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Author's Chapter Notes:
Just a warning, this is heavy on the angst.

A solitary cloud passes in front of the sun in that way January has of making early afternoon feel like early evening. We’re sitting on a cold wooden bench that’s part of an old, long gone playground a few blocks from the office. His nose is red and he’s picking up pieces of mulch and breaking them to pieces with his fingers. I’m watching my knees and trying to keep the cold out. Everything seems dull and gray and forgotten.

The mulch cracks in his hands and he bites his bottom lip as if this is the most important job in the world. He’s angry at those tiny pieces of wood because he’s angry at everything in the world right now. I’m mostly just cold.

We’re both thinking about that day three weeks ago when enough had finally been enough. Despite there still being a fiancé and a girlfriend and so much unspoken still between us. That hadn’t mattered at the time. It was just after that boat and that moment and I was kissing him frantically in the elevator because I was just so tired and-

He’s upset because they’re breaking too easily. I can tell from the way he’s pulling his eyebrows together and twisting his mouth. He wants to fight for it, wants to force it in half instead of having it just fall to pieces the moment he touches it. He throws that fragile one back on the ground and tries again.

We’re silent as always and our breath comes out and somehow stays there in front of us like fog.

I turn my head to watch the light through the trees, that muted orange and the skeleton branches. I feel my fingers ache with the desire to catch this moment and hold onto it. I take careful note of every detail and hope that I’ll be able to remember later. It isn’t beautiful, I just want to remember how it felt to see it.

The week consisted of four tests and a doctor’s appointment. The week of conception had been the week Roy and I were fighting over something inconsequential and, both of us so stubborn, we hadn’t been sleeping together. But then there was the night when enough had been enough.

He’s stopped breaking up the mulch and is now just sitting next to me with his head bowed so far his chin rests against his chest. His hands are clasped in front of him and his eyes are closed. It looks like he’s praying and I wonder if that would help at all right now.

He breathes out through his nose and runs a hand along his jaw. We aren’t talking about this. It doesn’t surprise me, but I feel lost and need to know if he is too. I want him to hold my hand right now and feed me clichés about getting through it and figuring things out. The silence leaves me anxious and my knees shake.

I’d told him quietly this morning, taken him out into the hall and looked down at my hands flat against my stomach, “I’m pregnant. And it’s yours.” I cried despite my best efforts and when I finally looked up at him, his mouth was open and wordless and he walked away quickly.

He knows I’m not going to leave Roy even though I don’t even know that yet. He knows our timing could not have been more wrong and this was not how it was meant to happen. He knows this puts an end to anything that might have been. He knows we were stupid that night in his too small bed. He knows I’m too scared to do anything now.

I’m weighing my options as the wind picks up, blowing curls in front of my face and numbing the tips of my ears. The see-saw across from us teeters a little, rusty hinges creaking. I watch its left side bob up and then down again and when it stops moving I turn to him and finally say, “We should-”

But at the same time he’s standing up, brushing off his pants with frozen fingers and turning his face up to that backlit cloud and then looking back down as he walks past me, saying, “Keep it,” the wool of his coat brushing against my shoulder.

I wrap my arms tighter around myself as I feel the cold settling deep in my bones and I start making plans.


unfold is the author of 102 other stories.



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