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“You are going to take care of it if you are, aren’t you?”

Now it’s Olivia’s turn to recoil. “Take care of it? You mean have an abortion? I don’t even know. I don’t know if I could. For heaven’s sake, I can’t even take a pregnancy test!”

Fuck. Bile rises in my throat and my hands are shaking. This is everything I was afraid of. The worst part is it’s my fault. I think back to that moment in the Tuross inlet when we had no condom. Then again in the bay. I let my need for her in the moment get the better of me and made two stupid fucking choices. “Fuck.”

Suddenly I need to hit something, to break something. I slap the wall, wishing I could put my fist through it, but it’s not my wall or Olivia’s. “Fuck.”

She’s watching me with wide eyes. The bitter note in her scent has risen to drown out all the sweetness, and now I’m cursing myself as much as the situation. I’m scaring her.

I’m scaring myself.

Fuck, Olivia is scaring me. I can’t be a dad. I just can’t. Kids change everything. I can’t be tied to someone like that for the rest of my life. We’ll both end up with broken hearts and a broken family. It’s not good for anyone.

“Don’t you see this is exactly what I was afraid of?” I’m shouting. My voice echoes through the quiet apartment and Olivia winces.

“Please don’t be angry.” Her voice trembles and I hate myself, but I can’t stop the rage boiling through my insides at how fucking unfair this is.

“What am I supposed to feel? Am I supposed to feel happy? This is a disaster! There is nothing good about this situation.”

“Noah!” She looks like she wants to reach for me, but I don’t let her. Turning, I pace toward the door then back again. I don’t know what to do with my body. It feels too big for the space. “There is no we, Olivia. There never was. You do what you need to, but you know where I stand. I can’t be a part of that. I’m sorry.”

Her mouth drops open and her eyes fill with tears. “Then I guess there never could be an us either.”

I want to spit the bitter taste from my mouth, tear apart the room, feel the sting of the cut as I purge my feelings with a razor blade on my arm like I used to when I was a stupid kid. Instead I shake my head. “I guess not.”

I leave without looking back. I know if I look back now, I’ll see the hurt on her face and I will want to comfort her. I’ll want to stay and wrap her in my arms and tell her I’ll make it alright, but I won’t, will I?

I’ll just make it worse.

Because I can’t be the man she wants me to be. The man she needs.

I can only be this monster whose only strength is shutting everyone and everything out so nothing can ever hurt me again.

The roar of my bike cuts through the awful sound of her crying I still imagine I can hear. I race up the hill, hardly caring where I end up, just knowing that I can’t stay here.

TWENTY FIVE

Olivia

I stare at the door through blurry eyes long after Noah storms out on me.

What was I thinking? That I would somehow convert a guy like that into the green flag guy you take home to meet your parents? That we’d settle down and raise a family?

I must have fallen and hit my head or come down with some nasty tropical illness.

We were never anything, so why am I crying?

Only my heart is screaming that we were. I know we were. At least for me we were.

And I thought he felt it too.

At the beach when he plunged into me desperately, filled me up in every hole as if he was desperate to claim every inch of me. I guess it was just great sex and nothing more and I’m the only one who can’t keep the two things separate. Just like he said in the beginning.

He tried to tell me. He tried and I didn’t listen. I just insisted I could handle it. Well this is the opposite of handling it.

Crumpling to the floor, I hunch on the carpet and cry until there are no tears left.

Inelegantly, I wipe my hand across my face. There’s no one here to judge anyway, and if there were they’d have written me off as a hopeless case long ago.