A/N: Okay, this story has thus far been done in third person limited POV, either from Ben's or Adrian's perspectives. I think I'm now going to add in Ricky's third person limited POV as well, since he now knows about the pregnancy.

Turning Tables

Absent Minded

"You didn't have the abortion, did you?"

"I don't want to talk about this right now-"

"Too bad." Cindy filled the bathroom doorway. "Now I just bought us a little time by getting Ben, his father, and Ricky to leave, but you can't avoid them forever." She shook her head, face chalk full of disappointment. "I can't believe you lied to me-"

"I didn't lie!" Adrian yelled. "I didn't tell you one way or the other, there's a difference."

"Lie by omission, then. You purposely let me think you'd had the abortion."

"Well I was going to, that's what I went there for-"

"Did you change your mind?"

"No. Not exactly." Adrian groaned and slumped against the bathtub. "Ben showed up. He didn't know about anything at that point, but apparently he was there to get tested because – because of me. Anyway, some shit went down and he realized I was there for the abortion and he started fighting me on it. I got angry and upset and I just left. I figured I'd go back later, but…"

"But what?" Cindy asked, voice getting higher in pitch. "You changed your mind?"

Adrian closed her eyes. "I don't know."

"How can you not know?"

"Exactly what I said!"

"How can you possibly want to have a baby in high school, Adrian?"

"You did!"

"Yes!" Cindy shouted. "And look where it got me! Us! I worked constantly, my parents resented me, you resented me-"

"I didn't resent you."

"Didn't you? I was never there for you, I always missed the important moments in your life-"

Adrian felt herself tear up again. "You were the best you could be under the circumstances, with my no good father around."

Cindy looked away. "Adrian," she whispered, "you're not thinking of keeping the baby just to keep one of those two boys, are you?"

"Why?" Adrian shrugged. "Why would it matter? I mean, even if I was, it wouldn't matter. If he got me pregnant, it's half of his responsibility regardless, right? It's not like I went out with the intention to get pregnant or anything, we were both stupid and things just happened."

"It won't work. You can't force someone to love you by trapping them with a baby! And," Cindy hugged herself, "in this situation, it's even more risky! What if you try to keep that baby for just one boy and it turns out to be the baby of the other boy's? Then where would you be?"

Adrian wiped her forehead with the back of her head. "Don't you think I've thought about that? That's what I've been mulling over since Friday, but now that they both know about the pregnancy, I don't have the backdoor that I had before!"

"If you get the abortion, you might still be able to preserve things with the guy you want."

Adrian glared at her mother. "I thought you said this was my choice? That you'd stand by me no matter what? Are you now advocating I get the abortion? Or…is that what you were hoping all along?"

Cindy was silent. A slip of cotton could've hit the tile and it would've echoed.

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"Ricky! What are you doing here?"

Ricky lowered his head, putting on his best distraught face. "I just needed to see you, Grace."

"Is something wrong?" She touched his arm with the gentlest of fingers. "Are you okay? Are you in some kind of trouble?"

Ricky shook his head. "Not exactly." He exhaled. "Maybe. I don't know. I just – I need to get away from my life for a little while, okay?"

Grace nodded and stepped aside, waving her arm across the threshold. "Come in, come in!" She led him into the living room, where the smell of fresh baked cookies enlightened the air. "I probably look a mess," she replied bashfully. "I just got done making some chocolate chip cookies. You want some?"

Ricky smiled. "That'd be great, Grace." He followed her into the kitchen and took a seat at her table while she scurried around with the energy of a squirrel, sliding warm cookies off the pan and pouring an icy cold glass of whole milk.

"Here you go! Tell me what you think…" She smiled bashfully. "I think I may have cooked them a little long…"

Ricky took one bite into the cookie: it was a little crispy on the edges, but the middle was gooey and so hot it almost burned his tongue. He took a sip of the milk and then dipped the no longer full moon shaped treat into the glass to cool it off. "I think they're the best cookies I've ever had!"

