My hands stroked my growing potbelly, as I played peek-a-boo with the fall sun on its descent to the horizon. The leaves left on the trees were a rich myriad of browns, oranges, and reds, interspersed with the stubborn green of the living foliage that refused to give up on the vestiges of the dying summer. Dustin had only been gone for three weeks, yet those twenty-one days felt like a lifetime to me.

As promised, he’d called me every night with the stories of how his day had gone and the interesting people he’d met along the way. That deep chuckle would always end in a pitiful huff of displeasure when he told me how much he missed me, and how I should be there to experience the discoveries with him. Those comments were always followed by him asking me to leave Childress and go to him, to be by his side in College Station. I’d made sure to take the time and go down to visit him on campus during the Labor day weekend just to check everything out and remind him how much I loved him, but I also knew these short visits would be limited as time passed us by and I began to show. He’d already made a comment about my breasts being bigger.

My body, whether I liked the development or not, was changing rapidly, and those changes were beginning to come harder and faster as the days passed unapologetically. The doctor in Amarillo had confirmed what I had already known. I was pregnant, and from all indications, I had conceived around the date of prom night. My next appointment was already rushing toward me. According to the tech I'd spoken to on my last visit, by the next time they saw me I would be far enough along that I could determine the sex of the baby if I wanted. I was already seventeen weeks into the pregnancy—very nearly at the halfway mark.

I was amazed at how little I knew about the whole process of pregnancy and the miracle of life that was growing inside of me. Not that I’d taken much interest in the topic having planned on holding off until I was well into my twenties to even think about having a child, and our education on the matter was laughable when you suddenly found yourself knee-deep in conversations about your hips spreading and loss of bladder control for the rest of your life.

Megan and Jen were still the only people who knew about my situation, and we’d decided that we would deal with telling people when hiding my bump was unavoidable. Right now, I just looked like I’d been at the buffet a little too eagerly. There was no telling how long I could make out like things were normal, but the weather was getting colder, and hoodies were a great way to hide my changing body, especially when they were several sizes too big for me.

The sudden buzzing of my phone had me plucking it up from the hood of my car where I was lounging. The name attached to the caller ID put a smile on my face, and I answered quickly.

“Great timing. I was just thinking about you.”

Dustin’s easy laughter filtered through the phone and relaxed me further. The familiarity of his tone was like an embrace, even when his arms were three hundred and ninety-five miles away in College Station, Texas.

“Oh, yeah? You gonna tell me what you were thinking about?”

“I already told you, I was thinking about you, but if you need that ego of yours stroked…” He laughed before I continued. “I was thinking about you, how much I miss you, how much I want to be kissing you right now.”

“Just kissing?” he asked, a hoarse rasp in his tone as he implied I was thinking about much more. He wasn’t wrong.

“Well, it’s a start. Kissing is the gateway drug to amazing sex, after all.”

“Damn, I love you.”

“You do?” I cooed quietly as my smile grew. “I was just thinking about that, too.”

“I really do, Mik. You know, they have a great radio station I think you would love down here. All classic rock, all the time,” he said in an announcer's voice. “My roommate’s from Houston, and he said that there’s an even better one down there called…” He broke off for a moment and called out to his roommate, Tad, “Rock one-oh-one KLOL. Shut up, man, I‘m about to tell her now. He wants us to all go to the rodeo down there. His dad has a cook-off team and says he can get us good tickets.”

“So, you and Tad are on better terms now?” I asked with a smile. When I’d visited him over the Labor Day weekend, the two of them were still getting used to sharing their space with each other.

“Shit, yeah, just one of those things you have to go through, I guess. We went out for a few beers, and it sorted itself out.”

“Even in a strange town, you get served beers?”

“It’s a college town, baby.”

“And you’re on the team.”

Dustin laughed again, the reverence in his tone warming me through as I pulled my legs closer to my stomach and took in the lavenders and oranges of the fading light.

“Funnily enough, it’s more that we’re students. I think it’s an officially unofficial thing. No one really says anything about it.”

“Another bonus of college then?”

“Not big enough to make me stop missing you.”

“Pussy!” Tad yelled in the background before laughing at something Dustin did in response.

“Shut up, douchebag. Don’t listen to him, Mik, he just has a huge crush on you.”

I smiled at the phone and rolled my eyes. When I’d visited Dustin had been insanely protective of me, and once we’d managed to get out of his bed and onto campus, his hand had been intertwined with mine. It was nice to feel claimed that way, and though most of that attention was due to the fact that he’d missed me, there had also been a possessive undertone there as well… especially around Tad.

“That’s unfortunate for him. I’m in love with his roommate,” I countered with a grin of my own.

“I fucking miss you.”

“I know that, and you know that I miss you so badly sometimes it hurts.”

There was a rustling sound. Music flared down the headset before going quiet again. We were alone now. He did this when he wanted to say something without being overheard. They had a quiet room on their floor for studying, and we’d made out in there when I’d visited him. That gave me a good mental image to follow him around while he was so far away.

“What did the lawyers say?”

