Chapter 67: Unplanned

-- SUNDAY, AUGUST 9, 2009 --

STOP: 0x00000050 (0xFCCBFFF, 0x00000050, 0x00000050)

PAGE-FAULT-IN-NONPAGED-AREA

A problem has been detected and your consciousness has been shut down to prevent--

No-no-no. We’re not doing that again. I’m not going unconscious. My soul is fine. Breathe, Ben. Breathe...

The problem seems to be caused by the following file: DAWNISPREGNANTWHAT?!?.SYS

Do you wish to continue? Y/N?

“Yes! I mean... of course yes! Was that ever actually in doubt?”

Well, your arms around her midsection kinda went from comforting hug to the sort of unyielding rigidity more suited to rigor mortis. Just sayin’.

Dawn shifted her gaze from the pregnancy wand over to my really HUGE eyes, and her eyebrows went up in inquiry. “I didn’t actually ask a question, but I think I can guess what your answer means.”

“Sorry, wasn’t actually talking to you at the time.”

She made a face. “Yeah, I know exactly how you feel. But I’m trying to be present in the moment right now. I feel like this conversation is gonna be complicated enough with just the two of us instead of four.”

I nodded and took a deep, calming breath, doing my best to similarly be in the present and not let the voice in my head second-guess me.

Good luck with that.

Shut. UP.

“You want to keep the baby,” she said as a statement, not a question.

I released my grip around her body and scooted myself upright to sit back against the headboard. Raising my knees to my chest and wrapping my arms around them, I collected myself before asking, “Do you NOT want to keep it?”

Dawn pursed her lips and winced. She didn’t respond right away, and while her hesitation to say ‘yes’ wasn’t in and of itself a definitive ‘no’ ... it certainly wasn’t a definitive ‘yes’.

“You’re obviously a little shellshocked and freaked out,” I stated reasonably. “Those are obvious tear tracks. There’s a huge part of you that wishes this didn’t happen.”

“It’s not that I didn’t want it to happen.”

“But you didn’t want it to happen yet.” I took a deep breath and exhaled. “I mean yeah, you talked about handing me your last box of birth control pills right after getting your diploma ... the operative phrase in there being ‘right after’ getting your diploma. Not when we’re ... what ... ten months away from you getting your MBA? Shit, your due date will be about...”

“Early April,” Dawn finished for me, having obviously done the math a long time ago. “Might even be around your birthday.”

I blinked. “How pregnant ARE you? When was your missed period supposed to be?”

“About a week and a half ago,” she explained.

My eyes got big. “You’ve known you were late for a week and a half?”

She stared back down at the pregnancy wand. “At first I thought I was just stressed out. Even though birth control pills are supposed to regulate a girl’s period like clockwork, shit still happens. I’ve been late before. I’ve even been a week late. And you certainly know I’m capable of stressing myself out like nobody else.”

“I did know you were stressed.” I pursed my lips and sighed. “I noticed you’ve been really quiet and subdued lately. You didn’t text me as often. Our Skype sessions this last week were pretty short - full of love, yes - but short, like you could only keep up the brave face for so long.”

She made a face. “You noticed?”

“You did flat out tell me when you were feeling weird, feeling unsettled, or feeling anxious. It made me feel better that you’d confess those things. It made me believe you were finally being honest with me.”

“It’s not that I wanted to be dishonest about this. I wasn’t lying to you. I just ... I truly didn’t know what was going on.”

“You weren’t hiding anything from me you weren’t hiding from yourself. You didn’t want to think about being pregnant. You convinced yourself you were just stressed out.”

Dawn started fiddling with her ‘Ben’s Cow’ ring, rubbing it like a nervous tic. “I’ve been feeling anxious and unsettled for weeks already trying to find myself and going through this identity crisis.”

