The Accidentals(78)

“I see.” He’s silent for a moment. “Do you think she expected you to carry it to your grave?”

“No.” I snort. “But she wanted me to graduate from college more than anything.”

“I’m sure that’s true. But I’m also sure that you will.” We reach the pond and turn onto the grass. “Rachel, it’s great that you take this seriously, and God knows you don’t want to get pregnant. But telling yourself that sex just isn’t part of your life is a doomed strategy. It’s part of being human; you can’t just turn off the urge. When you try to steamroll nature, that’s when the stupid shit happens.”

I grimace. “I guess you do know a thing or two about this.”

“Yes ma’am, I do. The trick is to know your heart ahead of time. Don’t let a guy do your thinking for you. He will go until you say stop.”

That sounds depressingly familiar.

“Now, abstaining, that’s very effective birth control. But you have to be upfront about it. Tell him when he can hear you, which is when you both still have clothes on. If he’s a good guy, he’ll understand. He might not even mind. There’s a lot of fun two people can have in a bed without doing the deed.”

I’m glad I don’t have to look him in the eye. He wasn’t kidding about not getting embarrassed. “Because…” I clear my throat. “Every method of birth control still leaves a risk.”

“Sure, but it’s risky just crossing the street, right? And a smart girl like you—if she wants to—can figure out how to protect herself. If I were you…” He thinks for a second. “At this fancy school, I’m sure they give out the Pill like candy. If that’s where things are going with this boy, make an appointment and go get them. But then you keep that information to yourself. Make him wear one every time. And he won’t mind, because he’ll think it’s the only thing standing between him and the world’s most awkward conversation.”

“Isn’t that dishonest?”

He shakes his head. “That way if you forget one, you don’t have to worry.”

My head spins. “Okay—winner! This is our weirdest conversation ever.” Although my birth must have turned him into a birth-control connoisseur.

He stops. “Rachel, it isn’t even close to our weirdest conversation. It wouldn’t even make the top ten.” He leans down to palm a stone. “The winner is the one about why I couldn’t even send you a birthday card for seventeen years.”

But we never actually have that conversation.

Aloud I say, “I thought you didn’t embarrass?”

He tosses the stone into the pond. “There’s a difference between simple embarrassment and deep shame.”





We walk back the long way, past the college football field.

“Can I ask you something?” I ask.

“Anything.”

“Did you mean to have a baby with Norah?”

He whistles. “I’m not going to lie, Rachel. The short answer is no.”

I hold my breath. That’s just what I’d guessed.

“But now I’m really excited about it,” he says. “It broke us up for a little while, though.”

“I see.”

“Well, you probably can’t see, honestly. Because there’s a lot more to the story. Before I met Norah she was trying to have a baby, all by herself.”

“Really?”

“It’s a little weird, telling you her troubles. But I don’t think she’d mind. She went to doctors who deal with that sort of thing, and it wasn’t working.”

“And then…it suddenly did?”

“Yeah. And it freaked both of us out. But I got over it. The trouble was that she didn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, she felt so damned guilty. The thesaurus is full of words for women who end up pregnant by accident. Knocked up… You’ve heard them all.”

“Did you know that the Spanish word for ‘pregnant’ is embarazada? Embarrassed.”

“I didn’t. But what do you call a man who sleeps around?”

“A player.”

“That’s right. So there’s Norah, who had always organized her life the way you do—college degree, graduate school. A smart lady. And she has to tell her boyfriend—who has a shitty track record with relationships—that she’s pregnant. So just to prove that I wasn’t on the hook, she vanished. She cut me off. That got my attention, because I’d gotten used to having a sane, intelligent woman sitting across the table every night. That’s when I figured out that being a player wasn’t fun anymore. I had to beg her to let me settle down.”

“That seems backwards.”

“It does to you, because your life isn’t a wreck. But when you’re me, backwards is forwards. Every good thing that’s ever happened to me was an accident. Think about it. I became a singer because I was too lazy to do real work. My first record deal happened because the producer showed up at the wrong club on the wrong night. And then there’s you, another accident. And your poor mom dying gave you back to me. Then Norah thought she was too old to get pregnant, so now I get to have an even bigger family.”