Grace playfully slapped his shoulder. "You don't have to flatter me, it's not like they're homemade or anything, just from a package mix. I was going to make homemade ones, mind you, but then I realized we were out of chocolate chips, so I was thinking of seeing if the neighbor had any, but then she wasn't home so I-"

The cheerleader's voice fell deaf on Ricky's ears as he leaned in to kiss her. He noted that her mouth tasted warm and sweet, completely unlike Adrian's, and he felt her go as soft as the middle of the cookies in his hands. When he pulled back, he realized she still seemed to be recovering. "You eat cookie dough while you're baking?" he grinned.

"How did you-"

"I can taste it on your lips," he cut in smoothly, running his thumb across her lower lip.

Grace shivered, her cheeks suddenly on fire. "Ricky…" She placed her hand to her chest, seemingly trying to catch her breath. "You said you needed to get away from your life," she said, changing the subject. "What's the matter?" She touched his hand. "You can tell me, I won't judge. I promise."

Ricky could feel his jawbone grinding below his gums as it yearned to open and spill to her everything that had just taken place in the hallway at Adrian's condo, but alas, he shook his head. "I can't. I'm sorry, Grace. It's just not my place." He knew it sounded better that way, at least to her.

Grace nodded slowly. "I understand. But when you're ready, I'm always here. Always." The blonde touched his arm, warm like the ray of sunshine that she was. "I ran into Adrian today," she announced, trying to turn the topic away from him.

Ricky's limbs became taut. "Really?" he asked, voice strained like a strand of hair about to snap, but Grace didn't seem to notice.

"Yeah." Her face went long and sour. "In the bathroom. She seemed really sick, like maybe she never got over whatever she had last week. I'm worried about her." Grace tucked her hair behind her shoulder.

"Did she tell you what was wrong?" he asked, worry lacing his words, though not for the reasons he suspected Grace thought.

"No, she seemed pretty agitated. I would've stayed longer, but then I was late for class." She looked down at her shoes. "I don't know," she sighed. "Maybe it would've been the Christian thing to do to stay with her anyway."

Ricky wound his arms around the Freshman, pulling her into his chest. "I appreciate that you did that, Grace. She hasn't done anything to deserve your kindness-"

"Love the sinner," Grace reminded.

Ricky felt his skin twinge. "Like me."

Grace pulled away from him. "I didn't mean-"

"It's okay," he interrupted. "I am a sinner. I've done a lot of bad things."

Grace touched his face. "It doesn't matter what you've done in the past, Ricky. It's what you do now that counts." She hugged him again.

At first Ricky resisted the inner warmth that her words provided, then he gradually began to feel something that could only be described as melting or thawing on the inside, the way he was giving into Grace's embrace on the outside. "Maybe if you knew about my past, you wouldn't be so quick to say that."

Grace shook her head below his chin. "No. You're a good person, Ricky Underwood. I can see that and so can God. You may not want to tell me what's going on with you right now and I completely understand that, but I promise that if you let God into your heart, he can help you with whatever you're going through…and if you ever need a physical friend, I'm always here."

Ricky internally scoffed at the idea of Grace's God helping him. He'd given up on God a long time ago. But even so, there was something about the other things she'd said that niggled at him. There were forces in place now that he had no control over, but she was right: he still had control over one thing, his own actions.

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There was no other way to describe it than pure mortification. Staring into Cindy's eyes as his father had professed how he would be responsible for Adrian and the baby, if the baby proved to be his, had been one of the most degrading things he'd ever had to do. It was further exacerbated by the fact that the hot shot drummer had walked up right at that moment and heard everything. Going solely by the look on Ricky's face, which was the same one that Ben had imagined himself to have, he also suspected that it was the first inkling the drummer had gotten about the pregnancy.

"Mom," Ben whispered, kneeling into the grass in front of a giant marble headstone that bore his mother's name: Sarah Helen Boykewich. "What am I going to do?" He reached out to touch the engraved S with his fingers, like he was running them through a curl of hair. The last time he'd visited her headstone was just the previous month, on the twenty-fifth of September. It had been years since he'd made two visits in such close proximity, but the situation was at a breaking point, and luckily his father had taken pity on him in spite of still maintaining that he was grounded.

