“No, that’s not the crazy part. The crazy part is that after I got with Six, I found out she was the girl I had sex with the year before. And…well…I got her pregnant. And because she didn’t know who I was, she put the baby up for adoption. A closed adoption. So I’m a dad, but I’m not. And Six is a mom, but she’s not. And we thought it would be okay and we’d be able to move past it, but we can’t. She’s sad all the time. And because she’s sad all the time, I’m sad all the time. And when we’re together, we’re double sad, so we don’t even really hang out all that much anymore. Now I think she’s about to break up with me.”
I feel protected by the beanbag right now because my gaze is on the ceiling and not on Hannah. I don’t want to look at her after vomiting all that. But an entire minute goes by and neither of us says anything, so I finally lift my head.
Hannah is sitting as still as a statue, staring at me in shock like I’ve just told her I got someone pregnant. Because I did. And that’s apparently very shocking, which is why she’s looking at me like this.
I give her another moment to let it sink in. I know she wasn’t expecting to find out she’s sort of an aunt with a nephew she’ll never meet during a conversation she probably expected to be about something a lot more trivial, like miscommunication with my girlfriend.
“Wow,” she says. “That’s…wow. That’s really complicated, Daniel.”
“Told you so.”
The room is silent. Hannah shakes her head in disbelief. She opens her mouth a couple of times to speak, but then shuts it.
“So what do I do?” I ask.
“I have no idea.”
I throw my hands up in defeat. “I thought you were going to help me. That’s why I told you all that.”
“Well, I was wrong. This is like…severe adult shit. I’m not there yet.”
I drop my head back against the beanbag. “You suck as a big sister.”
“Not as much as you suck at being a boyfriend.”
Why does any of that make me suck? I sit up straight now and scoot to the edge of the beanbag. “Why? What did I do wrong?”
She waves her hand at me. “This. You’re avoiding her.”
“I’m giving her space. That’s different.”
“How long have things been weird between y’all?”
I think back on the months we’ve been together. “It was great when we first got together. But when I found out what happened, it got weird for like a day, but we moved past it. Or I thought we did. But she always has this sadness about her. I see it a lot. Like she’s forcing herself to pretend to be happy. It’s just getting worse, though, and I don’t know if it’s college or me or everything she went through. But I noticed in October she started making more and more excuses not to hang out. She had a test, or a paper, or she was tired. So then I started making excuses because if she doesn’t want to hang out with me, I don’t want to force her.”
Hannah is listening intently to every word I say. “When was the last time you kissed her?” she asks.
“Yesterday. I still kiss her and treat her the same when we’re together. It’s just…different. We’re hardly together.”
She lifts a shoulder. “Maybe she feels guilty.”
“I know she does, and I’ve tried to tell her she made the right choice.”
“Then maybe she just wants to forget it ever happened, but you ask her too many questions about it.”
“I don’t ask her any. I never ask her. She doesn’t seem to want to talk about it, so we don’t.”
Hannah tilts her head. “She carried your child for nine months and then put it up for adoption and you haven’t asked her questions about it?”
I shrug. “I want to. I just…don’t want her to feel pressured to relive it.”
Hannah makes a groaning sound like I just said something that disappoints her.
“What?”
She looks at me pointedly. “I have never liked a single girl you’ve dated until Six. Please go fix this.”
“How?”
“Talk to her. Be there for her. Ask her questions. Ask her what you can do to make it better for her. Ask her if it would help her to talk about it with you.”
I chew on that suggestion. It’s good advice. I don’t know why I haven’t just straight-up asked her how I can help make it better for her. “I don’t know why I haven’t done that yet,” I admit.