30 First Dates (26 page)

Sure enough, the card read,
No pressure. Just want to talk. Meet me at Neapolitan tomorrow at 5? –Devon.

No sooner had her stomach flooded with a combination of anxiety, fear, and shame than her phone began to rattle on the coffee table. The card still in hand, she walked over to see who it was, expecting Devon's name to appear. It was Ben.

She clicked "answer" and closed her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose between her thumb and index finger. "Hey, Ben." She tried to sound perky, but that just made her voice sound even flatter.

"What's wrong?" he asked. "No, don't tell me. I don't think I want to know."

She sighed. "Did you call for any particular reason, then?"

"I did."
His
perkiness sounded genuine. "Want to go for a run?"

Erin considered it. She didn't want to run right now, but she needed to run right now. In her flurry of activity this week she'd hauled off and signed up for the Austin marathon, which happened in February. That meant she had roughly four months to get a program in place and train for the race.

"Oh, why the hell not," she said.

"All right," he answered, still chipper and ignoring the dullness of her response. "I'll be over in twenty."

When he arrived, Erin was dressed in running shorts and a pink racerback tank and was bent over tying her Nikes. Seated on the sofa was Paul, who'd knocked on her door not five minutes after she'd hung up with Ben. Like Devon, he was resorting to extreme measures to find out why she was avoiding him.

At this point she wasn't sure why she was avoiding any of them. She'd known she had to face them eventually—and that postponing it would make things worse.

But then, she'd never been scared she was pregnant before.

Erin pondered the situation. She felt like an animal trapped in a hunter's sights, like a scared patient awaiting a biopsy result…like an unprepared, inept, and totally unqualified
single
person who couldn't possibly handle an unplanned pregnancy.

Compared to that, she supposed, dealing with Devon, Paul, and Ben in the space of twenty-four hours couldn't be that tough to handle.

Erin yelled at Ben to come on in—the door was open. When he walked inside, she gestured to Paul and said, "Join the party."

The two men exchanged uncomfortable glances, and Paul stood up. They shook hands.

She'd already apologized to Paul for her avoidance tactics, but she did it again. "I'm sorry, guys, that I've been off the grid for the past few days. I've been going crazy with stuff to do for school and the blog and work." She looked up at Ben. "Paul knows we're about to go out on a run. I'm meeting him for coffee in a bit."

Paul was still standing, and he made his way to the door. "7:30?" he asked.

"7:30," she confirmed, avoiding his eyes and trying not to think about the fact that at 7:30 she was breaking things off with him before they started. It was awkward enough that there was a giant flower arrangement within view on the kitchen table. Paul had been shooting glances at it since he arrived, and now Ben was doing the same thing.

Erin wanted to scream. Or laugh. Or cry.

Mainly, she just wanted to get her period.

*  *  *

They didn't drive to Frisco this time. Today they ran in the park near Erin's condo, which suited her fine. In Frisco she'd be forced to come face to face with her childhood memories, and a happy childhood with two stable parents who knew their station in life wasn't something she wanted to think about right now.

She took in the activity of the bustling park during after-work hours, its busiest time, especially this time of year. The leaves hadn't started to turn yet, but the air had that scorched, parched feeling of early fall, the ground all but begging to pull up the covers of its leafy blanket and prepare for the coming chill. Erin breathed deep, her lungs expanding so she felt full, alive, her senses heightened. Across a brown-green field, some kids on a playground caught her eye. They were laughing and running, a girl and a boy. The girl, about five or six, was chasing the boy, who looked a little older. She glanced away from them at Ben, who seemed immersed in his own nature study.

They were thirty-eight minutes into their run, and for the past five minutes they hadn't talked at all. She broke the silence with, "I think I'm pregnant."

For a couple seconds she kept running, looking straight ahead, shocked at her unplanned outburst. It took her a few more seconds to realize Ben was no longer beside her.

