Tami was on her fifteen-minute break, sitting bent over a paperback in a booth in the far corner of the diner, trying not to think about the pregnancy. She'd made an appointment with the obstetrician for the end of the week. That was as far as she'd gotten in dealing with it. She hadn't told Mo. Not yet. She didn't know how he would react. She didn't even want him involved. Still, he deserved to know. She'd have to tell him eventually.
Eric slid into the seat across from her. She didn't notice he was there until he took the book from her hands, closed it, set it on top of the napkin dispenser, and asked, "Have you told Mo?"
"Not yet. I – "
"- Good." He put his hands flat down on the table and looked her straight in the eyes. "Here's what's going to happen."
"Eric, I - "
"- This baby is mine."
"You know that's not possible," she said. "We haven't even - "
"- Listen to me," he insisted. "You know Mo's not going to step up. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to elope this summer, before we go to college. TMU is giving me housing, too, not just tuition. If we're married before we start school, I can get us family housing. Family housing goes all the way through the summer. We won't have to pay rent the whole time we're in college. I can get more hours this summer at the gas station before we head off to college. I'll work two shifts. I'll work while we're at college too – I'll find another gas station or a lawn service or something. I'll find a way between football and school – I'll find a way to support you and the baby. And that's what's going to happen."
Tami nodded dully. She wanted to say no, that she couldn't ask that of him, that they hadn't dated long enough, that it was a bad idea, that he was under no obligation to her.
But instead she just grabbed the lifeline he had thrown her.
[*]
Tami had always hated going to the GYN. She'd made her first appointment in secret, the last month of her sophomore year, – because she was getting pressure from her then boyfriend, and she wanted to get on the pill. The guy had dumped her not long after they had sex. After that, she'd told herself she didn't need a relationship, that she was just having fun, that sex hadn't – and didn't – mean anything to her.
Today, she felt more awkward than usual. She was glad when the whole mortifying experience was over and the door shut, for the final time, behind her. She shred herself of the flimsy paper robe, which seemed specifically designed to intensify the discomfort of the whole experience. After throwing on her clothes, she walked across the hall to the doctor's office and sat down in the big chair across from her desk.
Dr. Erickson was scribbling on her chart. She closed the folder and looked up. "You took an E.P.T.?"
Tami nodded.
"Hmmmm…." She opened the folder again and looked at a paper. "And it was positive?"
Tami nodded.
"You just took the one?"
Of course she'd just taken the one. Those things cost a bundle. She nodded again. She looked at the framed picture on the wall behind the doctor, of three cuddly babies, all dressed in pink. Were she and Eric really going to do this? Raise a child together? While he worked and went to school and played football, and she tried to wend her slow way through college? Would she grow to resent him, the way her mother had grown to resent her father? Still worse, would Eric grow to resent her?
"Well…these home tests have been on the market for less than ten years. They haven't really been refined yet. So you get a number of false negatives. But false positives are very uncommon."
"I know." Those babies were plump, and smiling, and happy. Always the babies in the pictures. Never the parents. What did their faces look like, Tami wondered, after hours of not sleeping, after the fights caused by the irritability, after the vanished dreams?
"But apparently you got one of those rare false positives. You aren't pregnant."
Not pregnant?
Not pregnant.
Not pregnant.
The relief rose through her like a flame.
Then a wave of insecurity doused the relief. Eric had proposed to her. She'd said yes. He'd proposed to her when he thought she was pregnant with another guy's baby. He'd promised to stand by her, see her through, be her husband, and work hard for her and the baby that wasn't even his. To raise it as his own.
She didn't deserve him.
She wasn't better than her past, better than her mother, better than all her mistakes. Eric would realize that soon enough.
Tami made her way home numbly. She called Eric at the gas station. She told him she wasn't pregnant, and then she told him they were over.
He was still asking, "Why? What did I do? I didn't do anything! Why, Tam -" when she hung up the phone.
[*]
Eric called the day after she broke up with him, in the early morning, before Shelley had to be at summer cheerleading camp and Tami had to be at work. He called the second and the third day too. Tami made Shelley answer the phone every time and say she wasn't home.
"What's up with you and the dweeb anyway?" Shelley asked when she put down the phone that third day. "You aren't down with him anymore?"
"Shell, could you talk like a normal person for just one day? This phase has lasted well over a year now."
"You know, I think I was way harsh calling Eric a hoser before. Maybe you're the hoser."
"What's a hoser?" Tami asked.
"A hoser is someone who has this guy who's totally in love with her and kisses the ground she walks on like he was the frickin' Scarlet Pimpernel, but then she goes and dumps him because she's afraid of being seriously loved."
"Shell, did you seriously just make a literary allusion and attempt a psychological analysis in the same sentence?"
"No shit, Sherlock."
"Fuck you, Watson."
Shelley walked away, and Tami picked up her purse and headed out for work. She had to break up with Eric, the way she saw it. What if he insisted on keeping his word and marrying her? If he ended up staying with her out of duty, that would be a fate worse than losing him—to be with someone, day in and day out, who was punching a clock, who was just doing the right thing. Her mom had been like that with her dad, for years, and look where he'd ended up—with a shot gun to his head.
That wasn't going to be Tami, that was for sure.
[*]
The fourth day, Eric stopped calling. Tami hovered by the phone in the morning, hoping it would ring, but it didn't.
She wondered if he'd found another girl.
[*]
By day seven, Tami couldn't take not hearing his voice anymore. She called him at work and said, "I want to be friends still. Can we be friends?"
"I…" He sighed. "I don't want to be friends."
Desperation washed over her "Please? Eric, just…please?"
"Tami, I don't even know what I did wrong."
"You didn't do anything…I just…" How could she explain this? How could she explain any of this? "I just want to be friends. Please?"
"I have a customer." The phone went dead.
[*]
Tami pulled long shifts at the diner, late morning through the afternoon and late into the evening, but not as late as Eric worked. When she got off, she drove by the gas station, slowly, just to get a glimpse of him.
Sometimes he'd be pumping someone's gas, since it wasn't all self-serve in those days. Sometimes he'd be wiping down a windshield, but most of the time, that late at night, the place was desolate, and she could only see his profile through the front window of the quickie mart, where he sat with his feet up on the counter, reading a magazine. Once, she thought he looked up and recognized her car, and she sped off.