Page 20 of The Broken Beginning: Part One

I scoffed at that. “I was never missing in the first place. So, your punishment for worrying them is to stay here and bother me?” I asked before finally looking up long enough to see him shrug his broad shoulders. “Well, that sounds like more of a punishment for me. What the hell did I ever do?” I mumbled the last more to myself than anyone.

“You got knocked up,” was his quick response anyway.

“And whose fault was that?” I asked, anger brewing up once again over our situation. When he didn’t answer, I went on to point out the flaws in his logic, where he blamed me for everything. “You’re the one that started everything that night. I just accepted a ride home from a party where my supposed best friend treated me like shit and left me on my own.

“You’re the experienced one. I was the virgin. You’re the one who didn’t wear a fucking condom or pull out quick enough. So, why then is this pregnancy ALL MY FAULT?” I yelled the last few words at him because I was sick of taking all the blame for our predicament.

“Because you could have done something about it sooner.”

“Yeah, well you could have left me alone instead of using me to drown out your anger over your girlfriend pissing you off once again.” The wild angry feeling inside of me wouldn’t subside. “Why aren’t you off coddling the bitch anyway? Doesn’t she need your help massaging her fake bricks – I mean breasts – so that they’ll smooth out?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“That’s what she told me in the bathroom at school on Thursday. Once our farce of a ceremony was over with, you would be massaging her chest for her, amongst other things.”

I mock gagged as he stared at me. “I still can’t believe she thought that was even an attractive thing to use to make someone jealous. She’s not the brightest bulb in the pack.”

His inadvertent wince told me that he agreed with that assessment, even if he wouldn’t say it out loud. Brinley was a fucking idiot, and as far as I was concerned, if he was in love with her – that made him an idiot by proxy.

“I don’t care if you’re here. I won’t rat you out to our dads. You can leave, stay, whatever the hell you want to do with your life, but I have work to get finished.” I made a shooing motion with my hands.

“Yeah, about that…” he started but cut himself off for a minute as he moved closer to my desk. Before I could stop him, he picked up the stack of papers I had sitting on top of the folders they would eventually be tucked into. Merc scanned them all before his eyes bounced back to meet my own. “What exactly is this?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Your dad seems to think you’re breaking your back all the time for your own schoolwork, but these papers don’t have your name on them, Lily.”

“What do you care?”

“I care if someone is taking advantage of you,” he insisted.

I laughed. “No, you don’t.” His eyebrow cocked up at that, as if he was about to call me out on my statement. “If you do, then you’re a hypocrite because you had no problem taking advantage of me and my crush on you to suit your own needs. Your only problem was that you ended up fucking yourself over and got stuck with me afterward.”

That pissed him off enough that he tossed the papers back down on my desk and left. “Good riddance!” I called out too softly for him to hear.

I didn’t see Merc again until about a month after that, when he was picking up Brinley on the back of his Harley after school. Her smirk said she won the man. My middle finger and bored look told her I didn’t really give a shit. Merc at least looked slightly guilty as he sat there on his bike, with another woman seated behind him, all the while watching me in the line to get on the school bus that would eventually deliver me home.

My father had refused to help me get a car. He said that it was my husband’s job now. The same husband, who I hadn’t seen for a month – until today, seemed perfectly fine leaving his pregnant wife to ride the school bus. How in the world did my life get so fucked up? There was a time when I had dreams and aspirations. I wanted to finish high school, go off to college, become a famous screenplay writer for movies and television. Yeah, I know, it seems like a pipedream. But at no point while I was dreaming of my future, did being a teen mom ever factor in.

I thought briefly about spending my savings on a car. I would need something to get around in once I had the baby, after all. But every time I thought about spending that much of my money, I worried that I wouldn’t have enough to take care of us.

It was a legitimate worry considering the food in our house had run out over a week ago and I’d had to walk the six miles to the grocery store to buy food with the money I got from the last batch of papers I wrote for spoiled college students who couldn’t be bothered to do their own work. Luckily for me, Shannon – Stacey’s mom – had also been at the store and had given me a ride home with all my groceries. I’ll admit, I hadn’t planned out how I was going to walk six miles back with over fifteen bags weighing me down.

The memory fell away as my ass hit the bus seat while I watched as Merc finally took off with Brinley laughing from her seat behind him. It was as if my miserable life were the funniest thing in the world. I supposed, for her, it probably was. She reveled in my misery long before her boyfriend got me pregnant. Why shouldn’t she continue to do so since she was riding bitch on my husband’s Harley while I was pregnant with his child and taking the school bus home?

~*~

Christmas and New Year’s slid by with little fanfare. I thought I would see Merc on Christmas day at the very least, but apparently, he had gone on some trip or other. I assumed it was a run for the club since our parents didn’t seem that put out by it. My father and Boone invited me to the misfit’s meal the club held for all the single members and hang arounds who didn’t have families to celebrate the holidays with. That was where I met a woman named Callie, who apparently danced at the MC’s strip club. She seemed nice enough until Boone asked how his grandbaby was doing while patting my belly.

The pointed look he had given Callie, along with the way she avoided me afterward, clued me into who she probably was to my husband. I had heard through the grapevine that Brinley had been disowned and kicked out of her father’s home. She had hightailed it to California or something in search of fame and stardom. Good riddance to the bitch. I’d like to say I wished her well, but honestly, I hoped she starred in some lousy porn movies to pay the bills and ended up with a chronic case of herpes outbreaks as a result. Petty? Yes. Deserved? Also, yes.

After dinner, I feigned being tired and called a cab to take me home. Neither my dad nor Boone noticed that I still didn’t have a car. If they did, I guess they were waiting on me to do something about it. I was trying. I went to school during the day, worked at a local pizza chain making pizzas after school, and when the orders came in, I still did reports for college students on the weekends. Considering I had to feed myself and pay for the doctor visits and prenatal vitamins, it was never enough.

When I got back to the house, my heart lurched from seeing the pitiful little Christmas tree I bought. It was just one of those little table-top light up things from the dollar store, but I’d placed three presents on the table. One for each of the men in my life. My father, father-in-law, and husband. None of them came by that day to collect their gifts. I thought about throwing them in the trash, but instead I just left the tree and the presents there. Little did I know that they would sit there for another two months before anyone noticed.

~*~

It was a chilly, overcast day in February, and a rare day off work and school for me, when I finally broke. My humiliation knew no bounds that day. My energy levels had sunk to nil, and I didn’t want to spend the money on a cab to and from the grocery store, nor did I want to walk in the cold. Pathetically, all I had in the house was some stale bread, three packages of ramen soup, and one box of macaroni and cheese when my father stopped by to check on me. The only reason there was even any mac-n-cheese was because I was out of the milk and butter that I needed to make it. I had been so busy staring into my empty fridge, at the absence of those things, that I hadn’t heard him come in.

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