Page 4 of Keeping Our Secrets

No response.

“See, emo phase.”

“I still stand by my original statement,” I teased her. She deserved it after all the times she told me my brother’s extended showers were because he was jacking off.

“We should do this downstairs. Less chance of the little punk overhearing our conversation,” she told me as she opened the door next to the garage that led into her basement.

The small package weighed a ton as I followed her down the stairs.

Talk about the ultimate punishment for caving into peer pressure.

A few moments later, I found myself locked in her downstairs bathroom, while I peed on a stick, to see if two pink lines would be the consequence of my one week of letting go.

The road to hell was paved with good intentions, or a crazy weekend in Paris, as it were.

I would have gone home to do the test, but I left the house before my mom returned from her business trip. After a couple of weeks away, she would be tired, so I knew she’d be at home.

I wanted to avoid any possibility of her knowing anything was going on until I knew more. I didn’t have to imagine what her reaction would be to finding out what we were up to.

Even the mere mention of a possibility of me being pregnant would probably send her over the edge.

She would be devastated because she had better hopes and dreams for me than she did for herself at my age. My mom married my father when she was eighteen, got pregnant a month later, and their marriage lasted a whopping year after that. We were three months old when our parents separated and she emigrated from Scotland to Canada. Dad remained in Edinburgh and had since remarried, but he visited when he could and we went there twice.

Our mom did what she could, but being a single parent had always weighed on her. Not that our dad wasn’t in our life, but she had no other family where we moved. Also, he couldn’t just drop by to pick us up for the weekend or to give her a break.

She had travelled a lot over the years for business, and since she started dating again, she was gone more. Unfortunately, that left me alone most of the time, but being the model daughter, until now, of course, she trusted me without question.

However, I knew if I was pregnant, she’d find a way to blame herself.

The last thing I wanted to do was disappoint her.

Yet, sitting here in the bathroom with Jen holding my hand as we waited two minutes, as directed on the box, I knew deep down I would be.

CHAPTER 2

Liam

One of my friends was getting married in a week, so a bunch of us flew to London to celebrate one last weekend with him before he got hitched.

We were almost at the pub when my phone rang. Seeing it was my dad, I said, “Sorry guys, I’ll be a minute, then I stepped to the side and answered before it went to voicemail.

“Hi Dad.”

“I’m not bothering you, am I? Do you have a minute?”

“Yeah,” I responded. “We’re just going out for drinks.”

“I know you’re on a trip, but I was hoping I could ask you a question.”

“Okay?”

“You know that since Alana and I reconnected that we’ve been dating for the past half year.”

“Yeah.”

“Being back here where we found each other for a second time and after everything we went through with your mom made me realize I didn’t want to let her go. So last night, I asked her to marry me and she said yes.”

“Congratulations,” I told him. “When’s the wedding?” He was back in Las Vegas for another hotel convention, so it didn’t surprise me that he got carried away with the nostalgic moment.

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