Mr. James: A Forbidden Romance (13 page)

When the door was shut, he leaned against it and slid down the length of it until he was sitting on the floor, and there he stayed with his head in his hands and tears on his cheeks, wondering how in the world he was ever going to talk himself into believing that letting her walk out was the right thing to do.

Chapter9

Days passed slowly, one after the next, each one seeming to last forever as Catalina forced herself to go on with her life. She made herself get up out of bed every morning. She readied herself for school, and she went to all of the same classes that she had been going to, but Connor was no longer at the front of the class, looking back at her with those jade green eyes, gazing at her longingly.

There were new teachers that taught his classes, and rumors flew around the campus as to where he had gone and why. She wouldn’t listen to the rumors. She wouldn’t talk about him, though a few of the students had asked her if she knew anything about what was going on. She would only shake her head and walk away.  She stayed as far away from his office as she could, fairly certain that he was no longer there, but unwilling to take the chance to find out.

She didn’t want to add to the rumors, and she didn’t want to see him and have to turn away from him. She knew she wouldn’t be able to. Walking away from his office the last time they had seen each other was one of the most difficult things that she had ever done in her life.

She had fought so hard inside of her mind and heart not to turn around and go running back to him, not to rush to him and beg him to just run away with her, because she knew that they both had a life that they were going to be expected to live without each other.

Reggie tried to talk with her a few times, but she wouldn’t look at him or speak to him. It was because of his betrayal of their friendship that everything in her life and everything in Connor’s life had been upended and destroyed. There was almost no happiness in her life following her last night with Connor.

Her father tried to cheer her up a few times, but she was not interested in anything that he tried to do to make her happy. There was nothing he could say that would bring a smile to her face, and they grew quiet around one another.

It was two weeks since her last night with Connor when she woke up one morning and crawled out of bed, forcing herself to go to the bathroom to get ready for school. She ran out of deodorant that morning and tossed the old container in the trash bin, and then opened the cabinet door beneath the sink to pull out a fresh container of deodorant and as she closed the cabinet door, everything in her stopped.

She leaned back down and opened the cabinet door again and looked inside, and the thing that had caught her eye sat there in the dim light of the cabinet, staring back at her like a ghost.

It was her box of tampons. She had been so wrapped up in her heartbreak over all the weeks since their trip to Springfield, that she had not realized that the box of tampons she was looking at had never been opened, and it should have been. It stood there in the corner of the cabinet, brand new, untouched, and panic struck her heart as she lost her breath and sank to the floor in utter fear. She had not had a single period since she had been in Springfield with Connor.

Her mind raced backward over the days and weeks behind her, over all of the times that she and Connor had made love, and he had come deep in her every single time, and every single time he had never worn a condom. They had never talked about birth control, and since she hadn’t had any lovers during her time in college, unlike most of her girlfriends, she hadn’t been on the pill in so long that she hadn’t even thought about it.

For her, sex was purely pleasure. She hadn’t even considered that it might be something much bigger than that. She closed her eyes and dropped her face into her palms as she began to cry softly, muffling the sound so that her father wouldn’t hear her.

It couldn’t be, she thought. There was just no way that she could be pregnant, she promised herself, but there was that box, standing there before her like an omen of truth, and she felt more fear in her than she ever had in her life. She found herself suddenly wishing for the umpteenth time that her mother was still alive, and that she could go to her for help and advice. She was alone. There was no way she could go to her father with this, even in her uncertainty.

She wept a while longer, and then when she felt she had enough strength, she pushed herself back up off of the bathroom floor and looked in the mirror. She looked more tired than she ever had, and it disgusted her. Catalina got into the shower and turned it on full and hot, hoping to cover the sound of her weeping, and somehow to wash all of her sorrows and troubles away down the drain.

The troubles and sorrows were more evident than ever when she got out of the shower and looked at her abdomen in the mirror. There was no sign of change. She could see no roundness or indication of what might be a clue to her state as she examined it closely. It felt a little harder than usual, but that was all, and that was no sign that she could reasonably rely on.

She dressed herself and did her hair and makeup, trying to make herself look as normal as possible. She answered her father as he told her good morning when she walked out of her bathroom, saying good morning back to him, and that was all she said to him. She skipped the breakfast that he made for her and left the house early to go to the drugstore on the way to school.

Catalina went out of her way to go to a drugstore that was nowhere near her home or her school, and she bought three pregnancy tests, each one a different brand, just in case one of them might be wrong. Best two out of three, she told herself. Then she went to the school and headed for the handicap enabled bathroom in the library. Hardly anyone ever used that bathroom, and it was a single person bathroom, so there was no chance of anyone walking in on her.

She peed on all three sticks and then set them up along the counter, watching them as the seconds slowly ticked by. She tried to breathe evenly because she was afraid that she might pass out if she hyperventilated or held her breath, and that was all she needed; to be found passed out in the bathroom with three pregnancy tests lined up on the sink. She’d never live it down.

About a century later, two minutes had finally passed and she looked at all three tests. All three of them were positive. There was no getting around it. She was not alone in the bathroom. There was a baby inside of her belly. Connor’s baby was inside of her belly, and she was alone and he was gone.