"You know, even though your mother and I married right out of high school, she was skeptical about having children for a long time."

"Can you blame her?" Ben asked defiantly. "You were eighteen, just three years older than I am. You still had everything to look forward to."

"I wanted to try for children for years before she did."

"Where are you going with this?"

"Well if I'd had things my way, we might never have had you, Benjamin. And during those twelve years where we were childless, my business took off because I had time for it in ways that I wouldn't have had if your mother hadn't insisted on waiting to have children."

Ben glared. "And so talking about how great your life turned out because you waited to have me is supposed to make me feel better how?"

"You're hearing this the wrong way. My point is that I didn't get to decide my future. Things happened beyond my control that I initially was unhappy with, but turned out to be a blessing. Like having you. And although the circumstances right now may seem considerably less than ideal, maybe they're actually a blessing in disguise?"

Ben stared at his mother's headstone for a long time, then watched his reflection in the marble as he shook his head. "And then sometimes things just happen, that aren't good and ruin your life, just because they do…no rhyme or reason. Like mom dying…and this pregnancy." He rose from the grass and blew past his father, only bothering to look back once to see that his dad staring helplessly at the fated headstone.

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"Ricky!" A tall African-American man with a mustache, somewhat resembling an older Eddie Murphy, was just twisting the key in the door handle of his office when he turned to discover the teenager staring at him.

Ricky winced under the elder man's gaze. "If you're already closing up tonight, I can come back tomorrow-"

"No, no." The lines on his forehead stacked together. "Of course not, I don't mind staying for you." Dr. Fields quickly turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open, swiping the lights on his way inside. "You look a little out of breath, are you alright?"

Ricky hovered nervously in the doorway, fingers twitching as the clutched the frame and eyes jumping from one side of their sockets to the other. "I'm fine."

Dr. Fields moved to his chair and sat down before motioning towards the couch. "Please, take a seat."

Ricky cautiously kicked the door shut with the edge of his sneaker and moved to the couch, where he grabbed a red pillow and hugged it to his roiling stomach. He watched his therapist's face in order to gage his own actions. He didn't want to outright tell him all the things he needed to say, but he wanted Dr. Fields to make him explain himself.

As the silence lingered on, Dr. Fields nodded slowly. "You certainly surprised me," he said. "Lately I've gotten pretty used to you showing up late for your scheduled appoints, if you don't try to rebook them that is. So I take it…this must be pretty important?"

Ricky closed his eyes. "I was over at Grace's."

"Grace," Dr. Fields nodded. "The cheerleader you told me about last time?"

"Yeah."

"And how is she?"

"Fine. Grace is always fine."

Dr. Fields nodded. "And did something happen there? Did you-"

"I didn't have sex with her, if that's what you're getting at."

Again, the therapist nodded. "Then what happened to agitate you?"

"It wasn't what Grace did. Well, not exactly. She said some things…" The teenager shook his head. "But that's not it either. I went over there because – because…I went to Adrian's today."

"The majorette?"

"Quit answering me with questions!" he suddenly snapped. "You know damn well which one Adrian is!"

"Alright," Dr. Fields agreed. "So you went to Adrian's. And then what?"

"When I got there, someone else was there. This scrawny little punk, Ben. He's the one dating Amy."

"The one who turned you down at band camp?"

"Yeah."

"And Adrian was…seeing him?"

"No. In fact, I never even saw her at all. Ben was at the door with his father, talking to Adrian's mother."

"I see."

"No. You don't! You know what they were talking about?" Without waiting for Dr. Fields to answer, Ricky suddenly threw the pillow he was holding against the wall. "A pregnancy! Adrian's pregnant!"

Dr. Fields retained a stony expression. "With this Ben's child?"

Ricky looked down at his shoes. "Adrian and I have had sex too. A lot of sex. The condom slipped once. I never thought anything of it. I assumed with someone of her reputation, she was on birth control."

"So you're saying you think the baby could be yours?"

