The Free Pass

Chapter 12

Mallory

Since Shawn had extended his stay in Virginia, we took Saturday to drive to my hometown to tell my parents the big news. He'd called his parents the night before. I could only hear his half of the conversation, but I didn't get the feeling they were thrilled, though they seemed to support it. When I'd asked him about it, he said they were fine with it. My guess is that they didn't want their son marrying someone he didn't love. I couldn't blame them for feeling that way.

Shawn drove since I was feeling kind of tired. I'd had trouble sleeping last night. I'd be lying if I said I didn't have some doubts about our plan.

I opened up Instagram and looked at Shawn's post from the night before. It had over two million likes. The comments were mixed. I couldn't read them all, so I stopped after I'd scrolled through a couple dozen. It was clear that people were either very happy for Shawn or very upset that he was dating someone.

A couple photos from our dinner had been leaked. I scrutinized each one to see if my pregnancy was obvious. I just looked a bit chubby. No one would assume I was pregnant.

Shawn had called Andrew last night, too. They'd decided that the engagement would be announced some time in the next few weeks. It felt too fast to me, but given that my pregnancy was becoming very obvious, we didn't have time to take things slowly. Once word was out that we were getting married, I could stop trying to hide my belly. There wasn't going to be an official announcement about the baby yet. Andrew felt it was best just to let that news leak on its own.

I was going to sit down with Kris and Vera when I got back to the apartment on Sunday. I'd be giving them a slightly modified version of the story that would be public, which I felt bad about since they were my best friends. Only our families would know the truth. The 'official' story was that Shawn and I met and started dating seriously. I got pregnant, and we were both overjoyed. Shawn proposed and we would soon start a life together in Toronto.

It was maybe 50% true. We'd have to live with the fact that we were misleading people.

"Did you look at social media this morning?" I asked as I put my phone back in my purse.

"Yep. That's what I did while you showered."

"You okay with the reaction?"

He took his right hand off the wheel and placed it on top of mine, lacing our fingers together. "It's exactly as I expected."

I looked out the window at the farmland that whizzed by. A year ago I was planning a spring break trip to Cancun with my roomies. This spring break I'd be planning a wedding. So much can change in one year.

We pulled up to my house. I hadn't told my parents that we were coming, but I'd checked to make sure they were home by tracking them on my phone.

"You're sure about all this?" I asked before opening my car door.

"Positive. It's all good, hun."

When we got to the door, Shawn handed me my keys so we could let ourselves in.

"Mom? Dad?" I called as we stepped into the foyer.

"Mallory? What are you doing here?" my mom said as she hurried out of the family room. She enveloped me in a big hug.

"Shawn! What a nice surprise!" she said.

We followed her into the kitchen where she offered us coffee. She made me a hot cocoa.

"Where's dad?" I asked.

"He's outside. Let's go show him you're here."

We found my dad out on the patio reading the paper. It was still early spring, but the weather was warm.