Tears stung at her eyes and her chest tightened as the fears in her were realized and she lost all control of herself, crumbling to the floor and sobbing so hard that she threw up. She cleaned up her face and hands, threw all evidence of the tests away, and tried to steady herself as she walked out of the bathroom, hoping to keep from making eye contact with anyone.

She walked blindly around the campus for most of the morning, wondering who she could talk to and what she was going to do. She did not go to her classes that morning and by lunchtime she was tired and felt sick to her stomach with worry and grief, and, she guessed, pregnancy, and she went home. Her father was at work so she had the house to herself for the afternoon. She went into her room and closed the door, taking a photograph of her mother off of her shelf and staring at it.

People who knew her mother told her that the older she got, the more she looked like her mom, and it was a compliment she was always glad to get. It made her feel connected to the precious woman she had lost from her life, and as she laid there in bed touching the glass over the old photograph of the woman smiling back at her, she sniffled and cried quietly.

“Mama, I wish you were here. I need you so much. What am I going to tell daddy?” She cried a little more until she fell asleep, and she didn’t wake up until she heard the front door close, and then she opened her eyes and looked around.

The light was faint in the early evening sky and her mother’s picture frame was still in her hands where she had fallen asleep with it. She sighed and got out of bed, setting the photograph back on the shelf carefully, and then she told herself that she had to do it eventually, so she might as well do it right then.

She opened the door of her bedroom and walked out to see her father sitting in his chair by the kitchen table, pulling his boots off of his tired feet. He looked up at her and frowned.

“Where were you just now? I didn’t hear you come in,” he told her, looking around and sighing. “I can’t be that tired.”

She shook her head. “You’re not that tired. I stayed home from school this afternoon.”

He looked up at her and frowned. “Why is that? You feeling okay?” he asked, a look of concern in his eyes.

She took a deep breath and sat in the chair beside him. Catalina looked at her father seriously and told herself to say the words. Just say them, she thought.

“Daddy,” she began hesitantly, and then there was only one thing to do, “I’m pregnant,” she told him in a soft voice.

He froze where he was, his fingers tugging at his boot laces, his body bent over as he was taking his boots off. He stayed that way for a long moment and then the shoelaces fell from his fingers and he slowly rose back up in his seat and turned his head to look at her.

“What did you say?” he asked solemnly, looking at her like he expected her to say it again with different words that had a completely different meaning, because he must certainly have heard her wrong.

She had already said it once, and saying it the second time was no easier, but it was no more difficult either. “I’m pregnant, Daddy. I’m going to have a baby.” She said the words a second time, her eyes on his. His eyes were dark; they were the deep brown of mahogany wood. She had gotten her mother’s eyes when she was born, and her mother had gotten them from some distant European ancestor; blue gray eyes.

Eyes that searched her father’s dark brown ones for some kind of sympathy, for some kind of help or direction or guidance or advice… or something, anything, that could make her feel like she wasn’t completely alone in the world with her life change.

He stared at her in silence for a long while as he processed what she said, and then he leaned back down and took his other boot off, stood up, went to the refrigerator, and pulled out a bottle of beer. He didn’t drink often, but on very long days, he liked to relax with a beer, or on days when his patience had been taxed too much.

Or on days when he found out his only daughter had been sleeping with one of her college professors. Or on days when he found out that the college professor who had been sleeping with his only daughter had gotten her pregnant. On those days, he drank.

He opened the beer bottle and kept his back to her, tossing the lid into the trash can at the end of the counter. He never missed it. The lid made a soft tinkling noise as it bounced off tin and glass in the trash bin. He tipped the bottle back and swallowed half of it before he pulled it from his mouth, and then he leaned over the counter and placed his hand on the edge of it, standing there silently as the old clock on the mantel ticked away in the quiet of the room.

She breathed in and breathed back out again. Her heart banged against her chest. Her blood raced through her veins. Her brain felt like it was going to explode. She breathed in again and let the air out slowly as she tried to calm herself even a little.

He finally turned and looked at her, leaning against the counter and taking another long drink from his beer bottle.

She waited for him to speak, her eyes locked on his. She could do nothing but hold her breath.

“I don’t know what to do, Daddy.” She finally breathed, not sure what he was thinking, but desperately needing his help and advice.

100He walked toward her and set his beer on the table, standing beside his chair. “I’ll tell you exactly what you’re going to do. You’re going to get an abortion and kill that thing immediately. Then you’re going to change schools, because I don’t want you anywhere near that son of a bitch.”

Her heart felt like it broke right in her chest. She hadn’t considered abortion. Every thought that she had that day had centered around keeping the baby or giving it up for adoption, but abortion had never crossed her mind. As her father spoke the word, it felt like a ton of steel had landed right on her heart and smashed it completely.

His words echoed in her head as she stared at him. ‘…you’re going to get an abortion and kill that thing…’ he had told her. She could not unhear his words, and they found no anchor in her mind, so they kept zinging around, banging against the walls and wreaking havoc in her mind and heart.

“Daddy… I don’t think I can get an abortion. I don’t feel like that’s something I could do, and I’m not changing schools. Connor isn’t there anymore, Daddy. He is on suspension right now, so other people are teaching his classes. I don’t see him at all, and I don’t talk to him,” she told him quietly, looking up at him.