Page 47 of Unexpecting

J.B. found me inmy apartment, where I’d taken refuge with a blenderful of margarita, heavy on the tequila. Whereas my sister felt the need to resort to sharp words when our mother was around, I seemed okay on the outside, but often felt the need for a great deal of alcohol after she was gone. Once my mother left, dragging her latest boy toy and his besotted brother Derek with her, Coop’s party lost all appeal for me.

″I thought you might be responsible for the missing blender,” J.B. said mildly, taking in the sight of me flopped across my bed, with my head hanging over the edge and taking great slurps from the straw sticking out of the blender without comment.

I pushed my ponytail out of my face and looked up with red eyes. I hadn’t yet figured out why I felt the need to cry over my mother’s news, even though I knew indulging in a crying jag would inevitably result in a monster headache later. Another thing I could blame on my mother. That and how her visit sent me straight to the bottle, after I’d vowed to lay off the drinking.

It’s not like my parents had a happy marriage. My father was an asshole, and he’s been dead for years. My mother deserves happiness in herlife, doesn’t she? That’s the good daughter inside me talking. But the other daughter—the one who remembers living in the same house with Terri-with-an-i and watching her pretend ignorance of my father’s drinking and how it affected Libby and me; the one who caught her in bed with sixteen-year-old Aaron, whom I had a huge crush on at the time; the one she never managed to say good-bye to the day I left home to go to university—that daughter doesn’t really think Terri deserves any sort of happiness. That daughter thinks Terri should rot in a hole with her Botox injections and her Mr. Happy Rabbit vibrator. It’s not difficult to see which part of me has the better argument.

″Did you hear?” I asked J.B. scornfully.

″About your mom? Coop filled me in.”

″Can you believe it? He’s the same age as me. I know she likes them younger, but does it have to be so embarrassingly young? And then to bring his brother to meet me? What was she thinking?”

″That part’s pretty funny, actually,” J.B. said, not even trying to hide his smile.

″Ha-ha. Who wouldn’t want to date their step-uncle-to-be? Ugh. Ugh!” I took another long sip from the straw. “And then she says they want to have a baby? There’s a possibility my child will be older than her aunt or uncle! If I ever get pregnant, that is. Although after seeing Terri tonight, I’m starting to believe I shouldn’t be anywhere near a child so I don’t screw it up like she did.” I took one last swallow of margarita and flipped over on my back.

J.B. lay down beside me. The warmth of his weight on the bed beside me and his potent male smell were comforting, and I fought the urge to curl up in his arms. A hug from someone would be nice right now. I couldn’t even get a cuddle from my cat. He was sitting on the pillow just watching me self-destruct. It’s not like he hadn’t seen it before.

″Oh, I don’t know. You turned out okay,” he said.

I grimaced. “What do you know?”

″I know you didn’t run off and get married at nineteen, just for a reason to leave home.”

For J.B. to bring his marriage up instantly made me forget my pity party. “What happened with you two, anyway?” I asked hesitantly.

″There was a bunch of reasons. We were too young to get married, if you ask me. We were immature, had no money. Betsey always believed the good Lord would provide, as long as we loved each other enough. But then she got pregnant, and uh, lost the baby.” He glanced at me. “Shewas almost four months along when they realized there was no heartbeat. That’s when we both started to get pissed off with God, and I figured out he wasn’t going to provide for us and I’d better get my butt in gear. I went back to school, which was fine until Betsey got pregnant again. And lost it. And then she got pissed when I wasn’t upset enough that she lost the baby. I was upset because she was so upset, but she should have never gotten pregnant again.”

″You didn’t want a baby?”

″I was excited about the first one, but that’s before I woke up and realized it would have been a disaster. I’m not glad she lost it—any of them, but there was no way we could have handled it. We were kids ourselves. Betsey could barely take care of herself—always looking for approval. And she needed constant attention—there’s no way she could deal with a baby taking the spotlight from her. I was in school and couldn’t find a job, so I couldn’t pay for anything and the last thing I wanted was to work for my dad on the farm. That’s why I left home in the first place.”

″I can’t see you as a farmer.” I rolled over again so I was lying on my side facing J.B., who was staring at the ceiling.

″That was the whole problem—neither could I.”

″So what happened? Two kids, young and in love, facing the problems of the world by themselves—and then comes baby?”

″There shouldn’t have been a baby. Betsey told me she was taking birth control.”

″Nothing’s 100 percent, you know.”

″She lied to me and stopped taking it.”

″Ah. That’s not good.”

″Then she goes and does it again. After the second time, I started to think she wasn’t as perfect as I always thought and that us being married wasn’t a good idea. Plus, the good Lord wasn’t providing shit, and Betsey was becoming a bit of a bitch to live with. And about that time, she started messing around with my best friend. I came home once and found them together. That’s how my nose got broken.”

″From your friend?”

J.B. laughed, sounding embarrassed. “I wish. No, it was her. She hit me with a book to stop me from smashing his face in. I had a bit of a temper back then.”

″I don’t blame you. Is that—the card said her son, the one named after you?” I didn’t know how to put it delicately, but the thought of thepaternity of a child out there named after J.B. had entered my mind once or twice over the last few weeks.

″Yeah. He got her pregnant, but then she tried to say it was mine. But I knew—it was easy to figure it out once you did the math.” J.B. said this in a deceptively casual tone, but I could see a muscle pulsing in his jaw. Definite unresolved feelings there, I told myself.

″Wow. And she still sends you cards? I think I’d just go off and crawl under a rock someplace if I did that.”

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