“Not much. I haven’t seen them.”

He sighed in frustration, and I stroked the phone as though that had the power to ease his tension. It didn’t.

“I need you down here, baby.”

I released a stream of breath from my own lips as my hormones surged and filled my eyes with warm tears. I could cry at the tip of a hat these days, and most of the time it took a lot less to get me going. I just made more of an effort to cling to the fun parts of our conversations rather than remembering he wasn’t sitting in his bedroom cursing his family from across town.

I really wanted to be there, more than I wanted to take my next breath, even. All of those times we’d talked about the planned move down there ran through my head like a movie on repeat. I could almost feel his breath on the back of my neck when I settled into a nest of pillows I had on my car. Closing my eyes and giving myself over to the emotional upheaval could be cathartic, but when I heard my aching agony echoed back at me from his voice, it was too much.

“If I walk away now, I lose any rights. They can drag me back, which means the school district down there wouldn’t accept me when I do turn eighteen. This is the smart way to do things. You know that.”

“I know. I’d just really like to be on the hood of your car with my hand up your sweater about now.”

“I have a great imagination.”

The grunt of appreciation was all I needed to change gears, and I moved the conversation gracefully into reminding him just how much I needed him, too.

Falling back into the old routine at school was hard. I was, of course, grateful there was no Libby to worry about, but the less enjoyable part was that there was also no Dustin. Not to mention that there was my ever-growing stomach to hide from the rest of the populace. Before long, not even a hoodie would cover the bump that was protruding from my gut, and the secret would be out.

Knowing I still had my ability to fade into the background at school was nice and made it easier to keep things under wraps. On the day’s someone managed to catch a small glimpse of my stomach, Megan would be the best friend she always was and would cover for me in the unique way only she could. With a well-meaning snort here, she’d mentioned how I was eating my emotions these days with a sad smile and shrug. This deception that my solitude was finally becoming an Achilles heel was enough to distract whoever had churned up the interest to begin with, and the subject was dropped after a small exercising of their empathy.

Megan wasn’t lying about the food. In fact, my eating my emotions was all the truth. She just hadn’t mentioned that I was also eating more because I wasn’t just feeding myself anymore. Since the sickness had passed for good by the middle of September, my food consumption had multiplied considerably. I didn’t care that most took Megan’s response as us being on the outs because as it had always been. Megan and I did things our way and without apology. I had no reason to question her loyalty to me. I couldn’t imagine I ever would.

The days passed too slowly now I was back into the pattern of being in my own company at school, but no matter how slowly time progressed, my stomach ignored that logic and grew at almost double the rate. The baby had started to move by the end of September, and the first couple of times had felt a lot like a swarm of butterflies, but by the next week, the baby was over subtlety and doing somersaults, even going as far as to press down on my bladder in the middle of my college level algebra quiz. My teacher didn’t appreciate my snort of derision when he asked if I could hold off until the end of the damn test.

By the end of October—closing in on twenty-five weeks of pregnancy—hiding my stomach was becoming impossible without wearing sweaters three times too big for me, and even then stepping out into the wind was a calculated risk. One good gust and the material was plastered to the roundness of my bump exposing what was happening to me and my body. I was happy with my renewed ability to blend into the shadows where no one took any notice of the girl who was getting chubby in her senior year.

The first few flurries of snow fell and melted in early November. This anomaly was the same day that I was due in Amarillo for a doctor’s appointment. Jen had been with me to every appointment I’d had. She’d sit holding my hand, pumped me full of prenatal vitamins, made sure I ate everything I was supposed to eat and held my hand when I felt my world growing smaller by the minute. Jen was my rock, and she was the duct tape that held me together when I started to fall to pieces. She was the mother to me I knew mine wished she could have been, and Megan was the sister I’d always wished I’d had. She offered just as much support morally as well as physically that her mom was giving me. I had a support system that loved me unconditionally, and I knew how lucky that made me.

Having them in the room with me, each holding one of my hands as the image of my baby flickered on screen, and I discovered the sex for the first time, felt right to me. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house as we watched the smudge wriggle on the screen. The three of us stared in wonder as the doctor ran over the different points and printed us each off a picture to take home and coo over. I had two made; one was mine, and the other was for Dustin.

After much deliberation and a lot of time to think over everything, I knew that when he came home for Thanksgiving, there would be no question of the condition I was in, and there would be no more lies from me. I was going to tell him I was pregnant and explain why I had been so determined to keep the truth from him.

I carried the picture with me every day, hiding the glossy print in my pocket and stroking the smooth surface as I slowly fell in love with my growing child. I’d think I’d known, the moment I discovered I was pregnant, that I would love the baby and keep it, no matter what the outcome. The moment I’d seen the image on the screen, the tiny arms and legs in all its perfection, I was utterly and hopelessly lost… and I understood that I could never let the baby go. Even if Dustin decided he wanted nothing to do with us, I knew that I was committed to our baby. All of my heart, soul, and love were with the growing child inside of me.

The night before Dustin was due to drive home, he called me like he did every night, his voice filled with hope and excitement as he talked about everything he wanted to do with me.

