I was on my way to Smith Hall when a familiar voice called my name. I took a deep breath before turning to face Justin. Our eyes met and I was shocked at the hatred reflected in them.
“Is something wrong?” I asked, worried that maybe his father had done something. “Is it your dad?” I asked, reaching out a hand to comfort him without thinking.
“Don’t touch me, you lying selfish bitch,” he said, shaking with rage. He jerked away like I was poisonous.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked. If anyone should be angry at the other person, it should be me.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he shouted, drawing attention from everyone in the vicinity.
“Rob told you about the baby,” I said as more of a statement. “Justin, you don’t understand. I—”
“Yes, Rob told me,” he said, interrupting me. “How could you keep this from me?” he snarled as the onlookers crowded around so they wouldn’t miss a single detail.
“Whose fault was that? You were acting like such an asshole, you never gave me the chance,” I yelled. “It’s not like you were around. You were too busy hooking up with Shelly to care about the mess you left behind.”
“I didn’t hook up with Shelly. I took her to one party.”
“Right, a party where you had your tongue crammed halfway down her throat.”
He looked momentarily shocked at my words. “So I kissed another girl. That sure as hell doesn’t give you the right to do something like this without telling me first.”
“You’re kidding, right? Last time I checked, you’re not my father, and you have no right to tell me what I can or can’t do.”
“When it concerns my baby, I deserve the right to know. What kind of selfish person aborts her baby without telling the father? How dare you take that right from me, you fucking bitch.”
I recoiled at his words as everyone around us seemed to gasp at once. From the corner of my eye, I could see people snapping pictures with their phones. I’m sure we were quickly reaching the timelines of every Facebook page on campus. My cheeks felt hot as I searched for the words to set him straight, but all I could focus on was the judgment on everyone’s faces.
“It’s my body and my choice,” I lashed out, ignoring the whispers and comments of the students around us.
“You are a heartless bitch,” he said, with acid dripping from every word. “If I never lay eyes on you again, it will be too soon.”
I acknowledged his words by turning my back on him and heading toward my dorm. It took all the strength I had to keep myself upright, walking past every stare and snicker until I was out of Justin’s sight. My actions had caused a sea of hurt and misunderstandings. I could have set him straight and defended myself, but his eyes held me back. When I looked in them, I saw nothing but anger and hate. The kind of hate that is incapable of understanding. His intention today was clear. He was the judge and jury together, and I was already guilty in those eyes.
• • •
Melissa was devastated that Rob had spilled my secret to Justin. She begged me to let her set them both straight. I refused her pleas. I used guilt as a weapon, telling her the only way she could make it up to me was if she never mentioned the truth to either of them. I knew by the look on her face it was a low blow, but I stuck to my guns. She tried to wear me down over the next few weeks as my name rapidly circulated around school. Stares and whispers followed me everywhere I went, making it impossible to put the whole thing behind me. As the weeks progressed, my body recovered, but my will was completely broken. I was anxious for spring classes to end so I could leave. Without telling Melissa, I took the appropriate measures to transfer to a college closer to home for my junior and senior years. I wanted to leave everything behind and go where no one knew the half-truth about what happened.
31.
Present Day
4:37 PM
“I never got an abortion,” I admitted. It was a relief to finally have the words out there.
“What?” Justin asked, jerking his head up.
“I said, I didn’t get an abortion. I lost the baby that night I saw you and Shelly together. Someone pushed me down the stairs at Jacob’s apartment complex and I lost the baby,” I said, willing my voice not to break. I had already cried so many times over the past two years that it seemed impossible that mentioning the baby would tear me up again.
He looked like he could vomit. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he pleaded.
“In the beginning I was going to tell you about the baby, and then everything seemed to fall apart. I was so scared, and I thought you had moved on. I figured it would muck things up even further if I told you before I made up my mind,” I answered, standing up so I wouldn’t feel so vulnerable.
“Why did you let me publicly shame you like that? Were you trying to be some kind of martyr?” He stood also, sounding angrier than before.
