Page 97 of Never Forever

“Annie was going to go with me and I was going to get knocked up.”

“By the tennis player,” I remembered.

“He’s slightly myopic,” she whispered.

“I’m not,” I said. “Twenty/twenty vision.”

Miraculously, she laughed. Really laughed. The girl I loved was standing there in a pair of ice cream cone pajama pants that were quickly becoming my favorite article of clothing in the whole wide world.

Carrie laughed until she was crying, and then…then she was just crying.

“Hey, hey,” I said, taking the risk and wrapping her up in my arms.

She not only let me hug her, she wrapped her arms around me too and held on tight. She was so small against my chest. I wanted to pick her up and hold her. I wanted to feed her to make her grow strong with our baby and I wanted to protect them both.

I wanted to put my hands on her stomach and feel the life we’d made.

I wanted to make a home for us and tell her I would never hurt her. Again.

I just wanted to love her. The way I used to.

The way I never stopped.

“It’s going to be okay,” I said softly into her ear.

“Matt,” she laughed, bitterly. “How can you possibly say that?”

“Because.” I leaned back and stroked some hair off her face, amazed she was letting me touch her. Grateful she was letting me touch her. “I’m going to work really hard to make sure it’s going to be okay.”

She wiped her giant eyes with the sleeve of her shirt. “You understand why it might be impossible for me to believe you, right?”

“A’yup,” I said with a shrug.

“Don’t,” she scolded me. “Don’t make believe this is simple when I know it’s not.”

“Carrie,” I began. “I don’t know how to walk back everything we’ve done to each other. But we need to try.”

Carrie stepped back, wiping her face with the wrists of her sweatshirt. “What if I pay you?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Like… a million dollars.”

“Carrie,” I growled, but kept myself in check. I knew what she was doing, the panic she must be feeling, and truthfully, I knew I was going to have to suffer through a lot of this. Maybe this was my penance. “You know I’m not going anywhere.”

“How are we going to do this? How is this possibly going to work?” Her eyes were full of tears that didn’t fall. “I know you. You’re going to want to be just as much of a parent as me. And I was supposed to do this alone.”

“I think…” I stopped, swallowed the words, because they were too big to say right now. She wouldn’t believe me anyway.I think…

She cocked her head, her tower of hair listing to one side.

“What?” she said.

“Never mind,” I said. “I want to go to the doctor’s appointment with you.”

“Fine,” she finally agreed. Then we were just two people standing awkwardly in front of each other. One of them probably pregnant with the other one’s baby.

“You should probably go,” she said.