CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Stupid. The word just echoed in my head. I knew I was overreacting. I knew that Jonathon didn’t mean to insult me but it was just that word that made me crazy. Especially since I had been starting to suspect Jonathon was right. It was stupid to be messing around with trying to get his father to put something suggestive in a text. It had made me feel nauseous, deceptive, and violated in some way. It made me feel like even though I was doing it for the right reasons, I was a participant, a flirt.

Doing something wrong.

Which I was, by keeping it a secret.

There was nothing deceptive about my personality and I was lying, plain and simple. It made me feel super uncomfortable. So what do you do when you know you’re wrong? You get defensive.

But I was telling the truth about Jonathon treating me like a kid. He did that. I was not okay with it.

“This is it,” Devon said, unlocking his car on the street.

I got in the passenger side, and slammed the door shut behind me, shivering in Jonathon’s shorts, sweatshirt, and my fuzzy boots. Spring hadn’t arrived yet. “I live on McMillan. That way.”

I pointed, still annoyed with Devon for calling me an idiot.

“Look, I’m sorry about what I said. That was rude.”

“You’re right. It was.” Sorry, but I wasn’t feeling generous.

“But you know, Jonathon’s father is going to get fired if this comes out. There will be a huge scandal. You probably should have mentioned your concerns to him.”

He was right. “I wasn’t trying to cause a scandal. I was trying to prevent Professor Kadisch from doing this to someone else. Someone who would be afraid to speak out. But I honestly didn’t think he would get this creepy.” And I knew what happened to girls who spoke up without proof. They got dragged through the mud. “I didn’t think anyone would believe me without something in writing.”

“Well, you are right about that. Sad, but true.”

“That’s my building.” I gestured to the right. My shitty, sucky apartment building that was going to feel empty and dark without Jonathon in it with me. I sighed.

“You know he’s a good guy, right? I mean, you’re just pissed right now and you’ll work all this out.”

Tears filled my eyes. “To be totally honest with you, I am starting to think that Jonathon and I keep trying to force our relationship to work when we were never meant to be together in the first place. My stupidity and a cheating ex-boyfriend are the reason we hooked up, you know.”

“Don’t discount attraction and affection.”

“Affection? Yes, he has affection for me. Sort of like you do with your Yorkie.” I opened the door and climbed out. “Thanks for the ride.”

“Sure. Kylie, listen . . .”

But I was already slamming the door shut. When I had gone to the coffee shop and told Jonathon I was pregnant, I had also told him that I wasn’t stupid, that I didn’t expect him to fall in love with me and marry me. But somewhere along the way, I had expected exactly that. Sometimes I was optimistic and sometimes that moved straight on into unrealistic.

It hadn’t been fair to him.

I was still doing it.

I hadn’t even gone to the doctor to get birth control, the one thing he had been asking me to do. Even after hearing Riley and Jessica say it was a reasonable expectation on his part.

Running to the front door, I quickly opened it and jogged up the stairs. By the time I was inside my apartment, I knew what I had to do. I had to stop seeing Jonathon. Maybe not forever, but for now. I hadn’t even been over Nathan when I had hooked up with him. Then the pregnancy, the morning sickness, the miscarriage, the tension between us, the constant changing of my perception of what the future would hold . . . when had I ever had time to just reflect, grow, mature?

When had I given him time to decide if he really wanted to be with me?

After the miscarriage I had ambushed him drunk at the bar and coaxed him home with me. That was fair. Not.

Flopping onto my bed, I pulled my boots off and dumped them on the floor. Then I slid in under my comforter and lifted the neck of his sweatshirt up to my nose so I could smell Jonathon. I started crying. I couldn’t help it. I knew every inch of him, every gesture he made, every tilt of his head, every smile. Yet I didn’t know what ninety percent of those numbers on his tattoo meant, and I would never understand what he was actually studying or what he planned to do post–graduate school. I didn’t know what was in his head.

My phone rang in my pocket. It was him.

“Hello?”

“Kylie, I’m so glad you answered. You know I don’t think you’re stupid, I was just totally disgusted by my father.”

“Jonathon, you graduate in two months.”

“What? Uh, yeah, so?” His voice was gruff, confused.

“What are you doing after graduation?”

“Getting a job.”

“Is that what you were going to do before you met me?”

“I wasn’t sure yet.”

I closed my eyes, right hand holding my phone up to my ear, left on my forehead. “I need you to do whatever you were going to do before you met me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I don’t want to be the dumb blonde who held you back.”

“You’re not. Don’t say that.”

“I am. And I won’t do that to you. I want you to plan your life without me in it.”

“Are you breaking up with me?” he asked in disbelief.

“Yes. And when you are done with school and have a plan, if you still want me to be part of your life, if you think I will fit into it, let me know.” I tried to prevent a sob, but it slipped out anyway. “I’ll be here.”

“Kylie, no, come on. Don’t overreact. This isn’t necessary.”

“Yes, it is,” I insisted. “I want to know, no, I need to know that you chose me. That without the responsibility of me guiding you, you want me as your girlfriend, as your partner. Equal partner.”

“I do,” he said, his voice emphatic.