“I know you have. So whenever you were distracted or lost in thought, it never occurred to me it might be... this. I was trying to be a good boyfriend by being supportive, being present, and always reminding you I was here for you without actually pressuring you. Because let’s face it: you’ve never really responded very well to me pressuring you. And you openly admitted to feeling out of sorts rather than put up a façade and pretend that everything’s going well.”

“But I didn’t tell you WHY I was feeling out of sorts, though.”

“You know what? I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I think you’ve blamed yourself enough already. There were times when I asked you what was going on, and you told me you were freaking out a bit because there was a lot of uncertainty in your life. It was the truth, because there was a lot of uncertainty in your life. There was no way I could expect you to come out and tell me or anybody else, ‘My period’s late. I’m freaking out that I might be pregnant.’”

“Thank you for understanding.” Dawn closed her eyes and exhaled slowly in relief.

I suddenly clapped my hand to my forehead. “Oh, shit. Is THIS why you volunteered to be the designated driver Friday night? You didn’t HAVE to drive. It’s not like we can’t afford calling a cab. Normally ‘drunk’ and ‘horny’ are two words that go really well together for you, but not Friday night. You didn’t touch a drop of alcohol.”

Dawn blushed and stared down at the wand in her hand. “I didn’t know for sure, but I suspected.”

“Is that why you took a test this morning? How many tests have you already taken? Was it coming up negative before? Was this the first positive? Could it be a false positive?”

Dawn took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “This IS the first positive, but it’s also the first one I’ve taken, period. False positive? I suppose it could be. But then again...”

Her voice trailed off and she pursed her lips, staring down at the wand. I waited her out rather than press her.

“I spent a week thinking it was just stress and that my period would eventually come. But then by Wednesday I wasn’t so sure anymore. Thursday I started to worry. Friday I nearly had a full-blown panic attack ... and of course you noticed that I didn’t drink any alcohol. Yesterday I did my best to focus on you. Basketball was a nice distraction, but even then--”

“Even then you spaced out a few times mid-game,” I interjected. “I noticed.”

Dawn pursed her lips and nodded. “I didn’t want to think about it. I kept ... hoping? ... that my period would just miraculously show back up. But then I woke up like an hour ago feeling really nauseous and had to go hurl in the toilet.”

“Morning sickness already?”

“Or nerves? I dunno. In any case, I couldn’t put it off any longer. I got dressed, drove out to Walgreens to pick up a test, came home, and ... well ... you know the rest.”

I nodded slowly. “How did this happen?”

Well, Junior, when a man and a woman love each other very much--

Shut it.

“How did your birth control fail?” I clarified.

Dawn grimaced and glanced down at her lap. “I think it’s because I missed a pill.”

“WHAT?”

“The week we were ‘taking a break’, right before my birthday,” she explained. “I woke up on Thursday morning and realized Wednesday’s pill was still in the case. It’s not the first time I’ve forgotten one, and I never got knocked up before. I’ve read up on it and all the literature says it’s totally fine to miss one pill. Miss two and you might be in trouble, but one should be fine.”

“‘Should’ be,” I said, miming the air quotes.

“I didn’t do this on purpose.”

“I know you didn’t.”

“Will Adrienne believe that I didn’t?”

I winced, and for the very first time I thought about my fiancée. “Oh, shit.”

How the hell did you forget about your ‘Number One’?

Dude, shut it. I’ve got a lot of other stuff on my mind right now.

“She is NOT gonna be happy about this,” Dawn muttered.

“Now hold on a sec,” I muttered defensively. “Would it really be THAT important for her to have a baby before you? I mean, I’ve already got BJ. The role of firstborn son has already been filled and is even potty-trained.”

“You weren’t Adrienne’s fiancé when you knocked up Kim. Pretty sure most engaged women - especially world-famous ones - don’t want celebrity news magazines publishing articles about their husbands-to-be knocking up other girls before the wedding.”

I made a face and held up both hands. “Let’s not think of this in terms of the public at large. I really don’t give a shit what the public at large thinks.”