Erin did an about-face, still running in place, and looked back at him. He'd stopped in the middle of the wide path and was hunched over, his hands on his knees. She jogged over to him and put one hand on his back. Instantly he straightened up, and looked at her with a staggered expression.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

He still just stared at her.

"I guess I should be asking you that," he said. His voice sounded strangled, like he'd just recovered from a bout of choking. He looked pale, and unhappy. "Is it? Who—" The words trailed off.

Erin reached out and grabbed his hand, pulling him back into a slow jog. "I was…it was Devon," she said. "It was just one time."

They ran for thirty seconds in silence, Erin's mind spinning as she mulled over Ben's reaction. She wished desperately she could un-tell him the news, even though he'd always been the person she trusted most with important things to say. "I was so confused," she said quietly. "I still am. I don't know what I'm doing with him, with any of it."

She laughed, and it was a hard sound. "I wanted to experiment with love. I guess the experiment's backfired."

She listened to their feet on the pavement, wishing as usual that she knew what he was thinking. Was he disappointed in her? Pissed? Clearly he was unhappy, but why, specifically? Wondering was torture, but they ran for another full minute in silence.

"You said, 'I think,'" he said finally. "So you're not sure?"

Erin glanced over at him. "No." She looked ahead again, unable to watch his reaction as she went into the details. "I'm only a week late. I haven't taken a test yet. It's just that I'm never late. Like, hardly ever."

Ben seemed to visibly relax, causing the tension Erin was holding in her back and neck and shoulders to ease as well. "What, you think I'm overreacting?" she asked, flummoxed by his reaction.

He slowed his pace and then stopped running again, moving to one side as a bicyclist approached from behind them. She stopped, too, her face hot from the exertion of the run and the strain of her admission. He turned to face her and looked down into her eyes.

"Not overreacting," he said slowly. "Jumping too quickly to a conclusion, maybe. But maybe that's good. Maybe this is a warning sign that you're in over your head." He started running again, picking up the pace quickly, and Erin huffed as she worked to keep up with him.

"What do you think I should do?" she asked after another minute of listening to their shoes pound against the paved path. The trail was interrupted just ahead by a city street, and she slowed her pace alongside him to a jog, running in place as they waited for a walk signal.

He looked at her quizzically. "What do I think you should do about what? About Devon? About Paul? I can't really figure that out for you, E." He shook his head. "About the pregnancy thing, though? Take a damn test, Erin."

The light had changed, and as he said these things he jogged through the intersection. She struggled to keep up again, now for a different reason.

"That's harsh," she said.

He made a noise that was a cross between a laugh and a sob, causing Erin's heart to leap violently in her chest for reasons she couldn't fathom. Suddenly he veered to their left, slowing to a walk and not stopping until he reached a picnic table under a copse of trees about ten feet off the exercise trail. He sat down and again dropped his head, resting his forehead on his hands. She sat timidly beside him, not understanding his violent reaction.

"Ben?" she asked, and reached out to touch his arm.

He didn't move for several more seconds, and then suddenly he looked up and took her hand in both of his.

"What do I think you should do?" he repeated. "If you are pregnant," he said slowly, stopping, looking down, and then looking back up at her. "If you are pregnant, I think you should marry me. Forget this Devon. Forget Paul and all these other idiots you're messing around with." He stared unflinchingly into her astonished face. "Marry me, and we'll raise a baby together." He paused for only a second. "I love you, Erin," he said in one breath. "I've been in love with you for…God, I don't know…since we were probably about eight."

As she watched him, stunned into silence, his eyes were wet with tears that didn't escape. In answer, her own eyes brimmed over and a single tear rolled off her right eyelashes. They both sat completely still as he watched the tear trace slowly down her cheek.

Finally he whispered, "Did you not know?"

And then she was crying, her shoulders heaving with full-bodied, wracking sobs. She hadn't cried this way since she was a child, Erin thought, but she couldn't stop. The knowledge that she wasn't a crier went through her head, followed by the realization that it could be pregnancy hormones making her cry. That made her sob even harder.

