“Don’t tempt me,” I groaned, reluctantly smiling. “So, now that we’ve established a future with me consists of slumming it up in a flat in Ballylaggin and becoming parents at eighteen.”
Her eyes widened. “Parents?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “Buy me and get four kids free, remember?”
“Your siblings.”
“Who else?”
“Right,” she laughed. “Good one.”
“So, any cold feet?” I mused, tucking a tendril of hair behind her ear. “Any changes you want to make to our future plans, or are we all set?”
“No cold feet,” she replied, burying her face in my neck, as she hugged me tightly. “I want that future with you.”
BE HERE WITH ME
AOIFE
Joey said all the right things, made all the right moves, and I found myself, once again, snared to his mattress, with his big body on top of mine.
With our clothes cast aside on his bedroom floor, and our lips a crazed frenzy against the others, he moved between my thighs, burying himself deep inside of my body, filling me to the point of pain, and shattering any hope I had of ever surviving a life without him in it.
His family was falling apart around him, and instead of me supporting him, he was supporting me.
Genuinely feeling like I was losing my mind one hormonal imbalance at a time, I clung to his shoulders, my fingertips digging into his skin, as he built up a rhythm with his hips that directly aligned with the glorious heat building up inside of me.
Pulling up on his knees, he grabbed my hips and moved faster, as each thrust of his hips became more intense – more feverish.
Even now, as my body reveled in the wonderful feelings he could evoke from me, all I felt like doing was bursting into tears; consumed by emotions, by my fear of the future.
All I wanted him to do was hold onto me and never let go, because the unsteadiness of my life, as I balanced precariously close to the edge of the precipice that was parenthood, was terrifying me.
“You good, queen?” His words were a breathless pant, as his chest landed heavily on mine, and he hitched my thigh around his hip, deepening the angle. “You still with me?”
“Yeah.” Nodding vigorously, I pulled his face down to mine and kissed him deeply. “I’m with you, stud.”
“I love you.” His lips were back on mine, his tongue in my mouth, as he fused his body with mine.
“I love you,” I cried out between kisses, as my body burned in pleasure and my heart seized with dread.
He loved me now, but would he love me tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that, once the truth came out?
When he realized that I had taken his future from him?
The one he spoke about earlier?
It would never happen for us now.
Whether he tried to mask it or not, his resentment would be unmistakable.
His entire life was one long sequence of shouldering heavy responsibilities, and birth control had been one of the few things I could take care of for him.
It was a responsibility that I had gladly taken on my shoulders; empowered by the level of trust it had taken him to relinquish that control.
I was the one who vetoed a condom our first time; too caught up in my feelings to think about the consequences.
He was the one who suggested we use both the second time – and the third time, and the fourth, fifth and sixth.
I was the one who had na?vely assured him that we were protected every time it came up.
The pattern we had since fallen into had been built on the foundations of his ability to trust my ability to protect us from the very thing we were now facing.
“Get out of your head,” Joey grunted softly, nose brushing against mine, as he pressed another kiss to my lips, and pulled me back to the moment. To him. “Stay with me,” he instructed, green eyes locked on mine. “Be here with me.”
“I am,” I whispered. “I’m with you, Joe.”
With my eyes wide open and focused entirely on his, I forced my fears to the back of my mind, letting my body take over the thinking for me, as I drowned in my feelings for him.
Several hours later, long after he had fallen asleep beside me, I slipped out from under his arm, and quietly grabbed his hoodie and grey sweatpants from the corner of his room, throwing them on, before creeping downstairs, phone in hand.
It was 03:30 in the morning, and his house was in a rare state of silence. I padded into the kitchen, and dialed the phone number I knew off by heart, knowing that regardless of the early hour, my call would not be rejected.
“Hello?” my mother’s sleepy voice came down the line. “Aoife, love, are you alright?”
“Hi, Mam.” Closing the kitchen door out behind me, I exhaled a shaky breath and leaned against it. “No. I’m not.”
Concern immediately filled her voice when she asked, “Where are you?”
“At Joey’s.”
“Are you alright?” she demanded. “Have you two had a fight?”
“No.” I shook my head. “Nothing like that.”
“Okay.” Relief flooded her voice. “It’s half three in the morning, pet.”
“I know, Mam.” I chewed on my nail anxiously. “I just…” I exhaled a pained breath. “I needed to hear your voice.”
There was a long stretch of silence and I heard the ruffling of bedclothes, followed by footsteps padding.
“Okay, I’m in the kitchen alone,” she said a few moments later. “Your father’s upstairs in bed. We can talk.”
Trembling from head to toe, I exhaled a cracked breath. “I don’t know where to start.”
“Start at the beginning.”
“I’m in trouble, Mam.” I heaved out a sob and let my head fall forward. “And I’m really scared.”
“Okay?”
I shook my head, unable to get the words out.
“Aoife.” She sighed heavily down the line, and I could hear the kettle bubbling in the background. “What kind of trouble?”
“The late kind,” I strangled out, lowering myself to the floor, dizzy with anxiety and fear. “I’m late, Mam.”
“Late?”
I nodded weakly. “Late.”
“How late?” she asked evenly. “A few days? A week?”
Shaking, I hooked an arm around my knees and choked out, “Almost thirteen.”
“Thirteen days?”
“Weeks.”
“Jesus Christ.” I heard my mother’s sudden intake of air, and it caused a flurry of panic to skyrocket through me. “Aoife.”
“I didn’t know, okay?” I clenched my eyes shut as I sobbed down the line. “I didn’t realize. I had my last period on the fourteenth of December, and then everything happened between me and Joey, and I just…I lost track, Mam. I had a period at the end of January? Except it wasn’t like a normal period. It was like a little bit of spotting, but I just put it down to hormones, but Casey said that vomiting can affect the pill, and that wasn’t really a period at all and was something called implantation bleeding. I was sick in the new year, Mam. When me and Joe were together? I was really sick for a couple of days, and I’m sorry, Mam. I am so sorry! Please don’t hate me.”