Rachael clears her throat from the staircase. “Tiff, can we talk to you for a sec?”
“Sure,” she says bitterly, and with the flick of her hair, she spins around and slams the bowl of popcorn down onto the countertop.
I can feel Dean watching from behind me as she makes her way over to Rachael, and I can hear Jake watching football on the TV, and I can see Tyler edging his way over to the living room, wearing a pair of sweats and a faded T-shirt. It makes him look at home, and this makes me uncomfortable. Tiffani storms up the staircase, leaving Rachael to motion for me to join them. So I do, because although I’m terrified of Tiffani right now, I need to know if she’s lying or not. But as I’m scrambling over to the stairs to catch up with them, Tyler grasps my elbow in passing.
He yanks me back, moves his lips toward my ear, and hisses, “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” I mutter. Shoving his hand off me, I fix him with a glare that quickly turns into a disappointed frown. Something in his eyes shifts, the same way they were constantly altering last weekend, but before I can begin to process the change in his expression, he’s already turning away from me and heading over to Dean and Jake.
I hover for a moment. I contemplate pulling him back and telling him that Ella misses him, and that there’s a perfect opportunity waiting in New York for him, and that he doesn’t need to stick around here wasting his time with Tiffani. But Rachael yells my name from the top of the stairs, so I have no choice but to follow the sound of her voice, leaving Tyler behind.
And at the back of my mind, there’s only this: We are never going to be able to be together.
Upstairs, Tiffani is standing at the door to her room, her arms folded across her chest. To begin with it looks like she’s blocking us from entering, but then I realize she’s waiting for us to hurry up and get inside, so Rachael leads us in.
Immediately I notice that the room is different from the last time I was here. There are clothes scattered all over the carpet, and I realize that they belong to Tyler.
Rachael notices too, and, of course, she has something to say about it. “Is your mom seriously letting him stay here?” She kicks a pair of jeans to the side.
“Yes,” Tiffani snaps. She’s clearly pissed off by this point, given that I’m here standing in her room, not to mention that we’ve just separated her from Tyler. “Now what is it?”
She glances between the two of us, awaiting an answer, while I stare at Rachael and Rachael stares at her. I’m not planning on doing any talking whatsoever. If I do, like Rachael said, I’ll only mess up. So I wait for her to execute her brilliant plan, growing even more anxious for the truth.
“I’m not even going to do this subtly; I’m just going to ask you straight up,” Rachael says, and the atmosphere in the room thickens as we all wait for the question I know she’s about to ask. With her purse resting over her arm, she taps her foot impatiently on the carpet and locks eyes with Tiffani. “Are you pregnant?”
I stare at Rachael. That’s it? That’s her clever plan? It does, however, do a good job of startling Tiffani and taking her by surprise. She’s so flustered by the abrupt question that she just stares at Rachael with wide blue eyes and parted lips. And then she fires her eyes in my direction.
They’re like ice as she grits her teeth, grinding them together while fury washes over her. She knows I told Rachael. I’m the only person who could have. She takes a while to respond while the rain batters against the window, the sky an ugly gray. “Y-yes,” she manages to stammer.
I raise my eyebrows and exchange a glance with Rachael, who nods and then directs her eyes back to Tiffani once more. “Okay,” she says as she reaches into her purse and begins to rummage inside, “you shouldn’t have a problem with taking a couple of these then, right?” Just as the words leave her lips, Rachael pulls out two drugstore pregnancy tests, her expression taut as she waves them in the air.
And it only takes these two items to scare Tiffani to death. She’s staring at them, wide-eyed and blinking furiously, while the corners of her lips twitch as though she’s fighting for words to rise in her throat. I can see her digging her nails into her palms. “No problem,” she squeaks finally, but her voice is so shaky that it becomes obvious that it is a problem.
“We’ll just sit here and wait,” Rachael informs her with a tight smile as she passes the two small boxes into Tiffani’s trembling hands.