“God, do you ever think before you speak?” I snapped. “Since you’re so into the inquisition here, let me fire a few questions your way. Do you think it’s possible that I was completely freaked out over the entire situation? Because you know, pregnancy can do that to a girl. What do you think my frame of mind was when I walked into a crowded room to find you with another woman? Then you shot me that fucking shit-ass grin when you saw me, and don’t try to deny it. We both know what the hell you were doing. As for the public shaming, I had just gotten over a miscarriage, so I’m sorry if I wasn’t prepared to do battle with you in a public forum. I didn’t say anything because you fucking screamed like a lunatic, announcing to everyone that I had aborted our baby. You think at that point I wanted to give you the satisfaction of knowing the truth when you had ripped my heart out and stomped on it in front of everyone? I lost our baby in a painful miscarriage, but even if I had done the awful thing you accused me of, yelling it across campus would still have been wrong. You should have come to me,” I said, exhaling the last bit of breath from my tirade.
Justin stood in silence, recovering from the bomb I had dropped on him.
“I was mad,” he said quietly as his shoulders drooped.
“Yeah, well, I was hurt,” I countered. “Not only that, I had to leave to get away from what you did. You turned me into the martyr, not me.”
“I should have handled it better,” he admitted.
“You’re just saying that because you now know all the facts.”
“No, I mean it. I’ve known for years what I did was wrong. Hell, I knew while I was doing it, but I was like a rogue wave out of control.”
I nodded. I could understand that part.
“Why didn’t you tell me later? Why did you allow me to continue to think the worst of you?”
I sighed, thinking about the question before I answered it. “I guess at the time I felt like I deserved it. Abortion was one of the options I considered. When you were yelling at me, it almost made everything a little bit better. I was so sad after the miscarriage. You yelling at me shifted the pain away from the loss of the baby to something different.”
“You were sad?” he asked, joining me on my side of the elevator.
“It broke my heart when I lost our baby,” I said thickly. “I didn’t realize how badly I wanted it until I lost it,” I answered as one lone tear trickled down my cheek.
Justin reached out tentatively and captured the tear with his thumb. “You wanted our baby?”
I nodded, transfixed on his hand, which slowly moved away from my face.
“You can’t touch me,” I whispered. I wasn’t ready for physical contact after everything we had exposed.
He nodded and dropped his hand but remained standing in front of me. I could see the questions on his face, and I mentally prepared myself for them. Stepping away from him, I sank back down to the floor as the rest of the adrenaline left me. Instead of heading back to the opposite side of the elevator, Justin slid down the wall so he was sitting right beside me.
“Please tell me everything,” he said after we had sat in silence for several minutes.
His words opened a floodgate in me and for the next forty-five minutes I confessed everything. Some of it brought back raw emotions and I had to knuckle away a steady stream of tears. Halfway through, he reached over to hold my hand, ignoring my request that he couldn’t touch me. I described how awful the miscarriage was, not sugarcoating anything. At times, his grip on my hand tightened to where it was almost painful, and yet through it all he never released it.
“Why did you wait so long to tell me?”
“I figured it wouldn’t make a difference.”
“Make a difference? Brittni, do you know how hard it was for me to hate you?”
“You made it look pretty easy,” I answered dryly as he let out a low chuckle.
“Hating you made the fact that you didn’t trust me less painful.”
“I did trust you at first, but then I was scared after you broke up with me. Everything was so confusing and you weren’t making it any easier. You were being such an a—”
“Asshole,” he interrupted. “I was being an asshole,” he sighed, rubbing his hand across his head. “I let my insecurities get the best of me and I threw our relationship away. Why did I have to be such a jackass?”
“You were confused. I was acting like a complete zombie.” I found myself comforting him.
“So what? You had every reason to be a zombie. I confirmed all your fears by dropping you the second things changed. No wonder you hate me so much.”
“I don’t hate you. You were the love of my life, the father of my unborn child. I couldn’t have hated you if I tried. Believe me, I did try. My friend Tressa had to step up and hate you enough for both of us,” I joked through a watery smile.
