I was excited and anxious. It was during my second year at college. I'd been moved into my dorm for two months and my girlfriend and I had most assuredly broken up. It was only a matter of time after all, she had moved somewhere down south to start a band. We'd only been dating for the summer, after all and then we had a really bad phone call and we haven't spoken since.
Something else unexpected happened, though. One of my best friends from high school, who'd I'd had a crush on for years was pregnant and for some reason, the father had broken up with her. She was in college too and lived about six hours away. When I offered to come visit and hang out and she said excitedly said, yes.
Side note: it was probably one of the most reckless things that I had ever done in my 20 years on this earth, that should tell you something about how 'wild and crazy' I was.
I wasn't crazy enough to think that anything was going to happen but I was really going to enjoy spending the extended weekend with her. She lived with her father; when we were in high school she had lived with her mother in my home town.
This all happened in a time before social media so I didn't see what she looked like as a pregnant woman before I showed up at her door.
The drive was long, my CD player was connected through my tape deck and I sang most of the way while imagining a best case scenario for the weekend, not really thinking anything would happen.
Soon, I pulled into the gravel driveway of the small yellow house and approached the side door as she'd instructed. The metal storm door rattled as I knock and in another moment she was there, opening the door. Just as lovely as ever, her hair was casually curled, probably from a day or two before. Her blue eyes shone and she wore denim overalls and white shirt, long sleeved shirt, it was early November after all.
She smiled, and laughed as she reached out, wrapping her arms around me in a hug. The small talk began: 'how was the drive' and all that.
Eventually I gained the courage to bring up the elephant in the room. "You look great!" I said looking at her bump. I saw that she was embarrassed as her cheeks grew a little flush.
"Right," she responded with evident sarcasm. "I'm huge, and I'm only four months along."
"You're crazy!" I said, telling the truth. She was gorgeous: her breasts were a little larger but I couldn't tell much of a difference because of her bra, the overalls, and the fact that I had not seen her in months. Soon she popped off one of the buttons holding up her denim overalls so that I could feel the bump. She lifted her shirt a few inches and took my hand, placing it near her belly button. I relished in the skin to skin contact, pleased by her acceptance of me into this part of her life. Her baby bump was tight and she had no noticeable fat; the benefits of getting pregnant at 21.
She lamented that on her 21st birthday, the previous month, she hadn't been able to have a traditional 21st birthday night out, in the great American tradition.
That afternoon we ran to the store to buy things for a large dinner that would keep until her father got home from work. He was a contractor and kept odd hours. She didn't see much of him between her classes or even on the weekends. We grabbed some food from out before finally ending up at the video store and renting a couple of movies.
That evening, we sat on opposite ends of the couch sharing a large blanket. We both laughed at the movie and I shake the feeling that it was a date. I had to constantly fight off the impulse to stare at her.
My eyes grew heavy and I began to drift off in my contentment only to be awakened by her finger poking my shoulder. We moved to her bedroom where she had a bunk bed.
The top bunk was too hard for her to get into so it was mine by default. Like I said, she had grown up in my hometown but she would often come out to visit her father. This was the room that she had slept in then.
Her mirror had art projects and pictures from her youth. The room also had a flowery-sweet smell too; the result of years spent trying to figure out the best ways to use perfume.
We talked for almost another hour after we got into bed; that was more interesting than the movie. Eventually we had to make ourselves go to sleep even though we both could have kept talking about life and everything we had going on.
The next day I went with her to her OB appointment. I was blown away when I heard the heartbeat of her baby. I loved being there, I loved every minute of it. It was so intimate and allowed me, for just a moment, to imagine that the child she was carrying was mine, or at the very least, that she could have been mine.
That night, we popped in another movie and at first, I thought that I was imagining things but I thought that she was sitting a little closer to me than she had been the night before.
The movie went on but we started talking over it like we had in her bunk beds.
"It's a little scary, yah know. Being alone," she said.
"You're not alone," I assured her. "You've got your parents and your sisters."
"Yeah but it's not the same. I just...never thought that I'd be this girl."
"I think you're a great girl," I said, immediately regretting it. What a cheesy thing to say.