I Love You, Always

Chapter 21

"He knows. Trevor knows."

Lexy sniffles from the other end of the phone and I can tell that she's holding back her tears. It's been a couple weeks since Lexy found out she's pregnant and it's been a rough couple of weeks. She calls me every night, sometimes twice a day, and there's usually a lot of crying involved and me trying to comfort her to the best of my ability over the phone. I did get to go see her the weekend I wanted to and I think me being there helped her a lot. She still cried every night I was there, but at least then I could hold her and hug her and physically comfort her, which I think was definitely more effective than trying to reassure and comfort her over the phone. It sucks that I can't spend every weekend over at her place. If I could, trust me, I would be there.

"How does he know?" I ask.

Lexy and I talked about a lot of things the past couple of weeks and one of the things Lexy wanted to make sure of was that Trevor wouldn't find out that she's pregnant. She wanted him to never talk to her again, completely forget that she exists, and him not knowing would make this entire situation much less difficult. Honestly, I'm not sure how she had planned to keep it from him long-term, considering that at some point I think it would be become physically obvious that she is pregnant. It's already becoming more apparent, and I didn't realize that until I went to her house and she had me touch her stomach. I could feel this small firm bump and it was the weirdest thing. Lexy says she hates it because it reminds her every day of the situation she's in.

"I ended up telling Mia one night," she confides to me, "and I don't know for sure, but she must have said something to someone who spread it around the school. I haven't told anyone else who would be able to spread it around."

"So, how did you find out that he knows? Did he talk to you?"

"Y-yeah." Lexy pauses and I hear her take in a deep breath from the other side. "He came up to me at lunch and he said I better not think about aborting it because it's his too, and he threatened me if I did. He said he'd kill me."

"Are you serious?" What a grade-A douche bag. I already hated this guy with every fiber of my being and now I just want to eliminate his entire existence. All he does is cause more and more pain for Lexy when she never did anything to deserve it. "Did you tell Val?" I ask.

"Yeah. She's going to talk to the school about it Monday to see if they can keep him away from me. I don't even want to go to that school anymore. Everyone talks about me, everyone stares, it's horrible. There are people who are on his side, too. Can you believe that? Siding with a rapist? Who does that?"

"There's a reason I didn't like a lot of people at that school," I tell Lexy. My situation is completely different from hers, obviously, but I understand partially what she's going through. It wasn't uncommon for people to stare and say stuff about me there. It happens at my new school sometimes, but really only with Kyle. Leo doesn't seem to be a problem anymore. I can't relate to what she's going through entirely, but I can understand some things.

"I'm so tired," Lexy continues. "I still don't know what I want to do and I know I have to make a decision soon. Having it means Trevor potentially being part of my life forever and I can't live with that. Not having it is a hard decision too because I'm conflicted about if I would be okay with going through with something like that. There's adoption, but honestly, I don't want to have a baby. Not right now. Having a baby can mess your body up so much, especially when you're my age. Mom told me what it was like for her after she had me and I don't want that either. I hate this."

"You still have some time to figure things out," I reply.

"I feel so gross, every time I look at myself. I can't sleep anymore, I wake up every morning throwing up. It's awful."

"You might feel gross, but you're not gross," I reassure her. "You're beautiful."

"No, I'm not," Lexy replies. She sounds frustrated and still on the verge of tears. "I'm not. This baby is making me fat and Trevor...h-he said he regretted having sex with me, as he so put it because he won't admit that it was rape, and...and he said he regretted it because I'm nothing special and he hopes the baby doesn't come out ugly because of me."

"Lexy, why are you listening to him? He's an asshole. What he says doesn't matter. You're far from ugly. He's trying to get under your skin and upset you, that's all."

"I don't know..." She sniffles again. "It's like my hormones are all out of wack. I'm always upset over something, even if it's stupid."

"Well, I believe that you're very pretty and you're super smart and funny and you have an amazing personality, and you're an awesome person. Because I'm your best friend and Trevor is just some ugly, spineless, pathetic, gross, piece of shit, I think my opinion is more valuable than anything that comes out of his trash mouth. Am I wrong?"

I manage to get a soft chuckle out of Lexy, which makes me feel good. "N-no," she begins. "Your opinion m-means more to me than anyone else. I-it's just hard when he says these things that I was already thinking a-about myself."

"They're not true, Lex. You're seriously the most awesome person I have ever known and will ever know."

There's more sniffling. It's becoming more frequent and that tells me that Lexy is failing to hold back her tears. "Lexy, it's okay."

When the first sob comes through, I know that Lexy's going to be upset for a while, and that's okay.

"I-I'm sorry..." she manages to speak through her hiccups. "I'm just s-sad. You s-say all th-these nice things about me and it makes m-me happy, but I just w-wish that th-things could be different between us."

This is definitely not something Lexy has talked about since that night of the party when she confessed she liked me. I hate that I'm a source of her pain.

"I'm sorry, Lex. I can stop saying those things if you want me to."

There's a sharp intake of breath before Lexy responds. "No...I still like h-hearing them." Lexy sniffles and sighs, and she sounds frustrated again. "I'm so sick of c-crying all the t-time! I'm s-sick of this."

"It's okay. You're upset, of course you're going to cry."

"I-I'm glad I have you, Dami," Lexy says after a minute. Her sobs have dissipated so it's easier to make out her words. "I l-love you, always."

"I love you, too. Always," I reply.

There's some shuffling on Lexy's end. "I-I've been taking some of Mom's sleeping meds to sleep," she says and there's a little more shuffling. "I took one b-before I called you and it's starting to kick in. Will you talk to me until I fall asleep?" she asks.

"Of course." That's an easy thing for me to do. "What do you want me to talk about?"

She yawns. "Anything. I just...wanna hear your voice."

"Okay."

There's honestly not much to talk about besides telling Lexy about my day and I tell her about the podcast episode I listened to earlier, even though I know she probably doesn't have any interest in that. It's something I'm able to talk about for a while. Eventually, she stops making little hums in response to the things I say, and I sit in Derrick's bed, once again, listening to hear slow, even breathing through the phone.

"Lex?" I call out her name quietly so that if she is asleep, I won't wake her up, but she doesn't respond.