Page 64 of Brutal for It
Two pink lines. Test one.
Positive. Test two.
Then pregnant on the digital screen, test three.
Every single test says the same thing.
I sink to the floor, my legs giving out. The tiles are cold under my palms.
Jenni kneels beside me. “Hey, breathe. You’re okay.”
I shake my head. “No, I’m not. I can’t be.”
“Jami—”
I throw a hand up silencing her. “I don’t know how far along I am, Jenni. Don’t you see. I don’t know whose it is, Jenni.” The words rip out of me like glass. “I don’t know! I was high, I was gone, and I don’t know!” The last words come out in a full on screech.
She closes her eyes, pain flashing across her face. Then she pulls me into her arms. “You don’t have to know right now. You just have to breathe.”
I sob into her shoulder, the sound raw, animal. She holds on tighter.
When the storm finally breaks, she tilts my chin up. “You have to tell Tommy.”
“I can’t.”
“You have to.”
“He’ll hate me.”
“No,” she says fiercely. “He loves you. But he deserves the truth.”
I cover my face with my hands. “How do I even say it? ‘Hey, I might be carrying your child, or maybe the child of a monster who used me when I was too high to remember my own name?’”
Her voice softens again. “You don’t know that’s what happened.”
“I know enough.”
We sit there in silence, the ticking of the clock loud in the small room.
Finally, she says, “What do you want to do?”
The question echoes in my head. What do you want to do?
I want to run.
I want to disappear.
I want to find the numbness that used to hide the truth.
But then I think of the tiny heartbeat growing inside me. The part of me that’s still capable of creating life after everything that’s tried to destroy mine.
“I want to do better,” I whisper.
Jenni squeezes my hand. “Then start by staying clean. For you. For the baby.”
“I don’t even know if I can be a mom.”
“You can. You’re stronger than you think.”
