Not My Style

Chapter Twenty-Six

"Chelsea? Are you there?"

For a moment I may have blacked out. I could not tell you exactly how much time had passed, but evidently it was long enough to warrant, if possible, an even more frantic tone of voice to come through the phone.

"Chelsea?" Yep, completely frantic.

"I'm here," I squeaked, it was barely audible. I guess I was a little frantic as well. "I'm here."

"Talk to me, baby. Talk to me."

Talk to me? Talk to me? What on earth was I supposed to say? My mind raced a million miles a minute. To begin with, the idea of having children absolutely terrified me. I was not that little girl that played house, ever. Ever. When I drew bright crayon colored pictures of my future it was never with a husband or children. My pictures were maps of imaginary places full of rainbows, mermaids and unicorns. I drew landscapes that didn't exist and imagined taking my Rainbow Brite backpack there. Children? No, I sent them home at the end of the day to their parents. Just the idea that there might be a person growing inside my body terrified me beyond reason.

I pulled myself up in the bed as my nerves got the best of me.

This is not happening.

I was going to vomit again.

"Chelsea?"

"Yeah?"

"What are you feeling?"

"Nauseous?" I said, hoping for a chuckle but got nothing.

"No seriously, how are you feeling?" Chris repeated sternly.

"No seriously, I feel nauseous. I've felt nauseous for days."

He paused again before muttering angrily, "Fuck."

Even though I was terrified and Chris was equally scared, his reaction upset me. "What do you mean?" I snapped. The fact that he sounded so upset made me pull harder at the end of the quilt. I yanked at a thread in my lap which caused a portion of the quilt to start to fall apart. I attempted to pull the yarn in the other direction. Why was Chris sounding angry? What right did he have to be angry? Seriously?! Inadvertently I pulled on the thread again. The quilt was going to fall apart for sure.

We sat in silence again, neither of us exactly knew what to say. We were both definitely stewing in our little pots of anger.

"I'm sorry," he finally mumbled.

The soft whisper caught me off guard. "What? Why are you apologizing?"

"This is my fault."

I let that marinate. As they say, it takes two to tango. Fault could not be placed firmly on anyone's shoulders. "Not entirely," I forced a laugh and he did too. Then I cleared my throat, a symbol of how serious I wanted him to take the question I was about to ask. "Chris, that night at the house in Venice Beach... Did you? I mean, did we use?" My words were weak, shaking like my hands. My sentence structure couldn't hold up, it just shattered. I couldn't even say the words I wanted to say. I laced my fingers together and held my hands tightly in my lap. This wasn't possible. We hadn't slept together since that drunken night. We'd barely seen each other.

"No," he sounded like a reprimanded child.

All that anger bubbled right back up. Now I really was about to lose it. No. No? What did he mean no? Not once, NOT ONCE, in the entirety of our relationship had he been so careless.

"I'm sorry," he repeated.

I bet you are, I thought angrily. How do you just not use protection?