Ben wrapped his left arm awkwardly around her and pulled her to him on the bench, reaching around to cradle her with his right arm. Before she realized it, before she could stop letting him comfort her in this way, she felt his lips against her hair. Her body reacted, tingles arcing up her back and a warmth spreading outward from the center of her stomach, through her limbs. She felt like she was melting into him, like the world and her problems were suddenly inconsequential.

Then her head overtook these sensations, and Erin gasped. She pushed against him, disentangling herself from his arms and putting a few inches of space between them on the wooden bench.

"No!" she almost yelled.

He looked stunned, but he dropped his hands immediately.

Her face was streaked with tears, but no new ones came, as if the shock of his admission dried them up. She reached out to him, putting her right hand on his arm and looking at him with a pleading expression. "I'm sorry," she said. "God, Ben, I'm sorry, but I don't…I can't—"

He wasn't looking at her. Several agonizing seconds went by, and then she bent her head down to try to look him in the eyes. It took her several more painful seconds to gather her thoughts, but when he was looking at her again, when she was sure he was listening, she said, "I love you, too. I love you so much, Ben, but it's like you're family. I don't have much family. You're like my brother—no, more than my brother. You're my
best friend
." He flinched as if she'd physically slapped him.

He studied her for another long moment, put his head in his hands again, and when he looked up he stared straight ahead with a new expression in his eyes she couldn't read.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm obviously in no position to be giving you advice." He paused, and her head was spinning with things she could say to fix this, to make everything okay between them. He looked at her again. "Cat wants me to move in with her."

Erin blinked rapidly, trying to wrap her mind around this new turn in the conversation. "But it's…you're…so fast?" she said.

He laughed humorlessly.

"
We're
so fast?" he said. "What about you?"

Her face crumpled up, and she felt tears begin to well up once more. Instantly he scooted next to her and reached out like he was going to touch her, but his face showed his hesitation and he dropped his hands.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean that like it sounded."

He waited in silence while she collected herself, her entire body trembling with the effort to get her emotions in check. What a day. What a week this had been.

She reached out to him and, despite the heat and the mingled sweat from their run, took his arm and placed it over her shoulders, leaning into him in a familiar way. She felt the tension in his body, but after several long seconds it loosened and he relaxed, pulling her closer in to his chest and resting his chin on the top of her head. She stared past the expanse of grass, the trail, the line of trees to the urban street scene that lay beyond. Suddenly she was aware of other noises around them, cars accelerating, the squeal of brakes, the honking of a passing cab. A mother walking a dog, yelling ahead to her son on a scooter to slow down.

"You're right," Ben said after their silence had stretched at least two minutes. "Relationships are a son of a bitch."

*  *  *

After a mostly sleepless night, Erin awoke still processing Ben's declaration. She meant what she'd told him—when she thought of Ben it was as a family member, and she was terrified of losing that connection, that closeness. She'd screwed up every romantic relationship she'd even been in, and she couldn't risk letting that happen with Ben. And not only that, there was a very real chance she was pregnant with another man's child.

She hated that she'd hurt Ben, hated it with every cell in her body, but at this moment she didn't see another answer she could have given him.

Meanwhile, she struggled with the knowledge that she had to face Devon and give him the full truth—not just that she was on day eight of the period count with still no signs it was on its way, but also that she couldn't see him anymore. He wanted more right now than she could offer.

She toyed with the phone in her hands, lifting it several times with the intention of dialing Devon's number and dropping it to her lap again. Then she stood abruptly and looked around for her purse. She couldn't meet Devon tonight without taking a test, whether the results were fully reliable or not. No matter the outcome, she needed to know how Devon felt about the situation. Not that she'd consider having an abortion—she wouldn't. She was all for women having a choice, but she knew, if it were
her
decision to make, what her choice would be.

That was one reason she'd always been so careful.