“But Adrienne does. What does this do to her Tigress brand if it comes out that you’re the father?”

“Nobody knows that I’m the father.”

“You HAVE been spotted out and about the town quite frequently with both me and Summer. Hell, Sasha too.”

“Are you saying you wanna get an abortion to avoid hurting Adrienne’s public image?!?”

Dawn sighed. “There are a lot of considerations here: Adrienne’s public image, finishing my MBA, letting your wife have your next baby.”

“Breaking your mother’s heart ... again.”

Dawn winced, and I didn’t need any mystical link to know we were both thinking about DJ’s abortion. And Dawn muttered quietly, “Breaking your heart ... again.”

I sighed and let my shoulders slump. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that in the first place. I wanna be happy and excited and I wanna keep this baby, but you’re clearly torn and I don’t want to make this about me.”

“You’re allowed to make this about you. It’s your baby too.”

“I understand the logic behind getting an abortion,” I conceded. “It avoids all these messy complications with Adrienne’s image, your education, and my engagement. But this isn’t a game. We can’t push the reset button and start over. There’s no getting an abortion and then refreshing at our last save point right before you found out you were pregnant and then moving forward as if nothing ever happened. This is OUR baby. We’d NEVER forget this moment. The consequences would echo throughout our lives forever, and you know it.”

“Now you know exactly what’s been running through my mind for the last week and a half.”

I separated my legs and leaned forward to take hold of Dawn’s waist before physically dragging her in front of me. I parked her between my legs so that she was reclining back against my chest. My left arm hugged around her upper body to her right shoulder while my right hand almost absentmindedly rubbed her still-flat belly, imagining our developing lima bean still inside. And both of Dawn’s hands were on top of my right hand.

We sat there in silence, neither of us speaking, lost in our own thoughts for a moment. She’d had a lot more time to process than me, and I was still wrapping my mind around all of the ramifications. My gut instinct wanted to throw logic to the wind, say ‘Damn the consequences’ and swear up and down that Dawn and I would figure this out together no matter what. Had I still been in high school I would’ve certainly said exactly that, and probably the same had I been in college. But I was a 25-year-old man now with a corporate job, a not-quite-3-year-old, and a fiancée who was NOT yet pregnant.

In short: It’s complicated.

“It feels a little like fate that I took this pregnancy test in that bathroom out there, the morning after spending the night with you in this bedroom,” Dawn muttered out of the blue, and I found her looking up at the ceiling and across the walls.

“Your college bedroom.”

Dawn sighed and nodded slowly. “So many memories in this house.”

“Good memories or bad?”

“Bit of both. Mostly good. This was OUR house. This was the place where we could finally live in the same zip code again for the first time since we were kids. This was the place where our first real long-term relationship could grow.” She glanced at me over her shoulder and pursed her lips. “This is the house where I broke your heart.”

“For a little while.”

“I killed our relationship. It died.”

“For a little while,” I repeated and then smiled. “It’s better now. What was it that you told Adrienne? That you’d loved me for twenty-five years and never stopped for even a single day? We had a hiccup in our relationship, yes.”

“A four-year hiccup.”

“But we’re back now where we were four years ago. What would we have done had you turned up pregnant back then?”

“Back when we were together during junior year? We would’ve gotten married, and quickly, before my baby bump started to show.”

I smiled. “Well, probably, but I was thinking more just about whether or not we’d keep the baby. We would. I know it.”

“I know we would have, and even as undergrad students we’d have kept it and figured out a way. The logical part of my brain says that the timing of this is shit, but we’re still in a much better position now than we would’ve been back then. I can still graduate on time. You’ve got a great job and plenty of income. We have friends and family who will support us with oodles of free babysitting. I’m old enough and ready enough to settle down, with not even a second thought about trying to maintain my youthful body. All of DJ’s reasons for getting an abortion are a complete non-issue for me.”

I nodded slowly. “That’s good to know.”

