Page 47 of Ghosted By Texas

Clea giggled, which had been my intention. Then she went to the ensuite bathroom in her bedroom, and I took the one that was meant for guests to use. We reconverged with the tests and put them down on the counter after Clea neatly placed several layers of paper towels down.

Neither one of us seemed inclined to look down for results, so we talked instead.

“I’m only home like fifty percent of the time now. It’s weird, like we’re time-sharing houses or something, though I can tell that Houston prefers when we’re at his place.”

“Why is that?”

“I guess because I lived here with Jeff and had planned to make this our home once we were married.” She shrugged her shoulders, as if it was a silly concept.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I completely understood where he was coming from having been faced with that same reality once before. At least in her case, she hadn’t gone straight back to Jeff’s arms and broken up with Houston by not speaking to him. That was a cruel twist of fate that I didn’t wish on anyone.

“What about you? Did you ever take your neighbor up on his offer? He’s kind of cute. Anyone else catch your eye?” She prattled on with her questions and I shook my head to each one. The only date I’d been on lately was the one with my couch after work, where I did mindless things to keep wandering thoughts about what Austin was up to with Jordan from crushing my soul. I didn’t think my friend needed to hear that, though.

“My only dates have been the gym with you every morning. I have to go to bed early just to be able to keep up after getting ready to meet you at ungodly o’clock in the morning.” Clea gave me a quick smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“I guess it was silly to have you take one of these with me, since you hadn’t seen anyone for months before Austin, and then that was only one time.”

It felt like she was attempting to pry again. The one time she spoke of, with some guy I went out with about six months before Austin crashed back into my life, hadn’t even ended in sex because the guy had been strictly against going down on me while demanding that I do it for him. It was a sex non-starter and I’d kicked him to the curb before he even managed to pull his pants back up.

Clea was like a dog with a bone though, and her focus wasn’t even on that ‘one time’ with the dude from last August. She knew there had been more to Austin and me than the one-night roll in the hay I’d admitted to. I couldn’t talk about it. What was the point? Reliving the most wonderful two weeks of my life and then heartbreak that followed would only set me backwards.

I thought I heard the doorknob jiggle but then Clea’s timer went off on her phone indicating it was time to look at our results. We both picked our test sticks up. I hadn’t seen Clea’s reaction because I was too busy staring at the test in my own hands. It couldn’t be. I felt faint all of a sudden and needed to sit down but couldn’t make my body work. Instead, I just stood there and stared at the test until Clea snatched it away from me.

“No,” I cried. There was no way this could have happened.

“Marry me!” I turned on a dime, having mistaken Houston’s voice for Austin’s. Dammit why did they have to be so alike? Why did Jordan always have to ruin things? If it hadn’t been for her, I might have been taking this stupid test with my boyfriend and he might have been the one shouting out an impromptu marriage proposal. Instead, I’d be raising my baby alone. Oh God! Even worse, he would want split custody and his whore would help him raise our baby. I felt so sick at the thought. She’d already taken him from me, and now she’d get the chance to steal my child, too.

I didn’t hear Clea when she agreed to the proposal, but I did when she said, “Oh, shit! No, Houston.”

“No, you won’t marry me?”

“No. I mean, yeah. I mean, this isn’t mine!”

My best friend had been waving my peed-on pregnancy test all about like it was the most sanitary thing in the world. It didn’t bother me. I worked with kindergarteners and saw worse on a daily basis. Clea was a different story though, when she realized what she was doing, it would give her a good case of the gross willies.

I snatched the test back out of her hands and took a step away from the couple who were staring at me.

“Is it Austin’s?” Houston asked. I stared at him without answer, pleading with my eyes not to say that name again. It was bad enough that he sounded like the man who had knocked me up. And that was when I hit my breaking point. I crumpled to the kitchen floor and became a sobbing mess despite the fact that there were people to witness it.

“Dammit,” I heard Houston mutter.

“Don’t tell him,” I managed to choke out.

“Don’t ask me to keep something like that a secret,” he fired back.

“I’ll tell him, but…”

“Tell him. Decide what you’re going to do together, but Becs, do it soon because I won’t lie or keep it from him. He deserves to know.”

All I could picture was Jordan holding my baby while staring at me with that smug fucking smirk on her face. It was hard to breathe, like someone turned the oxygen off in the apartment and I was going to asphyxiate on nothingness and despair. It didn’t matter that you couldn’t have despair if there was nothingness. Logic was not factoring into my panic. Why had I come to Clea’s house? I had a standing date with my couch that I should have kept. Dammit. This was the kind of life altering shit that always happened to me when I left my apartment for anything other than work.

“A part of me wants to argue with you about that,” I finally cried to Houston. Austin didn’t deserve to know after everything he put me through. What if he did the same thing with our child. What if Jordan put her foot down and didn’t allow him to bring my baby into her house and so he just stopped showing up and ghosted our child the way he did to me? I would murder them both.

Houston kneeled down and then when that didn’t work for him, he sat beside me and pulled me onto his lap. It only made me cry harder because it was like Austin was holding me, only he smelled all wrong. It wasn’t him and it should have been. This was not the life I’d always dreamed of. The wrong man had me wrapped in his arms, and I didn’t think I could keep it together anymore even though I carried the biggest reason in the world to get my shit together.

The guilt hit right alongside my sadness. I hadn’t even known I was pregnant. Thinking back, I had missed a period, but chalked it up to the depression and weight loss from not having an appetite. Breakups were hell on my body. Correction. Breakups with Austin were hell on my body. I was one of those people who couldn’t eat when stressed and depressed, so it meant imminent weight loss. That couldn’t be good for the baby I was growing, so already my mothering skills were on par with my own mom’s. That sucked. I always thought I’d be a better, far more loving parent.

“I’m sorry he has his head so far up his ass, Becs. I don’t know what to say about him. For years, his ass was grumpy because he gave you up.”

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