Page 36 of Girl, We Go Together
I grabbed it and stared down at the results in disbelief. I was still on the bathroom floor with my back pressed against the cabinet. The test was clutched so tightly in my hand that my knuckles ached. I hadn’t moved since the lines appeared. My mind was all over the place, and thoughts of what I should do were going in a thousand directions.
The front door creaked open, followed by the heavy thud of footsteps. Orion’s voice carried through the house, low and sharp like he was already in a mood.
“Cay?”
I scrambled to shove the test into the cabinet drawer, but my fingers fumbled. The plastic clattered against the floor, and by the time I straightened up, Orion was standing in the doorway, his eyes narrowing on me.
“What’s this?” His voice was flat, unreadable, as his gaze dropped to the pregnancy test I hadn’t been quick enough to hide.
I froze. My throat locked up. There was no lie I could come up with fast enough, no excuse that would erase those two pink lines staring back at us both.
Orion stepped fully inside the bathroom, picked the test up, and turned it over in his hand. His jaw tightened, and his eyes went dark and stormy when they met mine again.
“You pregnant?”
The way he said it was weird. It wasn’t excitement. It wasn’t shock. It was suspicion, like the question itself was an accusation. My lips parted, but no words came. All I could do was nod. My heart was pounding so loud it drowned out everything else. The bathroom felt like it shrank around me while I waited for him to respond. Slowly, I picked my body up from the floor and just stood in front of him with my arms folded across my breast.
The silence was sickening, and a piece of me felt in my heart of hearts that he knew what he was doing. I could hear the garbage truck outside riding down the block. That’s how quiet and still the house was. My chest tightened, waiting for the storm. Waiting for the curse words, the accusations, the frustration that always came when Orion felt cornered. But he didn’t blow. He leaned on the doorframe with his arms folded. That jaw of his still wasn’t relaxed, though. Naturally, he looked mean, so when we were in situations like this, I never went by his facial expressions; I always went by his words.
“So, that’s what it is,” he muttered. His tone was cool, and that alone put me at ease a bit. “This explains why you've been off lately. You’ve been emotional as hell.”
He stood in front of me, tapping the test in the palm of his hand. It was fucking gross because I just pissed on the thing, butI could see his mind roaming. I was about to open my mouth to speak, but then he stopped me with the raise of his pointer finger.
“Don’t.” His voice was steady. “Just let me think a second.”
He set the test down on the counter like it burned him, then turned toward the door. My stomach dropped, bracing for the slam, for him walking out and not looking back. What the fuck was there to think about? As he continued with his silence, I started to brew hatred for him in my stomach.
If he walked out of this bathroom, it would tell me everything I needed to know. He wasn’t the man for me. I was never a fan of abortion, but I knew I wouldn’t keep this baby if I couldn’t promise them a home. I bit my bottom lip as he still stood with his back facing me. I anticipated him taking a step forward to leave, but he never did. His shoulders rose and fell, and when he turned back around, he eyed me for a bit.
Not being able to read him had my nerves bad. While I stood silently in front of him, I wondered if he would ask me to get an abortion. I sighed while biting my lip. It was like I was a child who was waiting to get her punishment for getting in trouble, and I hated it. He shook his head up and down and then moved his neck around like he was working out a cramp. His whole face shifted. The coldness melted, and his lips pulled into a crooked grin.
“Damn,” he said, shaking his head. His voice broke into a chuckle, low and disbelieving. “I’m about to be somebody’s daddy again.”
His laugh grew fuller until he closed the space between us and pulled me into a hug. I couldn’t remember the last time we were this close intimately. Over the past year, our sex consisted of him fucking me until he nutted and then him going to make a run. His hands cupped my face, and his eyes lit up with something I hadn’t seen in over a year: pure joy.
“You really carrying mine?” he asked, almost like a boy again.
When I nodded, tears streamed down my chubby cheeks. He kissed me hard and then lifted me like I weighed nothing.
“Boy, put me down.” I giggled, slightly scared that his arms would give out and drop my big ass on the bathroom floor.
“We really locked in,” he whispered against my ear. “We're having a baby, Cayla. My baby. Our baby.”
Chapter 13
Orion
Icouldn’t stop staring at her. At that test. At what it meant. A baby. My baby. Our baby. I told her I was happy, and I was. There was no denying that. But inside, my chest was tight as hell. I was nervous. Last time around with OJ, I wasn’t ready, and truth be told, I don’t think I ever really stepped up the way I should’ve. Now, here I was, about to be somebody’s daddy… again. I glanced at Cayla while she wiped her face, smiling all soft like this was everything she ever wanted. And I wanted to give her the peace, stability, and love she deserved. But the thoughts I couldn’t shake kept creeping in.
Cayla was already thick as hell. She was a BBW from the jump, and I loved that about her. There was confidence in her walk, even when she didn’t see it herself. But over the past year, she’d put on weight in places that weren’t appealing to me. Every once in a while, I would toss a comment around, hoping she would make use of my gym membership and do something about it. This was before I even knew she was pregnant.
A piece of me knew that worrying about her weight when she was carrying life for a nigga was childish as fuck, and I hated myself for thinking it, but it was there. The thoughts were sittingheavily in the back of my head. I wondered if I would still look at her the same? Would I still want her the same?
When she turned away from me, she looked at herself in the mirror. She turned to the side, I guess trying to envision a baby bump on her, and honestly, I couldn’t see it. I guess the stomach that was already there would eventually harden. When she turned to look in the mirror, I pushed the thought down and wrapped my arms around her from behind, burying my face in her neck.
“We got this,” I whispered against her skin, like if I said it enough, I’d start to believe it all the way through.
But deep down, the nervousness stayed. It was sitting right next to that little spark of happiness, daring me to ruin a good thing. I had a habit of always finding something wrong.