“You haven’t even thought about it. We both need to think about it.” Suddenly I just felt exhausted. Like the last nine months of my life just pressed down on top of me and squeezed every last ounce of energy out of me.

“I don’t see why we can’t think and still be together. I think all the time.”

That almost made me want to laugh, except that my heart was breaking. I didn’t want to trap Jonathon. I wanted him to come back to me all on his own because he loved me. Me. “I speak before I think a lot, Jonathon. I react. So I really believe that I need time to get myself together before we move forward with our relationship. Two months. Let’s talk when you graduate.”

“This is pointless and, frankly, it feels manipulative. Do you want me to beg?”

“What? No, of course not.” Why was it that when I was trying to be mature guys assumed it was a game? “I just think we need some time and space.”

“Space sucks,” was his opinion.

I’d never heard Jonathon sound immature, but right then, he did. “I have one question—do you want me to say anything about your dad to the university or should I let it drop?” It felt like it was his right to decide. It would be his family affected by an investigation.

There was no hesitation in his voice. “I want you to turn him in. It’s worse that it was you, but honestly, if it were any one of his students, I would want them to speak out. That is not okay. He should be fired, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Okay.” I was glad he felt that way. I was uncomfortable with the thought of his father doing to a vulnerable freshman what he had done to me.

Silence grew between us. I had so many things to say, but no coherent thoughts. How did I explain to him that I loved him with every breath in my body, but that I didn’t think I was good for him? That I was worried he would grow to resent me? That the things he found cute about me now would be the things he would grow to despise as the years went by?

How did I explain that I needed to be kinder to myself, more honest? That I had never allowed myself any time to stop and listen to my thoughts. That if we were going to be together, I wanted it to be forever, not a pit stop in my life. That when I looked at him, I felt my heart swell with the most amazing sense of love and contentment and that I wanted to be his wife some day, raise his children, greet him at the front door with a baby on my hip and a smile on my lips.

You don’t say those things to guys. You’re not even supposed to think them. You’re not supposed to admit that your greatest ambition in life is to have a family.

And lying in the dark of my lame apartment, barely passing my classes, it was all just ridiculous, a stupid dream. A future that I didn’t have the right to claim, an expectation I couldn’t put on Jonathon. He had to choose it.

“Jonathon . . .”

“Don’t do this, Kylie. Please.” His voice was tight. “I’ve been nothing but reasonable, you know. I’ve tried so fucking hard . . . it’s not fair that you just get to walk away.”

My tears came faster. “I don’t want you to be reasonable.”

“So you want me to be irrational? A dick? Yell and scream and make demands? Throw you over my shoulder?”

“No . . .” I wasn’t sure how to make him understand.

But he wasn’t going to give me a chance to explain. “If you want to talk in two months, you can call me. Because now I’m done.”

And he hung up.

I cried myself to sleep, hugging his sweatshirt to me.

*   *   *

After I got off the phone with Kylie, I walked back and forth across my kitchen, my fists clenched, my chest tight. When Devon tried to talk to me, I decided I had to leave. Grabbing my coat and keys, I went out onto the street, walking past the late night pizza place and the coffee shop that was open until midnight. Past the hipster club that hosted indie music acts, crowds of people hovering around outside smoking. I walked and walked, not sure where I was going, not sure that I cared. It was cold and that strange dark that you get in urban areas, where the dark is a cloudy shadow, murky and intermittent.

It felt sinister, like my mood.

I couldn’t believe that Kylie had broken up with me. Sure, she said it was a break, space, time, two months. Fuck two months. Fuck all of it. Good relationships don’t need a break or space. A break is a stop on the road to never seeing each other. It’s a pause where you feel free to fuck other people. Then you attempt to get back together and it’s all awful, it’s misunderstandings and baggage and bullshit and fuck that. Fuck it.

I kicked a rock with my boot.

My whole life was falling apart. My father was a pervert. He was also my advisor so there would be scrambling to redo my thesis panel. How was I supposed to tell my mother? It was just disgusting. Now I knew there was no way I was going to stay at UC for my post-doc. There wouldn’t be any point.

In the past few months, I had re-envisioned my life multiple times and I was sick of having to readjust, picture new realities. I wanted to know where I was going, what I was doing. Who I was doing it with. If I were honest with myself in the past few weeks I had been allowing myself to picture that future that Devon said guys like me weren’t supposed to want. Settling down with Kylie. Having a family.

I started to call her again then stopped myself.

It had only been two hours, not two months.

How could she stand the thought of going two whole months without speaking, without seeing each other? I already felt lonely, empty. My arms already missed her. I was already spinning logical arguments I could present to her.

But she didn’t want me to be logical to her.

She wanted me to proceed with my life as I had been planning to before I had met her that night.

I wasn’t sure what that was supposed to prove.

And as I sat on the steps of the Corryville church-turned-rental-hall, I knew that it was impossible to stand in that same spot with the same motivations and knowledge. Everything had changed that night she had walked into the coffee shop with her pink fuzzy scarf wrapped around her neck and when she sent me that text about having my ion you. I couldn’t undo any of the emotions our relationship had created. I couldn’t just wipe it clean and go back to being the guy who was only thinking about himself when he thought about his future.

The date was even on my arm.

It had changed everything.

And now she didn’t want it. She didn’t want me.