It used to be that as soon as Darry put his arms around her, Melissa felt safe. Like nothing could hurt her. It used to be that she honestly and truly believed that. Now, his arms are around her and she's still terrified. She's still hurting but good.
She puts her hands up into his hair. He wears it longer than his Soc friends, but shorter than most greasers. He doesn't grease it up, either, which Melissa likes because it's thick and has a cowlick in the back that just won't flatten. She likes to pull on it, and it makes Darry laugh.
She pulls on it this time, and he doesn't laugh. His head is pressed against her torso, just below her breasts and she knows he can hear how hard and fast her heart is beating. She bets his is beating the same way, without any indication that it'll ever slow down. Eventually, exhaustion takes over and Melissa can't stand there anymore. She sinks down next to Darry and lets him move his arms away from her only to reposition them back around her when she's at his level. Their faces are inches apart, then centimeters. She has never felt less sexy, but he kisses her and she lets him.
Darry's kisses are like balm to her. Melissa always thinks he can make anything better if he just wraps her in his arms and kisses her. She starts to think that if they kiss long enough this time, that when they stop, she won't be pregnant anymore. The problem will just float away, like a sigh that pushes off her lips when his fingers brush across her neck.
He lays her down without taking his lips off of hers, and Melissa closes her eyes when her head hits her pillow. She feels Darry's familiar weight settling over one side of her. She shivers, like always, when his hand brushes over her breast. But when his lips leave hers and he moves down to her neck, pulling her shirt out of the way so that he can kiss her shoulders, she knows she's still pregnant. He hasn't made it all go away this time.
Melissa puts a hand on her belly and feels Darry's close over the top of it. He's stopped kissing her now, and his face is buried in the crook of her neck. She feels the heat of his breath there. She's sweating a little bit.
"Mel."
He says her name, but she can't figure out why. Her eyes are still closed and she wants to move her hand away from her stomach. She wants Darry's hand away from there, too. She doesn't want to act like she's happy about this, because she's not.
Melissa has always secretly believed that if you have a baby and you aren't happy about it, the baby will know. Maybe not right away, but at some point in the baby's life, it'll figure it out. A light switch will go on in the baby's mind and it will never look at its mother the same way again.
This baby is doomed to that fate already. Melissa doesn't want it and she isn't happy. She isn't sure she'll ever be able to convince herself that this baby is a good thing. She'll have to drop out of school and marry Darry. He won't be able to go to Texas and they'll have to get jobs and a crappy apartment downtown. He'll do something during the day (she has no idea what) and she'll waitress at Denny's at night. It will be a scandal. Everyone will blame her because Darry was Going Places. Darry was going to Be Someone.Ashley Anderson will turn up her nose and say that she'd never have become pregnant with Darry's child until Darry was good and ready to be a father. Ashley will visit Darry at night, while Melissa is schlepping tables at Denny's for below minimum wage and lousy tips. She'll say she's there to help with the baby, but really she'll be there to remind Darry what he missed out on.
Melissa knows her imagination is running away with her, and if she keeps thinking like this, she's liable to go insane. She bites her lip hard to remind herself to come back to reality. Only she hates this reality as much as she hates the fantasy she's just dreamed up. She starts to cry without meaning to. Darry's arms tighten around her, but his face doesn't come out of the crook of her neck, even when tears roll down the sides of her face and splash onto his cheek. Even when she becomes wracked with sobs. He just holds her, not moving. He probably can't comfort her because he can't even find a way to comfort himself.
Darry knows he's going to miss curfew. He knows it without even looking at the clock. It feels like an eternity has passed since he walked into Melissa's room and found her sitting in the middle of the bed. Suddenly, missing curfew seems like a very small infringement upon the rules. Getting his sixteen-year-old girlfriend pregnant, now that's definitely something for his parents to scream at him about.
Melissa cries for a long time, and Darry feels his heart shattering into tiny pieces. He wishes he could fix this. He hates it when she cries. But he doesn't say anything because there's nothing he can say that's going to make it better. He knows he needs to reassure her that he'll be there for her and he has every intention of doing the right thing, but now doesn't seem to be the time. He's numb, and he's having a hard time formulating his role as protector.
He holds her until she falls asleep. She's cried herself to sleep, and Darry can't believe he let her do that. He let her cry all that time without saying anything, and he feels like a world-class jerk. He kisses her forehead and moves off of her, then gets the quilt at the foot of her bed and pulls it over her small form. She looks young, way too young for this anyway, and he starts to wonder again what the hell will become of their lives now.
He's going to let himself out from the terrace. Her mother will have gone to bed by now and he doesn't want to chance running into her father. Darry stops at her desk and opens one of her notebooks; the one that says 'science' across it in neat block letters. He turns to a blank page and writes, "I'll call you tomorrow. Everything will be okay. XOXO Darry."He couldn't lie to her face, but he guesses he could lie in a note. Everything will not be okay, that is for damn sure. Then he turns off her lamps and lets himself out onto the terrace, making the short jump over the iron railing into her mother's flower beds. There's nothing growing there yet, but in the summer, there will be rows and rows of brilliant color. For a minute, Darry stands there, sucking in lungfuls of fresh, cold air. His head clears a little, and when he looks at the sky and the sparse smattering of stars there, the situation feels less surreal.In the summer, he thinks, when Melissa's mom spends every minute she's not at her store in her yard tending the flowers, Melissa will start to show. Her belly will distend on her slender frame and those who haven't heard through gossip will now see with their own eyes. Everyone will say things like, "What a shame," and "That Curtis boy could have made something of himself. If only."
If only.
It's not like he's never thought about it. He's been petrified of getting a girl pregnant ever since his buddy Jason Thompson knocked his girlfriend up when he was a junior in high school. He dropped out and has been working at the Quick Mart ever since, and Lisa, now his wife, cleans hotel rooms on the weekends. After the first year or so, Darry never visited, and now his whole life seems so removed from Jason Thompson. Funny that he might be buddying up again when they become neighbors in the ramshackle apartments called The Willows that run along Sutton Street. Darry thinks it's the cheapest place to live that isn't infested or the size of a cardboard box. The Willows are at least the size of two cardboard boxes, side by side.
Darry thought about it all the time after Jason told him Lisa was pregnant. Jason's a year older than Darry, and at the time Darry had barely gotten to second base, much less considered going all the way with a girl, but Jason told him the time would come when he'd have to make a decision. Darry likes to think he's been a lot more careful than say, Paul or some of his other friends on the football team. But of course, it only takes one time, and he and Melissa have beat the odds lots more than once.
The truck has no heater, and Darry welcomes the bracing cold as he drives home. He starts trying to think about what he's going to say to Melissa tomorrow. Tomorrow will be the time he needs to step up and tell her he's going to support her. Maybe he couldn't do it tonight, but he deserves some time for this to sink in, too. Tomorrow, he'll do the right thing.
TBC...
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Tessie26 - In answer to your question, no, this does not correspond to "Not Today".