Chapter 16
Jessica hid out in a filthy motel on the outskirts of Reno. The desert wasteland around her reflected her mood perfectly. She felt as empty as the desert with the cold December wind howling over it, shivering the cactuses and yucca. Though she had intended to only stop here for a little while, she had not been feeling well. So she ran scams and panhandled here for nearly two weeks, earning enough each day for food and the rent on her motel room. Besides, she was sick of moving around. She had really liked her little apartment and she missed it. It was nothing fancy, not like Evan’s place, but it had been home. The transient life was already old to her, even though she had been living it for nearly six years already.
The “Vacancy” sign flashed on and off, imprinting its red lines into her eyeballs. She didn’t have the energy to close the curtains and shut it out, however. Since arriving in Reno and getting off the smelly bus, she had felt queasy and horrible. At first she thought it was the bus’s stench; then she thought it was stress and guilt from leaving Evan high and dry, and her sense of betrayal. Now she was beginning to wonder if she had food poisoning. Her stomach rumbled with hunger but she knew that if she ate, she would not be able to keep it down.
Suddenly, she bolted to the toilet and threw up the entirety of her burger and fries from lunch earlier. As she gagged over the toilet, she rocked back and forth on her heels. “Would this misery just end?” she groaned.
She reached into her overnight bag to locate her mouthwash to get the foul vomit taste out of her mouth. Her hand brushed over an unopened box of tampons. Unopened…wait, how long had it been since her last period? She counted the weeks on her fingers and gasped. No period, throwing up, no energy, weeks of unprotected sex with Evan – she was pregnant!
Jessica barely remembered to throw on a coat before she dashed outside. There was a Walgreens a little ways down the street. She ran the entire way there, driven by her sense of panic. Never before had she been pregnant, or even had a pregnancy scare.
“How could I have been so stupid?” she muttered as she ran her fingers over the different pregnancy tests. No difference between the different brands was apparent, so she grabbed four different ones and dumped them on the checkout counter. The unfazed cashier scanned them and Jessica’s hands shook as she attempted to focus long enough to count out the bills.
Back in the motel room, Jessica peed on the first two sticks and set them on the counter to wait. She found that she was too dehydrated to take the other two tests, so she bought a few bottles of water from the motel’s vending machine to chug. The man working the desk surveyed her with a devious smile and asked how she was doing. She just blatantly ignored him. Whether she stayed in Reno or moved along farther away, she wasn’t going to stay in this shady place.
By the time she made it back in her room, she realized that the tests were ready. But it took her a while to find the guts to peek at them. They lay on the bathroom counter next to the sink, innocent-looking pink plastic sticks of doom. Standing on her tiptoes, Jessica gradually leaned over the counter to see what the screens said.
Both sported two lines.
She was pregnant.
She desperately squatted over the other two tests. The water went right through her and she was able to saturate them. Then she hovered over them, her dread surmounting as the second line grew on both of them.
Pregnant!
Jessica flopped down on her bed to cry. All she wanted in this moment was the feeling of Evan’s fingers through her hair. His touch felt a lot like her mother’s. She didn’t want to endure what her own mother had, slaving away day after day, never making ends meet, sometimes skipping meals. Besides, she was a con artist. A pregnancy could offer her a wealth of scam options, but con artists didn’t get health insurance. How could she afford to deliver her baby? And besides, what kind of life would that be for her child growing up? It wasn’t like Jessica had the work history necessary to get any kind of good job. Her chances with Evan were clearly blown.
The only option was to tell him, Jessica realized. And while her stomach clenched at the thought of telling him the news, she wanted to tell him. She wanted to share this moment with him and see the look on his face. As much as she hated billionaire playboys, she knew that Evan was not that way. Maybe he was a smarmy liar and a con artist like she was, but he had a genuinely kind soul. That wasn’t an act. Or so she hoped. He would actually care, of that she was sure.
Then the fantasies filled her head. Fantasies of Evan pushing a small child on a swing, and taking the child out for ice cream. She imagined them sitting down to decadent, home-cooked meals in his lavish kitchen. Above all, she imagined that the child would resemble Evan, with his serious countenance and broad nose and smiling sterling silver eyes. He or she would have brown hair, and a cute face, and probably Jessica’s faint childhood freckles. What a cutie! And how she looked forward to holding her baby, their baby, and feeling it writhe around and hearing its little cries. More tears sprung down her cheeks, but they were tears of love and tenderness. Love for the baby and love for Evan. The fact it was Evan’s baby made this moment even sweeter.
“Stop and get a hold of herself,” she told herself. “How could I still be in love with him? He’s just another Gary. Conning me with his smiles and his gourmet cooking and his muscles. He’s sure good at playing the perfect man. But he’s just another liar. A good liar, too. I don’t ever want to see him again.”
