Birthday Flowers | The Kissing Booth

12. Playing the Odds

Late March

(Noah)

For the hundredth time today, I tell myself to relax. Just being here is making me crazy, but what was I supposed to say - Sorry, can't chaperone the basketball team's tournament trip because I might see my ex-girlfriend? Yes, I'm hiding from a tiny brunette with commitment issues? So here I am, trying to keep an eye on my students while avoiding any awkward run-ins. But UCLA is a big campus, and we'll only be here two days - what are the odds? Funny things, odds.

After a long day wrangling teenage boys, I gratefully accept the other teachers' offer of a few hours off during the evening tournament games. I need to clear my head of this ridiculous feeling that I'm trespassing on enemy territory. We've been given passes to all the athletic facilities, so I head to the pool to try and exhaust my nerves away.

A dozen laps in, I pause at the end of my lane to adjust my goggles and catch my breath, and that's when I hear it. An exuberant laugh I'd know anywhere, a laugh that has my heart racing as I duck below the rim of the pool to avoid notice. And there she is, walking from the locker rooms to the opposite side of the lap pool. Of freaking course I would run into Elle, odds be damned. I stay low in the water, glad to be masked by my goggles and swim cap. She's wrapped in a towel - the pool deck is chilly - and I watch her twist her hair into a bun before pulling on a swim cap.

As Elle laughs with another girl and fusses with her cap, I try to remind myself of all the reasons I let her walk away five months ago. All the times she's made it clear she has no faith in us. I'd told her to call if she ever decided to take us seriously, and her silence has given me my answer. And yet, foolish hope and bitterness are duking it out yet again. That is, until Elle drops her towel and all rational thought comes to a crashing halt. Elle is... pregnant.

I'm no medical expert, but I am rather familiar with Elle. This is not a little added chubbiness. This is not a big meal. This is Elle, pregnant; I am sure of it. Adrenaline floods my system along with questions I'm not ready to process. I drop even closer to the water's surface, staying out of sight as Elle approaches the opposite end of the pool and climbs in. Once she starts swimming, I vault myself up and over the edge of the pool and into the locker room as fast as I can. My heart is pounding and I crank the shower as hot and strong as it will go, letting the water scald me as I lean my forehead against the wall.

Elle is pregnant.

Elle, pregnant.

The obvious question tortures me. And as certain as I am that what I saw could only be a pregnancy, I have no idea how pregnant.

I think back to October and count. I have no idea if this is what five months pregnant would look like. And Elle had been on the pill. Could she have lied about that? It seems so unlike her. But then, did it... not work? Now would be a useful time to remember all those stats, all those odds from sex ed.

But how could she not tell me, if it were mine? She couldn't. Could she? No matter how poorly we left things, it seems impossible to imagine Elle keeping this from me. But my track record for predicting Elle's reactions is not great, I bitterly remind myself.

Lee. I suddenly recall that Lee was in LA last weekend. He must have seen her, so he has to know she's pregnant. Lee is probably the first person she'd tell anyway, I think bitterly. If it were mine, Lee would have said something, right? He wouldn't be able to stop himself from harassing me to go see Elle and Make Things Right. I can practically hear Lee yelling it, complete with the extra capitalization. And yet I've heard nothing from Lee. Not to mention Mr. Evans - surely he knows, and yet he hasn't shown up at my door to threaten my life.