"I have no fucking idea what to think!" He suddenly kicked the leg of the table. "For all I know, it could be mine and she's just trying to trap him because he's a little rich snot." Ricky looked up, feeling the heat on his face and the swelling of the veins along his neck. "If there was any chance it was mine, why would he know and not me? I didn't even know they knew each other!"

Dr. Fields crossed his legs and reclined into his chair. "I thought you and Adrian had an open relationship?"

"That's not the point."

"Then what is the point? Are you no longer satisfied with an open relationship?"

"I –" Ricky faltered, then turned and punched the arm of the couch. "I'm pissed!"

"Why?" Dr. Fields insisted. "Are you jealous of Ben?"

"Why would I be jealous?" Ricky torpedoed back. "Ben's got nothing on me!"

Dr. Fields folded his arms. "I would've thought you'd feel relief to think that the baby isn't yours."

"I don't want a baby at sixteen."

"And yet you're still upset that Adrian didn't say anything to you."

"We may have an open relationship, but she's still seeing me more than any other guy right now."

"But if the baby was the result of another guy during your open relationship, then certainly that's no concern of yours unless she were to decide to have the baby, correct?"

Ricky snarled. "But she can't be sure it's not mine when the condom slipped!"

"Do you know how far along the pregnancy is?" Dr. Fields queried. "Perhaps it was before you even met Adrian?"

"Why would she be screwing me if she was knocked up by some other guy? That's sick."

"It's actually perfectly healthy for pregnant women to continue sexual intercourse during their pregnancies, even late into their pregnancies…" Dr. Fields lifted his eyebrow. "Maybe she didn't even know she was pregnant until recently. Have you actually spoken to Adrian herself on the matter or just accepted what you heard? Perhaps–"

"I didn't hear wrong and no, it is what I think. She's been having morning sickness. I brought her medicine and soda crackers for it last week, when she told me she'd eaten bad yogurt. And this morning, Grace caught her blowing chunks in the bathroom."

"You brought her medicine and crackers?" Dr. Fields asked, his voice getting a touch higer pitched with intrigue.

Ricky shook his head. "Don't do that!" he hissed. "It's not that important, the medicine and crackers. Don't think it means something it doesn't."

"I didn't say it meant anything, I was just noting what you already mentioned."

"Well, good, because it didn't mean anything. I – I just wanted to make sure she was better by the weekend. The sex is the best on the weekend."

"And why is that?"

"Why does that even matter?"

"Maybe it doesn't."

"No homework to worry about the next day, okay? That's why it's better, we have more time to-" Ricky stopped himself and noted that Dr. Fields face had a certain air about it, like he was about to lean forward, just waiting for Ricky to finish. The teenager bit his tongue and shrugged instead. "More time to fuck uninterrupted. That's all." He wasn't sure if he was imagining it or not, but Ricky seemed to think Dr. Fields looked a slight disappointed, which left him feeling satisfied in his answer.

"Well then," the therapist drawled, "what are you going to do about the situation? Are you going to confront Adrian?"

"Why would I do that?"

"It might help to ease your frustration."

"I can just find another girl – any girl – to ease my frustration. You know that."

"Of course." The therapist dropped his hand to the arm of his chair, then began to strum his fingers. "Alright, then, Ricky, humor me: if, hypothetically speaking, the child was yours, what would you do about it?"

Ricky looked down at his shoes again.

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Adrian stood in her bathroom, staring at herself in her mirror. She untied her robe and let it drop to the floor: all she wore was her bra and underwear. She examined herself in the mirror, studying and touching every exposed centimeter of flesh. After a solid fifteen minutes, she finally picked something up from the back of the toilet seat and wrapped it around her tiny waist: Ricky's white belt. It was far too big for her, even on the tightest hole. Then she turned sideways and stuck out her stomach as far as it would go, until she could finally hold the belt up on the tightest setting.

With a ragged sigh, she finally unhooked the belt and dropped it onto the counter before sliding her robe back onto her bare shoulders. She opened the bathroom door and padded over to her bed, where her laptop was humming on her pillow. She typed prenatal DNA test into the search bar and waited while the computer calculated the hits. When it was complete, the first link she clicked read: What is amniocentesis?