The Song

Part Fifty

“And here I thought I was going to walk into more teasing about this morning,” Aston sighed, running his hand over the top of his short hair.

“I’m not messing around.”

“Sorry,” he said, sitting in the arm chair to the side of me.

“Do I have some kid I don’t know about somewhere out there?” I asked, going straight to the point.

“No.”

“Then what the hell is this about a pregnancy test?” I asked.

“You took one, but it was negative.”

“When?”

“Last time we were here,” Aston said.

“Which was?”

“About a month before the accident. You weren’t feeling well and the signs all kind of pointed towards maybe you being pregnant so we got some tests. But like I said, it was negative.”

“So then we fought?” I asked, trying to understand what the hell Karen had been talking about.

“It was tense yeah…” Aston said, not giving much away.

“Aston I need to know what happened. I’m trying to remember my life and there are clearly huge gaps in the stories I’ve been told.”

“Yeah we had a big fight,” Aston said, “We were supposed to be here for two weeks and the test happened on the first night we were here. The few days after that were really tense, we didn’t talk a lot and we sort of avoided any contact at all. I guess after like a week it came to a head and we both just blew up. It wasn’t even really a fight about anything, we were both just in need of letting off some steam. We said things we probably regret. I know I do.”

“And then I left?”

“You said you needed some space away from me,” Aston said, “So you went home a week early.”

“Then what? Did we make up?” Aston stared at the floor, not answering my question. “Ast!”

“No,” he mumbled.

“What do you mean no?”

“I came home and things were still pretty tense,” he said, “For like two weeks it was like walking on egg shells. I’d spend all my time at work and you’d spend all your time shut away in the Conservatory with your piano.”

“And then?”

“Your accident.”

“Right,” I said, “Why didn’t you tell me that we weren’t really in a good place?”

“I wanted you to trust me,” Aston said, “I didn’t want you to think that you were trapped living with a guy you hated or something.”

“I didn’t hate you did I?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Aston said, “What matters is getting you back to where you were. And that you’re happy.”

His answer didn’t really give me much information, but I could tell he didn’t want to talk about it. Maybe I had told him I hated him?

“I don’t get it though? You wanted me to trust you so you lied to me?” I asked.

“I didn’t lie…” Aston said, “I just didn’t give you the full truth I guess. Things really were perfect between us up until the pregnancy test.”

“Ast,” I sighed, my head starting to hurt from all of this, “Not telling the truth is the same as lying.”
“I mean…” he started, stopping abruptly.

I heaved a deep breath, not sure what the hell was going on. It seemed this perfect life I was apparently leading wasn’t so perfect after all, and that made me really scared. What if I had made the wrong decision in staying with Aston? What if we really weren’t meant to be like he had said?

“I’m going to go lie down,” I said.

“Jess…”

“I just need to think about this,” I said, “And my head is starting to hurt a bit.”

“Babe!”

“We’ll talk about it later.”

“Please,” Aston said, watching me wander down the hall. I crawled into the bed in the main room, not really sure I wanted to be there. Maybe it would be better if I went to the spare? My head hurt too much to care about it so I pulled the duvet over my head and scrunched my eyes shut tight.

None of this made sense to me. I’d been living with the guy for months, and all of a sudden a few passing comments by a random acquaintance and things were blowing up between us? What was really going on here?

I tried my hardest to fall asleep but my mind was spinning, my head starting to throb more and more. I didn’t like it. At all.

As the sun went down Aston knocked lightly on the door, dinner ready in the kitchen.

“I’m not hungry!” I mumbled, the duvet over my face as the light of the hallway made my head scream with pain.

“Babe you’ve got to eat.”

“Not hungry!” I said.

“Don’t be stubborn about what I told you,” Aston said, “I’m here now, supporting you through all of this. Let’s just forget about that for now.”

“Ast, I’m not hungry because my head is screaming in pain,” I replied, “I don’t care about all that right now.”

“What?” he asked, coming over to the bed.

“Just let me sleep.”

He peeled the duvet back and looked at me for a second, his hand feeling my forehead. “You don’t have a fever.”

“Ast…” I moaned.

“Hang on,” he said, disappearing for a minute. He came back with his phone, frantically scrolling through something. “Shit I thought so…”

“What?”

“We gotta get you to hospital,” he said, not giving me any more information.