Dawn pursed her lips and shook her head. “The reasons NOT to have a baby are completely different. You’re Adrienne’s fiancé now. I know she wants to get knocked up on your honeymoon. I did want to bear your children, but not right now. I’m not supposed to end up pregnant yet.”

“Maybe you are supposed to end up pregnant. Maybe that’s our destiny.”

“I don’t believe in destiny.”

“‘Sometimes Destiny happens whether you believe in it or not,’” I quoted softly.

“I can’t believe in Destiny,” Dawn said quietly. “If I did, then I would believe this was a sign from the gods that you’re making a mistake marrying Adrienne and should be marrying me instead. I’d believe I was meant to be Perfect Dawn. I’d believe I was meant to be your perfect wife, live in our perfect home, raise our perfect 2.5 kids in our perfect white-picket fence house with the PTA and the jealous moms and all that jazz.”

“And that’s not who you want to be.”

“It’s NOT. Fuck Destiny.”

“We did. Sydney lives in SoCal.”

Dawn simply rolled her eyes at my lame joke.

I moved forward quickly. “If Destiny is real, it means you and I were always meant to have children together. And even if Destiny isn’t real, we still have this opportunity to have children together the way we’d always wanted. The timing is shit - obviously - but the end result is the same. You and me ... bound together in a way that can never be truly broken. People get married. People get divorced. But once two people have a child together, they will forever be family.”

“We’re already family through the twins.”

“The twins aren’t a direct connection between you and me. But once that little lima bean growing inside you finally comes out to meet us, that tiny little life...” I let my voice trail off, momentarily losing myself in the vision of a squalling infant being held up by the delivery doctor while a nurse hands me a pair of medical scissors to cut the umbilical, the way I’d done for BJ.

I imagined that adorably wrinkled little girl being placed onto Dawn’s bare chest, her tiny mouth instinctively stretching out in search of her nipple to take her first sucks of breastmilk while I gazed down at both of them with infinite wonder and love.

My Dawn.

And our daughter.

Ours.

Dawn glanced back at me, and I saw a shimmer in her eyes that told me she was imagining the same thing. She still had her hands on mine, and she squeezed them both. She set my right hand on her tummy to rubbing a bit, and she stared deep into my eyes while murmuring, “I can’t wait to meet our baby.”

“Me either,” I said sincerely.

“Do you think we’ll have a boy or a girl?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t really have a preference,” I hedged.

Her eyes narrowed fractionally. “You want a little girl. Maybe just because you already have a son? Maybe because you associate us Evanses with women?”

I shrugged. “Maybe.”

“It’ll be a girl,” Dawn stated confidently. “I guess we already know what a mix of our two families will end up looking like. Maybe she’ll grow up as gorgeous as Eden and Emma.”

“Maybe she’ll grow up as gorgeous as her mother.”

Dawn gave me a small smile and then sighed. “So that settles that then, I suppose: I’m keeping her.”

“Did you ever have any real doubt?”

“‘Real doubt’? Yes. Totally. Absolutely I had real doubt.” Dawn sighed and let her head fall back over my shoulder. “There are so many logical reasons to have an abortion, and had you preferred an abortion, I think I honestly would’ve agreed with you.”

“I was never going to prefer an abortion and you know it.”

Dawn nodded seriously. “Yeah, I do know it. So now that we’re firmly agreed that I’m keeping it, what now? How do we break the news to the others? How does this affect your relationships with the others?”

“You mean: How does this affect my engagement to Adrienne?”

“I don’t believe in destiny and therefore can’t believe destiny made me pregnant just to fuck with your engagement. But this is gonna fuck with your engagement anyways and we both know it.”

I took a deep breath and regarded her seriously. “I love you. Please don’t doubt that.”

“I don’t. ‘Til death do us part. For all eternity. But me being pregnant doesn’t change Option Two. I’ve got a blueprint from Kim for how to raise a child with you, but Adrienne should be your wife.”