Page 33 of Broken

Five years ago

I found myself in a small hotel in Moses Lake, Washington staring at a white stick with two blue lines. Looking over at the counter there are four more that look the exact same.

“One more.” I say, ripping the package off and tearing the lid off. I dip it into a small plastic cup of pee and wait for a few seconds. I recap it, and wait.

Three, long, excruciating minutes.

“FUCK!” I scream as the blue lines appear, again. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” My heart beats against my ribs as my head starts spiraling. Worthless, broken, and now, soon to be a mother. What kind of person brings a child into the world when they can’t even get a handle on themselves.

“Fuck!” I throw the stick across the hotel room, watching it break against the door. My period is literally three weeks late, all six of these stupid sticks, and my body feels off. There’s no fucking doubt now. I’m pregnant.

“Fuck!” I shout again. My head hurts, I can’t be pregnant, all of those things are wrong. I drop to the bed on my back and let out a deep breath, there’s no point in lying to myself.

I haven’t heard from West in over a month, I’ve texted him, called, and now when I call his number, it says it’s out of service. I’m going to have to just call George. There’s no way around it.

Picking up my phone, I stare at the screen. A picture of West and I shines in my face, lighting it up, reminding me of what I lost. Facial recognition unlocks the phone and I pull up my contacts, staring at George’s name. I touch the edge of the phone to my forehead and breathe a few times. Okay, I can do this. I call him, and listen to it ringing. I click it to speak so I don’t have to hold it to my head. I pull up the calendar while it rings to start counting weeks back to figure out when it would have happened.

“Hello, this is George.” He answers.

“Hey bro.” I reply nervously. “I have a situation that I’ve found myself in and West stopped talking to me.”

“Mmhmm.” He hums.

“I really need to talk to him, can you give him the phone?”

“Hmmm.” He says, like he’s not going to.

“Is he there, can you just put it on speaker phone?”

“Okay.” He replies.

“Can he hear me?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Westley, I’m so sorry. I fucked up and we need to talk, preferably without my brother.” I say, but no sound comes from the other side. “I’m pregnant.” I start chewing on my lip, waiting for a response, but again nothing.

“George! Can you actually put it on speaker phone?”

“I can,” he says, “But I won’t,” he adds. Fucking prick.

“Then tell him for me if you won't let me talk to him. He needs to know that I’m pregnant, this isn’t about you!”

“Bye.” he throws at me and the line goes dead.

“Fuck you!” I shout at the phone, even though my asshole brother can’t hear me.

I type out a text to him.

Me: I fucking hate you. He needs to know George, don’t fucking hide this from him. He’ll hate you for keeping this secret! *middle finger emoji* I’m having his baby, he has a right to know!!!!

I wait for two days and George never responds back, fine. I tried, West changed his number, I don’t know how to talk to his parents without going through mine and I’m not ready to tell them. Although George will probably tell them, just so he can be on an even higher pedestal with them, throwing me under the bus.

Present

The Inn is small, but there was no way I was staying at my parents house. When I tried to introduce McKenna to them, they ignored me. When I tried to invite them to her birthday, they ignored me.

I came back to show all these judgemental assholes that I fucking made a life for myself. I own my own tattoo shop, McKenna and I have a house to ourselves and we didn’t need any of them to do it.

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