Just Friends

TWENTY

"Jaden?" I asked, seeing him standing outside my father's hospital room.

The drive from where we were at to the hospital took about twenty minutes giving I was practically yelling at Dixie to hurry up. When we got to the hospital, I impatiently waited for the nurse at the counter to give me my father's hospital room number. Once I got it, I was basically running through the halls, stopping to go up three floors of the elevator, and running up towards the correct room.

It definitely took me by surprise though, to see Jaden standing outside the door, looking in my direction as if he was waiting for someone to come.

I shouldn't have been surprised though, to see Jaden I mean. Bianca probably called him, telling him what was going on and asking him to come.

My father and Jaden were almost as close as Jaden and I. They were first introduced a few months after Jaden and I had first met, the two of them immediately bonded over their shared taste in music. It made me happy to see the two people I cared so much about getting along.

For some reason, they stayed in contact after their initial meeting, somehow exchanging numbers out me knowing. I found out weeks later when I was playing games on Jaden's phone and my father had sent him a text. Jaden wasn't nearby so I read through some of the texts, most of them being about me ( when I was younger, my past relationships, etc.) and others were about themselves. It truly surprised me when I saw how alike they were, it was no wonder they got along so well.

I was expecting Jaden to say something, tell me why he was here or who called him or something along those lines. But instead, Jaden walked towards me and enveloped me into a hug, not saying a word as I dug my head into his neck.

"Beah?" I heard Bianca's voice call out.

Jaden pulled away so I could look over her shoulder and see her standing there, tears streaming down her face.

This wasn't normal. She was usually okay with the hospital visits, they never were too alarming and she was more used to them as they were quite common due to my father's situation. Seeing her there, eyes puffy and face red, was definitely not a sight I was used to.

"Bianca?" I asked, walking towards her. "What's wrong?"

When I got to where she was standing, I looked into the room and saw my dad laying there. No beeping could be heard, not from the heart monitors or anything. In fact, there was really no sound at all in the room.

"Your dad-" Before she could finish, Brandon came around the corner, his face also covered in tears.

Now this, this was definitely odd. Nothing seemed right in this moment. Everything seemed wrong. Nothing about this whole situation was like the hospital visits in the past. Something wasn't right.

"Beah!" My brother yelled, rushing down the hall and almost causing me to fall to the ground as he flung his arms around me. "Dad is gone, he's really gone."

I was frozen. Time had really stopped in that moment. The world felt like it was on mute, I couldn't hear a thing. I looked around the hallway, my vision blurry from the tears threatening to escape.

Bianca was standing there, staring into my fathers room, her hand covering her mouth as the tears didn't stop coming. Brandon still had his arms wrapped tightly around me, my shoulder becoming wet due to his sobbing. Behind me, Dixie looked as shocked as me, though she let herself cry. She had grown up with us, we were like her second family so this hit her as hard as it hit us.

As for Jaden, he just stood there, no emotion present on his face. He caught my eye and we stood there, in the middle of the poorly lit hallway, staring at each other.

I didn't know what to do. So, I did the only thing that seemed right in that moment.

I ran.

I ran out of the hospital, down the street, and to a park close by.

This park felt familiar, unlike the situation in the hospital. I just needed something that felt familiar.

When I wad younger and switching between living with my mom and dad, I would visit this same park every time it was my father's week. It was my place, my place to just be myself and forget about all the problems in the world. I don't know why, it was nothing fancy and had the oldest of equipment. But, it was still my place.

I walked over and sat at one of the few benches scattered around the mulch area.

A few minutes later, there was a hand on my shoulder causing me to jump up, only to see Jaden standing there. He walked over to me and pulled me into another hug.

I have been hugged more in the past hour than I have been ever.

I knew I had to do it. I had to tell Jaden. It was now or never. If I didn't tell him now, I was convinced that I probably would never work up the nerve to do so.

"Jaden?" I pulled away, looking up at him and wiping away a few tears that somehow escaped my eyes without me knowing. "I need to tell you something."

He nodded which was his way of telling me to go on.

"I'm pregnant."