Tiffani studies the tests, gives Rachael a shaky nod, and then forces her body toward the bathroom. Her steps are slow and unwilling, her breathing fast and uneven. When she reaches the door, she places a hand flat against it and comes to a halt. Quickly, she spins around and there are tears rolling down her cheeks, her face red. “Fine! I’m not!” She screams the words across the room at us and she bursts into tears.
Rachael throws me a triumphant grin, but I’m in no mood to start grinning back. I feel numb. Tiffani did lie. It sickens me that she had to resort to such a pathetic act, and it worries me even more that she was planning on misleading Tyler. For how long? What was she going to do? Feign a miscarriage and hope the two of them would live happily ever after?
“What the hell is wrong with you, Tiffani?” Rachael snaps, and I’m thinking the exact same thing. You have to be a pretty terrible and desperate person to do something like this.
Tiffani’s sobbing, the rain that’s pelting against the window drowning out the sound of her sniffing. Everything feels so loud all of a sudden and the only thing I can think about is Tyler.
He’s downstairs, totally oblivious, and still believes that he has quite possibly made a huge mistake. None of this is fair on him. He’s stressing out over the whole situation, wondering how he’s going to break the news to Ella and figuring out what’s going to happen with Tiffani. But now he has no reason to stay with her, because there’s nothing holding him to her.
“I’m telling Tyler,” I splutter. My heart is beating frantically in my chest and I know I need to tell him as soon as possible, and I don’t trust Tiffani enough right now to let her fix her own mistake, so I throw open her bedroom door. “He needs to know.”
“No!” Tiffani screams, but I storm my way along the hallway before she can stop me, too furious to worry about what she’ll do. She still knows our secret, but right now I’m so zeroed in on Tyler knowing the truth about her that I don’t even care if she tells or not.
When I jog down the staircase, Tyler’s lying on the couch staring at the TV screen alongside Jake and Dean, watching some football game that I don’t take notice of.
“Tyler,” I snap loudly so that it’ll grasp his attention, “I need to talk to you. Right now. Kitchen.” I blurt out the words as quickly as I can, and although they come out blunt, Tyler can hear the strain in my voice, and he immediately knows that something’s up.
He gets to his feet while Dean raises an eyebrow curiously, but I move away and as far into the kitchen as I can go so that neither he nor Jake can hear us. Tyler comes padding across the carpet in his sweats, a puzzled look on his face. He stops directly in front of me, and I quickly steal a glance over his shoulder to ensure Dean has looked away. He has.
“Tiffani’s not pregnant,” I hiss, my voice hushed but frantic. “She’s faking it so that you’ll get back together with her.”
He quickly takes a step back, appearing slack-jawed as he blinks at me. “What?”
“She just admitted it to us!”
For a long minute, he just stares at the wall as the expression in his eyes shifts, his breathing slow. I wait. I wait to see which expression he’s going to end up with. I keep waiting. He clenches his jaw, his hands curling into fists, his features hardening, and soon he’s livid. He looks like he’s only just stopping himself from punching the wall, so I place a hand on his arm in an effort to comfort him, but then immediately draw it away when I hear footsteps on the staircase.
Tiffani comes bounding down, tears streaming down her face, her eyes searching the living room. Both Jake and Dean stare at her with parted lips, because the sight of her crying is enough to draw their attention away from the game. She spins around from the living room to the kitchen, and it’s then that Tyler’s eyes meet hers.
And she must be able to tell by his expression that he’s furious at her, because she cries even harder as she rushes across the room to us, her eyes swollen. “Baby, please, I’m sorry,” she tries, but it just sounds choked and unintelligible. “I’m so, so sorry!”
She tries to reach out to touch him, but he swiftly angles his body away from her outstretched hand and yells, “You’re a psychopath!” It’s so loud that everyone falls silent.
Rachael’s standing at the bottom of the staircase, her eyes fixed on the scene, and Dean and Jake have paused the TV and sat up to watch.
“I hate you!” Tiffani screams, but when I glance back over to her, she’s not looking at Tyler. She’s looking at me. Her eyes are fierce, and I can place a bet on what’s running through her mind right now. And so I think: Here it goes. She’s going to tell them all our secret, because now she has every reason to.
I squeeze my eyes shut and wait for it, for her voice to yell out the truth and for the rest of them to gasp, but no one’s saying anything. When I steal a glance through my half-closed lids, her lips are pressed into a firm line, and she just continues to stare at me. And then, for the briefest of moments, I swear she almost smiles.
And right then, I realize she’s not going to tell them. At least not now. It’s obvious she’s planning on holding on to our secret for a little while longer.