Nevertheless, it was a long, sleepless night. Jessica oscillated between thoughts of Evan and thoughts of running off to some place like New York City and doing this alone. While she didn’t want to be alone, she also didn’t want to go back and put her trust in Evan after he completely broke it. Sure, she had been lying to him, but the way that he had led her on just sickened her.
In the morning, she woke up stiff and miserable. At least her morning sickness seemed to have abated, even though it was, ironically, morning. It was also now two days until Christmas. Jessica groaned as she thought about Christmas.
As a child, her mother always strove to make Christmas magical. She would take Jessica for drives through neighborhoods to see the lights and they would stand outside of lavish Christmas shows on the Strip. They always went to the Christmas tree lighting and had a little fake tree of their own. There were always stacks of presents under the tree. Jessica felt so bad about when she was ten and she pitched a fit because her gifts were not as flashy as the ones her classmates got. Her mom had cried for hours that night. With age, Jessica began to feel worse and worse each Christmas. She felt guilty for hating her cheap presents and how hard her mother would work approaching the holiday season. The year she was eighteen, she set up a little Christmas tree in her mother’s hospital room and they enjoyed a meager, watery Christmas feast of hospital cafeteria food. Her mother had been too weak to sing carols and had just laid in her bed, smiling at Jessica. There were no gifts that year; no money was available to either of them.
Since her mother had died, Jessica’s last good Christmas was last year, with Gary. They had just completed a huge scam and were rolling in money. Gary had made an effort to cater a splendid feast and even hauled a real Christmas tree into their room. Of course, they had had to take it down in five days since they moved rooms at least once a week, but the spirit was still nice. Jessica remembered perching cross-legged by the tree sipping buttered rum and opening the expensive pieces of jewelry, watches, and other fine things that Gary had bought her. It seemed like Christmas once again and she was so stunned when just a few months later, Gary took off with her money and the closest thing she had ever enjoyed to a father-daughter relationship.
No other Christmases had been very nice for Jessica. And now, here in this cold motel room in Reno about to take another bus rude to some undetermined location, she felt miserable. She didn’t want this Christmas. She wanted the holidays and the jingles playing in stores to go away. It all brought her tons of pain. And now she had a little one growing inside of her, so she couldn’t go get drunk, which was the only thing she felt like doing.
She couldn’t put her little one through the same pain she had gone through. She couldn’t subject her baby to a life of paltry Christmases, moving around, and sometimes having money and sometimes not even having enough pennies to buy ramen. And there was always the possibility getting caught and going to prison. Then her child would be foisted into foster care.
There was no choice. It was time to go back to Evan. The life Evan could give her child was so much better than anything she could provide herself. She hated the idea of that bat Linda being involved in her child’s life, but Evan had to be. Evan was a liar and a con man, but so was she. Maybe they were perfect for each other. At least perfect enough to raise a child.
She grabbed her few bags and ran to the bus station, hoping to catch the next bus to Las Vegas. But the next bus did not run until 1:30. She had an entire morning to kill. So she slumped into a nearby diner with Wi-Fi. She had thrown out her phone and picked up a burner to see what was going on in the world. The idea of calling Evan right now over Wi-Fi killed her. But she decided this was the kind of news that you break in person.
The surly waitress brought her a cup of weak coffee. Is coffee okay for when you are pregnant? Jessica typed into the Google search bar. The Internet assured her that her morning coffee addiction was fine as long as she stuck to one cup. Then she looked up what to eat when you’re pregnant and decided that the only remotely healthy thing on the menu was the pancakes and eggs.
For hours, she slumped in her seat, reading about how to be a mother. She wished more than anything that her mother was there to show her what to do. To meet her little grandchild. Jessica was so overcome with thoughts and worries that she couldn’t think straight. All of this was just too much. The waitress kept glaring at her, so she would order something else like juice. She watched the buses pull in and out of the terminal as the minutes dragged by with irritating slowness.
Finally, 12:30 came. She tipped the waitress well, even though she was nearly at the end of her cash, and she ran over to the station to wait in the blistering cold. Her legs jumped. An old man sat next to her and asked her if she was all right.
“Fine,” she lied with a smile.
“Want a cigarette?” He pulled out a smashed and beaten pack.
Jessica vehemently shook her head. “I’m pregnant.” Saying the words aloud made it even more real for her.
“Wow!” the man said, sizing up her stomach, which still wasn’t betraying her condition. “That’s wonderful. Boy or girl?”
“I won’t know for a while,” she replied. Then she added, “I hope it’s a girl.”
The man started talking about his three daughters, all by different women, when Jessica’s bus pulled in. She ran away from him, barely remembering to tell him bye.
It was time to go to Vegas and begin a new chapter of her life as a mother with Evan Davis.