“Keith, we need to talk! Message me ASAP!”
I paced my room waiting for him to answer my text. My palms were so sweaty that the phone threatened to slip out of my hands.
He finally texted back, “What’s up, babe?” He had thrown a kissy-face at the end.
I messaged, “Where are you?”
“Dorm.”
“Alone?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you really actually alone?”
“…why?”
“I have to tell you something.”
“Should I call?”
“I can’t talk out loud about this. You remember last time that you came to see me? And what happened?”
“You mean the part where you mom let me stay in the guest room instead of a hotel?” There was a winking smiley taunting me.
I took a deep breath. I wished I was there with him instead of at my house. I couldn’t risk anyone listening in there, but at his dorm up in Boston we could go for a walk around his campus and no one would bother us. I’d thought about trying to go for a walk around my house, but I never went for walks. My mom would get suspicious for sure.
I messaged Keith after my nerves settled. “Not that you STAYED in the guest room…”
“LOL No, and I’m glad I snuck over to you. It was an amazing night.” A row of hearts crushed me.
I messaged, “So you remember what happened?”
“Yes. We had sex.”
No emoticons. I knew he was starting to get worried. Arg! Why couldn’t I just come out with it, already?
I tried typing out what I was trying to get at, but deleted it. I needed him to get to it himself. “Right, but what was different?”
“…The condom?”
“Yes, Keith. The condom.”
“What about it?”
“We didn’t use protection.”
“Sarah,” Keith messaged, “Are you saying you’re pregnant?”
“No!”
“Then what?”
I collapsed onto my bed. I dragged a pillow over my face and squeezed. Was he dumb? Or was I just being crazy? Did hormones get screwy this quickly?
“The day that we had sex,” I finally typed, “and you didn’t have a condom, I think some of your cells may have made their way to an egg.”
“You’re not making sense.”
“I’m saying that I have some of your cells mingling with my cells inside of me.”
He had a frowny face before his message. “So, you ARE pregnant?”
“No, Keith! Stop saying that!”
“You just said that my sperm got to your egg! What else does that mean!?”
Nope, that was it. He was dumb. I sighed, contemplated going for that out-of-character walk, and decided against it when I heard my mom watching Netflix on the living room computer.
I messaged Keith, “It means that sperm got to my egg.”
“What part of that ISN’T pregnant, Sarah?“
“Pregnant means that you have a baby in your uterus. I just have extra cells in my uterus. I am not pregnant.”
“How do you know then?”
“I missed my period,” I messaged. “I was having weird cramping, so I took an EPT test. But that test was hard to read, so I got a few of the real pregnancy tests from my friend at school who’s mom works at the GYN’s office.”
Keith asked, “How many did you take?”
“Four.”
“All positive?”
“Yes.“
A minute went by before Keith texted me back. All he had to say was, “Wow.”
“I’m going to make an appointment to have it taken care of.”
“Shouldn’t we discuss this first?”
“Discuss what?”
“The decision of having a child or not, Sarah. Yes, it’s your uterus, but that’s my kid in there.”
“It’s not a kid! Cells!”
“Whatever you want to call it. You can’t just make the decision on your own.”
I was blown away. It felt like the air had been ripped from my lungs. I texted back, “Hon, I didn’t think that you would consider keeping it. Our parents would kill us.”
“They’d fall in love with that kid once he got here.”
“It’s not a kid yet,” I messaged. I had to remain firm. “Keith, I’m in high school. We’d have to drop out.”
“No, you wouldn’t. You’re a senior. You’ll graduate before you give birth.”
“Okay, true. But we can’t support a baby. We don’t make any money. You’re too busy with college.”
“You work. I’m only at a two-year school. When I take over my dad’s business after, it’ll make plenty of money.”
I could have laughed if I wasn’t so horrified. He considered my job as a waitress enough to support a child on? Was he really that out of touch?
“My job barely pays my cell bill and lets me have some fun now. And your dad’s business is in Philly. What are you planning on doing, wiring money to me every week? I’d be a single mom in NYC!”
“Move down there with me.”
Ha! “Your mom hates me.”
“She’s just hard on you because I’m her youngest.”
“I’d never be happy in PA, Keith.”
“Sure you would! Give it a shot!”
“My whole family is in New York.”
“They’d come visit us. It’s really not that far away. We already take the trip every weekend to see each other.”
“That’s not the only problem.”
“What else is there?”
“I have dreams! Plans for after high school. I don’t want to just roll over into the family business.”
“Roll over?” He made an angry face, which fumed on my phone’s screen.
I was screwing this up big time. I started to regret telling him like this. Maybe I shouldn’t have told him at all? Would that have been safer?
No, he deserved to know. I knew that much was right.
“I’m sorry. I’m not trying to offend you,” I messaged. “I’m just saying that, well, I think that my plans are a little bigger than you realize.”
“What plans do you have, Sarah?”
How did not see? He wanted to have a child together and didn’t even know what my plans were!
He messaged again, “I always thought you would come live with me…”
“Did you ever ask me to live with you?”
Nothing came in for a long time. Then Keith texted, “No.”
“So why assume that’s my plan?”
“You always knew about my family’s business, that I’m going to join after I get my Associates. I thought you were tired of us being long distance.”
“I am! But, Keith, we never discussed living arrangements after graduation. I don’t want to just follow you to PA, give up my dreams in New York.”
“You keep talking about dreams in New York. What dreams do you have?”
“I want to go to a college in the City. I’ve applied NYU and Columbia.”
“There are plenty of colleges in Philly.”
“There are colleges everywhere, but I want to be in NYC.”
“Why?”
“Because here is where all of the opportunity is! I want to go to a New York college, and get my foot in the door as a teacher in a good NYC Public School.”
He made several laughing smilies and messaged, “There’s no such thing as a ‘good New York City Public School.’”
“That’s not funny.”
“I’m not kidding.”
“Keith, I’m not ready to have a child.”
“No one is ever ready.”
“Some are. There are plenty of people who plan and save for a child.”
“And the majority of people have kids by accident.”
“I don’t want to be ‘the majority of people, Keith!”
“Neither do I. But we already are.”
I bristled at the message. Angry, I typed, “No, we’re not, because I am not pregnant. I just have some of your extra cells inside of me.”
“Sarah, you’re pregnant. Own it.”
I shook my head and gritted my teeth. “If you want me to have your child, finish college first, start a career, save money, and let me do the same.“
“We’ll still be able to do all of those things if we have a baby in nine months.”
Oh, Keith.
“No,” I messaged, “we won’t. And you know it. You probably wouldn’t be able to see the kid except on weekends, because I will never move to Philly. I’d be a single mom. Please, stop thinking about it as a kid; it’s not a kid. There are just a few extra cells in my body that I have to have removed.”
“Sarah, I love you. I know what you’re trying to say. But this isn’t a decision we can make in a day.”
“I can’t sit on it for too long. I don’t want to be pregnant.”
“I can work with that,” he messaged. “You set the appointment to have the ‘extra cells’ removed for Friday. We take the next five days to work through this. If you don’t change your mind by then, you’ll go to the clinic. Okay?”
Now we were getting somewhere. I typed back, “That sounds fair.”
“All right!” Smiley face. “I’ll get on a bus down there tomorrow.”
I laughed. “What if your parents find out you ditched class to come to New York to see me?”
“We’ll figure it out. Together.”