The fuck were we going to do?
We were still in school.
She had her whole future in front of her.
She was supposed to go out in the world and leave her neon-colored mark on it.
Instead, I had saddled her with a baby.
A baby!
Jesus Christ.
It was like I was watching my worst nightmare unfold around me, and I was too paralyzed to stop it.
The knowledge that I was, singlehandedly, responsible for ruining her future was crippling.
Well, you finally did it, asshole, a voice in my head taunted, you finally came full circle and turned into your father.
Feeling too much in this moment, feeling too goddamn exposed and vulnerable, I tried and failed to steady myself.
It was pointless.
The panic and uncertainty thrashing around inside of me was unlike anything I had experienced before.
I could feel Molloy’s anxiety.
It was palpable.
It mirrored mine.
“I’m scared, Joe,” she continued to whisper, over and over, as she buried her face in my chest and leaned against me. “I’m so scared.”
I couldn’t reassure her of shit.
Not when I had no clue of this would play out.
All I could do in that moment was hold her.
Because I didn’t have the words to fix this, to make it right for her.
All I had was my body.
My presence.
My ability to stay.
Sniffling, she looked up at me, eyes puffy and red. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For proving me right.”
Confused, I frowned. “How have I proved you right, exactly?”
“Well, you’re here for a start,” she said, offering me a small smile. “And you haven’t hit the roof.”
“Molloy, you didn’t climb on top of yourself and get pregnant,” I bit out. “I’m the asshole who did that. I’m not going to hit any damn roof. This is on me a hell of a lot more than it’s on you, okay?” I shook my head, feeling lost and frustrated. “I didn’t realize your birth control mightn’t work. I didn’t even think about it when you were throwing up that weekend. I should’ve put a condom on. I should’ve taken better care of you.”
“I shouldn’t have kept it from you.”
No, she shouldn’t have, but I got it.
“I have an appointment at the hospital tomorrow,” she blew my world by saying. “It’s for an ultrasound – a dating scan, they called it.” Shivering, she added, “I really don’t want to go on my own.”
“You won’t be on your own. I’ll be there.”
“You will?”
“Of course,” I ground out, feeling too much in this moment. “I would’ve been there for the doctor’s appointment, too, you know. If I had known. I’m a lot of things, Aoif, but I’m not a coward, and I don’t run.”
“I’ve been trying to ask you for days,” she whispered. “Trying to work up the courage to tell you.”
“It’s okay.” I pulled her close. “It’s going to be okay.”
“I’m going to be the talk of the town, Joe,” she admitted in a small voice, looking achingly vulnerable. “Everyone at school probably knows by now. Paul and Danielle will make sure of it. How am I supposed to walk back through the doors of BCS?”
“We are going to walk back into school with our heads held high, and if anyone has something to say, then they’ll have me to deal with,” I replied, hackles rising. “Because fuck them, Molloy.”
“Fuck them?”
“Fuck them,” I confirmed.
She sniffled. “Kev told Dad.”
My heart dropped into my ass. “Kev has a big fucking mouth.”
“I don’t want to go home yet.” She worried on her lip. “I’m not ready to face my father, and if I see my brother, I’ll kill him.”
That made two of us.
“Then don’t go home yet,” I replied. “Stay with me.”
“What are we going to do, Joe?”
I have no fucking idea. “We’ll figure it out.”
Sharing a bag of chips at the GAA grounds probably wasn’t what Molloy had in mind when she told me that she didn’t want to go home, but in all fairness, what the hell else was I supposed to do?
I didn’t have a car to bundle her into.
I didn’t have a home to take her to, not one where she would be safe.
I had no big-time future ahead of me like her ex, or no family to prop me up like him, either.
I had a grand total of thirteen euro in my pocket, and the prospects of a gutter rat.
Fucked didn’t even come close to defining how much trouble we were in.
The only thing that I had going for me, that most of the lads I knew who were in similar positions didn’t have, was the fact that the girl carrying my kid happened to be my best friend.
In a way, that made her being pregnant significantly worse, because the guilt was so staggering.
My conscience was weighing on me in a way that Dricko or any of the lads I knew with kids had never experienced.
Because, for me, it wasn’t my future I was mourning.
It was hers.
Because I loved her.
I loved her so fucking much that I let myself get reckless and ruin her.
I didn’t meet her on a whim, stick my dick in her after two or three weeks of messing around, and become a makeshift family overnight.
I had six years of friendship racked up with Molloy.
I knew the girl inside and out, and she knew me.
We’d grown up together.
Our lives were tangled up and entwined.
She had never been someone to pass away the time with until something better came along.
She was the time, the better, the goal, the whole nine yards.
Any future I had ever dared to imagine for myself never veered from having her slap bang in the center of it.
I never wanted to be a parent, babies were never part of my plan, but if it had been a dealbreaker for Molloy, far, far into our future, then I maybe could have been persuaded.
Now, it was being thrust upon us both.
“Don’t even think about it, Houdini,” I heard myself warn an hour later, as I watched my girlfriend eye the towering wall surrounding the GAA pavilion. It was a wall I’d watched her effortlessly scale a thousand times before.
Not anymore.
“I mean it, Aoif,” I warned. “Keep those feet on the ground.”
“You’re being a tad dramatic.”
“It’s called being sensible.”
She rolled her eyes. “Since when do the words Joey Lynch and sensible go hand in hand?”
“Since the words Aoife Molloy and pregnant joined forces,” I shot back, holding my school jumper out for her. “Sit your ass on the footpath.”
Begrudgingly complying, she took my jumper, folded it in half, and then placed it on the concrete before lowering herself down.
“Thanks for the food, Joe.” With legs for days stretched out in front of her, she placed the warm brown bag of steamy chips on her lap and sighed. “I’m flat broke right now, and I missed all of my shifts at work last week, so I don’t have any money coming in for a few weeks.”
We were both flat broke, but if I couldn’t buy my pregnant girlfriend a measly bag of chips, then I needed to be taken out into a field and shot.