Open House(51)

FORTY-ONE

Emma

Ten years ago

Noah’s eyes are piercing in the dark, two golden orbs surrounded by a bright white aura. The wind swirls around us, coming faster now that we’re at the top of the cliff. A circle of rocks mark the ground between where we’re sitting and where the cliff drops off, as though they’re warning us how dangerously close we are. The cliff towers over the dirt below, and then it’s twenty or so yards until the shore of the river. When my dad used to bring Haley and me to the woods above the gorge, he warned us never to get too close to the edges of the cliffs, but we were so little then. It’s different now. Everything feels more perilous.

What I need to say to Noah comes slowly, crystallizing in my mind first, and then whooshing into my mouth with a weight of its own, something that bursts forth because I can hold it in no longer. “I’m pregnant,” I say, my hands wringing themselves in my lap. “And the baby is yours.”

Telling him feels like an exorcism. The whites of his eyes get bigger and bigger, but he says nothing. He stares, taking me in like he’s seeing me for the first time. “We weren’t careful,” he says, and the evergreen trees behind us swish and carry away his words.

I wait until the air is still again, and then I say, “We weren’t.”

“I don’t know what to say,” he says, and for a second I think he’s going to cry. I’ve never seen Noah cry. “I guess I’m surprised, even though I shouldn’t be.”

It’s a relief to hear him say that, to accept what I’ve told him as the truth instead of questioning me like Josie and Brad did. “But I thought you were on the pill,” he says.

“Why would you think that?” I ask. I draw my knees into my chest as though I can protect myself from the blame in his voice.

“Because we had sex without a condom,” he says. “I just assumed you were on the pill to do something like that.”

To do something like that.

Vulnerability washes over me. “This isn’t only my fault,” I say. “It’s both of ours. You have to know that.”

“I do know that,” Noah says. An animal calls out behind us, and I shiver. Noah’s voice isn’t gentle enough when he asks, “But now what are you going to do about it?”

I look at Noah, and for the first time I see a child, a twenty-one-year-old who dreams of living in Australia for a semester, not an almost-adult who dreams of being with me exclusively forever and ever. “You think I should have an abortion?” I ask, trying on the word. It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud about the baby.

“You just told me the news five seconds ago,” Noah says, angry now. “I don’t think anything yet.”

Defiance rises in me. “I’ll figure this out,” I say. “I have my family.” My words are so soft I’m not even sure Noah hears me. Branches rustle behind us, and Noah turns first. I follow his gaze, my eyes fuzzy in the dark but still able to see the streak of bright red parka that means Josie.

She crashes through the brush. Her eyes narrow on me, and then on Noah, like she’s trying to figure out whether I told him the secret. The silence between the three of us is so weighty I want to scream. And maybe Josie can’t stand it, either, because when she blurts out, “What are you guys doing?” her voice sounds uncharacteristically nervous.

“We’re just talking, Josie,” I say.

“Yeah,” Noah says, running a hand over his jaw. “Just talking.”

I know by the way he says it that he doesn’t think I’ve told her I’m pregnant. Sometimes he’s thick like that.

Josie considers us, and it feels so good to have the upper hand here, to be the only one that Noah thinks he wants, even if that might not be true. The forest towers above us, and I wonder how many love triangles these woods have seen, and if they’re all basically the same, or if we’re somehow special.

“So did you invite your tall, dark, and handsome boyfriend?” I ask Josie, because it’s the question I would ask if I weren’t always just a little afraid of her, and like I said, I’m high with my upper hand.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Josie hisses. I can practically see her cheeks burning in the dark. Everything the three of us have been to each other weights the air between us, stifles us. “But yeah,” she says. “I invited Dean. He’s back at the campsite. Wanna come?”





FORTY-TWO

Haley

Haley and Dean were back at home, sitting across from each other at their makeshift kitchen table and avoiding each other’s glance. It was an old-fashioned worktable, or at least a new table designed to look old-fashioned, the kind of thing hipsters purchased at design stores and put in Brooklyn apartments. Haley hated it. She rested her elbows on the thing, even though Dean abhorred elbows on tables. The things that bothered him felt so obscure and disjointed that Haley could never predict them. Was she about to spend her entire life trying to figure him out?

“I’m tired,” Haley said, her head in her hands.

“That makes two of us,” Dean said. He set down his mug of coffee, and Haley noticed a tremble in his fingers.

“Dean,” Haley said, but he still didn’t look up. “Are you okay?” she asked, softer now.