Page 48 of Exile and Embrace

Nodding, I take the first journal and open it up, flipping to a page in the middle.

That bitch is pregnant. I don’t know what to do. She’s trying to trap me here in this fucking state. I don’t want kids with her. I’ve never even wanted a future with her. She was just supposed to be a bit of fun before I went.

She came over after school yesterday and told me. I’m going to have to have a paternity test done. The last thing I want is to have to father a baby that isn’t even mine.

Although, the last thing I really want to have is a child at seventeen.

This is going to fuck up the rest of my life. I know it is.

When my father finds out, he is going to insist that I do the right thing and marry the girl. I can’t do that, though. She’s nice enough, but this baby is just a trick. It’s a trap to get me to stay in Portland.

She’s never liked that there is an entire life out there waiting for me.

Nobody has.

Everyone thinks that I should stay home and run the family business.

I’ll die if I have to spend the rest of my life running a fucking hardware store.

Their insistence is only going to get worse once they find out about the baby. Especially since that bitch is staying here and going to the community college.

She thinks that she’s making the right choice but putting her future on hold.

I’m sure that she thinks I’m going to stick around and provide for her.

She even said she thought that I would change my mind about children. She still thinks that I will want to stick around and be a father once I hold the baby for the first time.

I think she’s full of shit. There is no way that a baby is going to make me put my entire life on hold. I won’t allow it.

I’ve worked too hard to get into a good university.

I’m going to pack my shit and move across the country. I’m going to become a politician and everyone back home is going to wish that they didn’t doubt me. They’re going to wish that they had spent more time supporting me instead of telling everyone I was going nowhere in life.

I’ll show all of them.

My breath catches in my throat as I read the passage over again. Though I knew that I was born when my dad was eighteen, I assumed that he and my mom were always deeply in love.

Though, relationships are never quite that simple. They were young and clearly having their problems. An unexpected and unwanted pregnancy would be enough to send even the calmest person spiraling.

I flip to another passage, running my finger over his scrawling letters.

How am I going to be a father and a politician?

School starts in a little less than a month. I have to move soon and start university. The baby is going to be born while I’m there.

I’m going to have a little girl.

It seems insane to think that she is going to be here in a matter of months.

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about what she is going to look like. What her personality is going to be. I think about her future and what’s going to happen when my baby girl wants to leave the nest.

And I keep thinking about how I never want her to be anything like me.

If she does half the things that I did only a couple weeks ago, I don’t know how my heart will survive.

Hell, I don’t know how I’m going to survive in the first place.

I don’t know what it’s like to be a parent or how I’m supposed to be a good one while I’m building a life for us.

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