“One day I’ll have to thank her for that.”
“For hating you?” I asked, confused.
“For being there for you when I wasn’t. For being your friend.”
“Yeah, she’s pretty fantastic in that category. I’ve been lucky that way. Melissa and Rob are pretty fantastic too.”
“Do they know all the bonehead things I’ve done?” Justin grimaced.
“Melissa does. She was never supposed to tell Rob, but I suspect he knows, considering he tried to get us together today,” I answered.
“I’m surprised he didn’t knock some sense into me,” Justin said as the floor beneath us shuddered slightly before starting to move. “Hot damn, we’re moving,” he said, surging to his feet and pulling me in for an excited hug.
Though my excitement matched his, I couldn’t help stiffening in his arms, unsure of how to react. A lot of shit had gone down between us in the nearly six hours we’d been stuck together. Just because we’d cleared the air didn’t mean we didn’t have a whole lot of baggage and past hurt bogging us down.
Whether he felt my resistance or sensed the doors getting ready to open, Justin abruptly dropped his arms as the doors parted to reveal a crowd of people, including Melissa and Rob.
Melissa rushed forward and gave me a tight hug. “Do you want to kill Rob? I could hold him down so you can at least get a good sock in,” she whispered in my ear.
“At the moment, I just have to use the bathroom really bad,” I said, dragging her along with me.
“In Rob’s defense, he didn’t know you two would somehow end up on the same elevator, let alone an elevator that would break down,” Melissa chattered away as I hurried to one of the stalls. “Was it awful? I’m so sorry,” Melissa continued.
Knowing Melissa as well as I did, I knew no comment was necessary at the moment. I stayed in my stall longer than needed so I could gather my mixed emotions. Having spent the last six hours with Justin with no more secrets between us made me feel jittery like I’d consumed heavy doses of caffeine in a short amount of time.
“Brittni, are you okay?” Melissa asked, standing right outside my stall door.
“Yeah,” I muttered, opening the door. “So, how did you find out I was here anyway?”
“Rob fessed up when the building operator called and told him his two visitors were stuck in the elevator. After the first hour, he called me, figuring I’d need to protect him from you once the elevator started moving again.”
“Why’d he do it, Mel? Did he think forcing Justin and me to have lunch together would suddenly right everything between us?” I asked, washing my hands.
“Well, he’s been pretty upset since I told him what really happened.”
“Speaking of which, you swore you’d never tell,” I chastised her, placing my hands on my hips.
“Au contraire, my dear. I swore I’d keep your secret as long as he was my boyfriend. As soon as Rob proposed, he no longer fit in that category.”
“Really? You’re going with the technicality clause?” I asked.
“Look, I was never comfortable keeping it a secret,” she said, placing her own hands on her shapely hips. “I did it at the time because I felt so damn bad about my part in everything that went down. It was a bad situation. But just so you know, I never agreed with the idea of you bearing the brunt of it. What Justin did to you in the courtyard was a shitty thing and wouldn’t have happened without my big mouth. I needed Rob to know the truth,” she added defensively.
“I understand,” I said, smiling at her astonished look.
“Really? I thought you would be ready to kill Rob and me by the time you made it off the elevator. I remember you hated elevators and was sick that you were cooped up in one for hours, with your ex no less.”
“I’m not going to lie, it got hairy there for a while, but I worked it out.”
“And Justin? Did he give you the silent treatment the whole time?”
“Not exactly,” I admitted. “We kinda worked some things out.”
“You did?” Melissa squealed, making me cringe as a couple of women looked our way.
“Shhh,” I said as the bathroom door opened. “We did, but let’s not make a big deal about it. I’m not even sure where we go from here. Maybe we’ll be friends, maybe not, but at least we don’t hate each other.”
“Oh my God. I’m so excited,” she said, bouncing up and down.
“Mel, chill,” I ordered as we headed out of the bathroom together.
We found the guys waiting for us in the lobby. “So, we kinda thought we’d skip visiting my office and maybe grab some grub,” Rob said, eyeing me sheepishly.