“Rett’s already been on my case about going out and drinking at the old train car. He said he and the guys want to know about all the college girls. They’re going to be disappointed. I figure once I give them a heads up on how much the coach rides our asses, they’ll cut me a break.”

I smiled sadly and closed my eyes, just listening to his voice like I did at the beginning of most of our conversations.

“I’m sure they’ll want to hear about it all.”

“It just sucks. I wanted to spend that first night home with you, you know. Then that douche calls me and it’s back to that old shit again.”

I opened my eyes and looked down at my large protruding belly in all its splendor. My hand rubbed a circle over the wiggling baby as I tried my best just to focus on this conversation between us rather than the inevitable one about my current situation.

“He’s your brother, D.”

“I’ve had over nineteen years with the jerk. One night wouldn’t kill him.”

“He hasn’t seen you in months,” I said, trying my best to be the voice of reason and play Devil’s advocate at the same time.

“Neither have you,” Dustin said quietly, his tone edged with patient love. “You’re my priority, baby.”

My smile bloomed on my face, and my heart expanded with the love I felt for him, even though I knew this homecoming wasn’t going to go quite like he wanted it to. The fact that his brother had inadvertently given me one more night to prepare myself had been a blessing in disguise. I’d been waiting so long to see his face and the weeks had felt like years rather than months.

I could already see the smile he would give me when his eyes met mine, the warmth and need that would radiate through them as he reached for me. That visualization was almost as clear as my mental imaginings of his reaction to what he would see below my breasts.

Part of me knew that I should give him some kind of warning, that I shouldn’t just spring the baby on him with a surprise I’m pregnant, but I wasn’t sure how else I could break the news to him and get him in the same room so I could explain face-to-face. The possibility of the whole thing all blowing up and our relationship going to hell in a handbasket was a deep-seated fear that had anxiety running through me at all hours of the day and night. I wasn’t the only one suffering because of this constant panic. The baby wriggled every time those dips in gravity rolled past and made me feel like I was on the downside of a rollercoaster.

“I love you, D.”

“I love you, too.” I could hear the smile in his voice as he spoke, and the love laced in his tone brought warm tears to my eyes where they stung like an early punishment for my secret keeping. He would be upset, he had every right to be, but I needed him to listen.

“I’ll come over as soon as I get up on Tuesday morning.”

“Call first, just to make sure I’m up.”

“You don’t have to get up. I’ll just crawl into bed with you.”

Wouldn’t that be a shock to the system, I thought, the smile melting from my face as the panic crossed over me like a cloud eclipsing the sun. I didn’t know how to stop him from just showing up without sounding like I didn’t want him to come at all. My only choice was to be up earlier than him and be ready and dressed in the baggiest clothes I could find.

“We need to talk first.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“It’s not intended to be,” I said smoothly, an edge of reason coating my voice. “I just know exactly where your mind is located.”

“Did you just refer to my brains being located in my dick?” he asked, the laugh trailing from the last word. He coughed his humor back to a level where he could talk again. “Admit it, baby, it’s also one of the reasons you love me so damn much.”

“I love you for a lot of reasons, Dustin Hill. Sex is very close to the end of the list, even if it does have three underlines and exclamation points next to it.”

“You know how to stroke my ego. You always have.”

“Gotta keep my man happy,” I said quietly, my eyes slipping closed as my hand glided over the swell of my stomach again.

“Hey. You okay? You sound weird.”

“I just hate being apart from you.” Truth. “I hate that I can’t be there with you.” Truth. “I can’t wait to see you.” Truth.

“I’ll be there tomorrow, I know I won’t see you until Tuesday, but I will be there.”

“I can’t wait!” Lie. Oh, I couldn’t wait to see him, but I needed more time to think about how I was going tell him about the baby… how I’d lied to him for months.

“You want me to push Rett back? Ask him to wait for another night?”

There was a selfish part of me that wanted to say yes. I was scared to death of the rejection I was facing, but, if he decided he wanted to be a part of the baby’s life, I looked down at my stomach again and stroked with adoration, a part of us, it would be a huge weight off my shoulders. I also knew he had to have this time and wind down with his brother, and I wasn’t going to take that away from him.

“God, no. You haven’t seen him since you left. Just have fun.”

“This is Rett we’re talking about. He’s just going to get me stupid drunk.”

“I’m sure that’s true.” I yawned and shook my head, a small smile on my lips. “Right now, I’m going to bed, because the sooner I do that, the sooner I get to see you.”

“Now you’re talking. I love you.”

“Beyond the rings of Saturn,” I whispered back.

“That’s new.”

“Go to bed already.”

“See you soon, Mik,” he replied, whispering another declaration of love before he hung up and left me in the silence of my room. The gentle thrum of the AC lulled me into a false sense of security as I bundled under the covers.

Thirty-six hours.

That was all I had left. The expiration date on all of the lies I’d fed the man I’d promised not to lie to. The truth would finally be out, and the decision would be his to make. I just selfishly prayed that he would choose me. Us.