Page 71 of The Book of Summer

“Listen to me, you fucking cunt.”

He slammed both hands onto the table and stood.

“Hey, buddy,” said a voice. “You should…”

Calm down?

Excuse yourself?

Shut the hell up before I punch you in the face?

Bess didn’t hear what the guy said. The blood whooshing through her ears was too loud.

“Brandon!” she hissed. “Sit down.”

“If you have this fucking baby…”

“Shut.Up.”

“I want you to remember that thing was made when I was fucking a different whore every goddamned night.”

“You’re despicable,” Bess wheezed.

She took a sip of coffee, thinking it was water.

“The same dick that was inside of you,” Brandon raged on. “The very same dick that made that creature had been in a hundred other cunts before yours.”

Bess reached under the table for her bag, accidentally knocking over her coffee along the way. She didn’t bother to pick it up.

“The sperm that fertilized your pathetic egg,” he said, “is the very sperm I squirted over some bitch’s tits that same night. Your baby will have syphilis or gonorrhea. It will be half whore. Three-quarters whore, with you in the mix.”

By then, Bess was up on her feet, heading toward the exit. Brandon kept shouting. It would be the last time she saw the man she had promised to love forever. The last time she went into that Starbucks, too. Good thing Brandon wasn’t as well known in Silicon Valley as he imagined.

The next day Bess made an appointment to terminate the pregnancy. What Brandon said didn’t make any biological sense. She didn’t even need her medical degree for that. But Bess knew she’d never be able to stop hearing his words once she saw the baby’s face. Not ever having been a mom, Bess didn’t understand that the opposite would be true. A new child had a way of making the bad disappear, for a time.

“Do you still think it was the right thing to do?” Evan says now, all the way in Nantucket, on the other side of the country. “Telling him?”

Bess laughs sourly.

“Well, he called me a bunch of names,” she says, the furthest into the story she’ll go with Evan, or anyone else.

Not even Palmer knows the details of the coffee exchange. Maybe her cousin is onto something with the accusation of verbal abuse. Bess doesn’t know which is more reprehensible: that she can’t admit it, or that part of her believes verbal isn’t abuse enough to count. They should revoke her medical license for the very notion. She could give it to Palmer. Her cousin has limitless compassion and could figure out how to poke around in people eventually. That’s the easy part.

“After the name-calling,” Bess says, mind spinning with all she’s said, and even more so with what she hasn’t, “I felt pretty crappy. So the answer is no, I shouldn’t have said a thing.”

“You know what I think?” Evan leans back onto both elbows, his face turned toward the ocean. “You weren’t sure. I think that’s why you told Brandon.”

“Could be,” Bess says. Her body softens as her brain winds down. “But seeing him solidified my decision to end the pregnancy.”

“Your decision is anything but solidified. I think it’s the opposite.”

“Oh yeah?” she says, squinting at him. “How’s that?”

“You won’t drink my beer.” Evan gives a wink. “And you’re never one to turn down beer.”

“Good Lord,” Bess says, and rolls her eyes good-naturedly. “Dr. Mayhew in session. So, if that’s true, then why didn’t I cancel today’s appointment? Especially after I knew I was headed to Nantucket? Travel is the perfect excuse.”

“You’re trying to kid yourself into beingundecided,even though you know exactly what you want.”