“What is it?” I ask her what’s wrong as if I can’t list a hundred things that could be upsetting her right now. Although there are probably more than a hundred things upsetting her.
“They sold the house,” she says. “We have three weeks to pack everything up and leave.” We knew it was coming, but I convinced myself it would take all summer due to the decline in real estate right now, or so I’ve heard Mom and Dad talking about.
“We have three weeks,” I tell her, trying to sound positive regardless of how I feel.
For the last eight weeks, we’ve talked a whole lot. We patched over our broken hearts with a common understanding of loss. I forgave her for hiding the decision on what to do with our daughter, since I understand it was out of her control too. The anger I felt for her at that moment was the same anger she had been feeling toward her parents for months. We’re together in this, no matter what. We both have broken hearts—hearts that will never find where they truly belong, even though we try to say we did everything we did for a good reason. I think that’s bull, and if it makes me less of a man or less of an adult to think that way, it’s because I’m seventeen.
Our relationship has changed. It changed when we found out she was pregnant. It was less about the number of kisses I could steal before her father would turn on the porch light and almost catch us on the side of her house—less about the quietness of my shoes hitting the porch roof below her bedroom window—less worry about my raging need to be with this girl in every way humanly possible. I took part in ruining our lives, and I’ve punished myself every day for it. I did what I could to convince her that she looked beautiful every morning at school. Even though I noticed the swelling in her face as well as the rest of her body, she was still beautiful to me. I spent my time reassuring her our lives would be okay, even though I was pretty sure they never would be again. I spent the days and months falling in love for the very first time, and it was all about the girl I wanted to be with, not the girl I wanted to get with. It was different, and maybe that’s why guys my age don’t usually know what love is—they’re too busy trying to explore new interests, feel new sensations, experience the thrill of danger and stupidity. Yeah, it’s all stupidity. Putting all of that bullshit aside, like most people who are beyond the age of high school years, then there’s room for love.
“Right, only three weeks,” she says, sniffling into the phone.
“Then we have texting…and courier pigeon.” I hear a quiet giggle with that one, and feel like I’m doing something for the better, rather than just making her cry more.
“I’m scared—” she says, her voice suddenly sharp and strong.
“Of—”
“I’m scared you’re going to realize how much you hate me when I leave. You’re going to have time to think about what I did and how selfish I was, how I handed away a life that belonged to us. It’s going to happen, and I know I can’t prevent it from happening but I’m scared for when it does. I’m scared that will be the end of us, and it sucks because I know there can’t be an ‘us’ as it is anyway. So whatever is left of your feelings for me, will likely be erased and masked by your rightfully horrible feelings toward my decisions.”
We’ve had this discussion so many times over the past couple of months. I get it. I might have gotten over it, but I will never move past it to the point where I’ll be okay with giving up our daughter. I understand. I will always understand, but that doesn’t fix the pain. “If that were going to happen, it would have already happened.”
“We’re going to change, AJ. We’re going to grow apart if we can’t grow together. There’s no way around it.”
“Can we try not to?” I ask, realizing how silly and naive I sound.
“I want to,” she whispers.
“There’s always another way,” I tell her, not thinking this through thoroughly, even though I’ve been thinking this thought for weeks now.
Her voice sounds a little perkier when she says, “What is it?”
“Let’s move somewhere. We’ll put college on hold until we can support ourselves, and we can be together, drown in sorrow together, grow together, and put our lives back in some order for our daughter who should have been able to depend on us.” As the words dribble from my mouth like drool, they sound a little scarier than when I was reciting them in my head. It sounds real. It is real. I have less than five hundred dollars in my savings account and no experience for work, no real life skills either. But I love her and I’d go into this plan blind if it meant keeping her close.
“You want to run away?” she asks. “With me?”