cannot be my reality.

It has been hard enough to accept the fact that Tommy will never walk into my life again, but I cannot accept the fact that there might possibly be a constant reminder of him walking around Bolton, a child who will never have a Father but carry the Stanton name.

"No, it is not possible." My voice sounds far away and Wesley takes a step towards me, as I stand frozen in the waiting room like a statue, my veins are filled with ice.

I feel hot and cold all at once, everything is moving fast and then slow and my mind is racing at a hundred miles per hour. It is not possible. Jenna cannot be carrying Tommy's child. Jenna and Tommy were never anything. They hardly even knew each other. How could she be pregnant?

"It is possible Ash, and it's true. Jenna and Tommy were in love." Wesley begins reaching out to me but I reel away from him like he is poison.

The word love seems to snap me out of my daze and suddenly I'm filled with anger, and it has found a target on Wesley Martin's back.

"In love?" I cry incredulously. "They are eighteen years old Wesley! They don't know what love is! How could my brother have been in love with someone and have never even told me she existed? No, it is not true, Tommy would have told me about Jenna, he would have never keep something so significant from me." My voice is loud and carries across the waiting room, earning us more attention that we need right now.

"Ash, just calm down okay? Lower your voice." Wesley urges and I shake my head, my heart pumping with adrenaline.

It is like I've gone insane and all rational thoughts have left my mind. All I can feel is anger and pain.

Pain that stems from the fact that my brother never told me about Jenna Marshal, the girl he was in a relationship with, who he apparently fell in love with. I thought Tommy and I shared everything, and it was one thing to accept that he had friends like Wesley Martin, friends who I never knew about, but to accept that he had found someone who meant the world to him and never mentioned it to me breaks my heart.

"Keep my voice down! Why? So I don't embarrass you? So people don't start to talk? So that my families perfect reputation can stay untarnished without the knowledge that Mayor Stanton is going to be a grandfather?" I chose to focus on the anger rather than the pain that is breaking my heart right now.

Anger has become a common acquaintance in my life and I welcome its company.

"Is that why you have been talking to me Wesley? Is that why you've been hanging out with me this summer so that you can scope out my family for Jenna? Have you been using me to see what Stanton's are really like?" My voice comes out softer, more serious and as soon as the words leave my mouth I can tell by the look of pity and guilt in Wesley's eyes that I'm right, that is exactly what he has been doing.

"Wow, you really are the asshole everyone warned me you were." I shake my head and turn my back to him, my eyes filling with tears as the anger begins to fade and the pain takes precedence.

I can't believe I bought his bullshit story about how he wanted to get to know me because of Tommy. All this time he has just been playing me so that he can get some kind of in tell about my family and report back to Jenna. To think that I actually trusted him makes me feel sick and used.