Chapter Eight! Sorry for the long wait, everyone! Still, please enjoy and leave me feedback! I need it to improve
Chapter Eight
The confession to Trisha actually helped me to realize that maybe my quirk wasn’t such a bad thing. I mean, sure it wasn’t something that I’d go out and publicly announce, but it would be something that I could accept instead of loathe and try to push aside. Even better was the fact that Trisha lived about twenty minutes away from my house, which meant that over the summer break we’d be able to hang out. Our friendship grew with every conversation we had until we talked to each other about everything. I had even helped her with her psychology project, which she mysteriously chose to do on infantilism…didn’t see that one coming…not.
She asked me all sorts of questions regarding what kind of things triggered my desires, how I coped with them, how I felt about the whole thing, stuff like that. All of this was done under complete confidentiality, and since none of her colleagues knew me too well, I was never approached or suspected of being her subject (not to my knowledge, anyway).
May crept up on me like a shadow in the night, and before I knew it, my first year of college was officially done. Everything was a blur, though, with the exception of one thing: Jill. I couldn’t stop thinking about her for some reason. Part of me actually worried about how she was doing and what the outcome of her pregnancy was. I kept her screen name on my messenger program, and occasionally she’d pop up for a few minutes, but neither she nor myself bothered to send a message. This only increased my curiosity.
I searched my city for jobs the first week I returned from college in an attempt to keep myself busy and have a steady source of income. That, and my parents had been nagging me about finding a summer job because they wanted me to start helping with some of the bills. That’s when I landed a temporary job at the local retail store, Bullseye.
Selling merchandise and dealing with customers all summer didn’t sound too appealing to me, so I got a position in the backroom of the store, meaning I’d be doing all of the behind the scenes work. I only asked for 20-30 hours a week because I really didn’t care about making a lot of money at the time, and I wanted to enjoy my three and a half months off from classes. A couple hundred bucks a week was all I needed to live comfortably that summer. However, God had a good sense of humor that year. You see, since I wasn’t the only person working in the back, they had to split up which sections that we covered, and take a wild guess what I got for the entire freaking summer. Yeah…the baby section (and also the sports section).
I was taunted every time I worked as I pulled out various kinds of diapers, bottles, and other baby items. God knew what He was doing, and He thought it was funny. I smiled, too, but I also yearned to have another experience like I did with Jill, which made me upset since I knew that my luck with her was one of a kind. Who would’ve guessed that she and I would cross paths once again on yet another fateful day?
Three weeks after I’d settled back into my parents’ house, I drove down to the lake to skip stones. It was something I did while I sorted out the many things on my mind. With each stone I placed a thought, and by throwing them, it signified that I was done thinking about that particular thing.
After about twelve stones, Jill’s stone came up. It was perfectly flat, but its edges were jagged, and its orange/red color made it stick out among the other ones that I’d thrown. I held it firmly between my index finger and thumb and got ready to throw it. Just as I was about to release the stone, however, my phone began to vibrate in my left pocket.
Must be Trisha.
I smiled as I pulled my phone out and checked to see who it was…it was Jill. My heart pounded and my insides burned as I felt the phone shake. I was torn between picking up the phone and ignoring the call. I wished to repair our broken bridge, but I also couldn’t shake off what was said between us. What she said about me. How foolish and mean she was. That time we had. That weekend that was everything but ordinary. I held my breath, opened the phone, and put it to my ear.
“Hello?” I said in a shaky tone.
“John…please…don’t hang up.” Jill sobbed, her voice sounding raspy as if she’d been screaming for hours.
“Jill? What-what’s wrong?”
“I can’t take it anymore! Please don’t leave me like he did! Please don’t hate me anymore! I’m so sorry for everything!”
Everything bad I’d thought about regarding Jill was pushed aside in mere milliseconds, as her voice jabbed at my heart and broke little pieces of it with each cry.
“Jesus, are you crying? I won’t hang up. What’s the matter?”
“I can’t…I can’t tell you on the phone. Please. Can we talk in person? I’ll give you gas money and-”
I don’t remember how she finished the sentence, but it ended with a cry as well. My brain told me not to waste my time, but my heart told me this wasn’t a ploy or a ‘I was wrong and I’m crawling back to you’ scenario. The sound of her voice told me this was something much more serious.
“Tell me where to meet you, Jill.”
She told me she was living in a town between my college and hers; quite the drive for me, but I had the next couple of days off, and I’d have felt terrible if I ignored her cries. After I got her address, I told her I’d be there as fast as I could and was soon in my car and gunning it down the interstate.
My car’s clock read 9:00pm when I reached the street that Jill lived on. I immediately noticed her red car in a driveway a few yards down and pulled in behind it. The air was colder than a normal May evening as I exited my car and headed up the steps of the little brick half-house. A welcome mat lay perfectly on the porch and a set of wind chimes twirled about slowly as I made a few light knocks on the heavy wooden door. Within seconds it opened, and there stood Jill, her eyes filled with tears and her complexion trembling uncontrollably.
“John?!” she cried as she fell into my arms and sobbed.
She was a living train wreck! There was a faint smell of liquor coming from her house, and when I looked in I could see some empty bottles lying on the floor. This wasn’t the Jill I knew.
“I didn’t think you’d come.”
I didn’t think I would, either.
“You sounded awful on the phone. I couldn’t just leave you hanging!”
“But what about what I said to-”
“Forget it. We’ll talk about it later. Now, what on Earth is going on with you?”
Jill led me into her living room as she pulled some tissues out of her pocket and wiped her face. Tears still rolled down her face, and I could see the sadness in her eyes. That’s when I noticed something: there was no baby stuff in the living room. No crib, no diapers, no baby bottles, no scent of babyish things, and no baby crying. And where was her boyfriend? I almost made a comment about how quiet the house was, but I didn’t want to upset Jill even further.
“So…what’s going on?” I asked.
“Well...nothing good.” Jill frowned.
“Come on. You can’t mean that!”
“John, you don’t understand. I was going to call you last month, but I wasn’t sure if you were going to pick up. I-I had-I had a miscarriage.”
Have you ever seen a show where when someone drops the bomb you can hear either a record scratch or glass breaking? Yeah, it was kind of like that, except it sounded and felt more like a gunshot to me. All of my assumptions about how Jill was doing were completely wrong, and immediately I felt guilty for not calling her.
“Oh, my God,” I said as Jill started to cry once again, “I’m so sorry!”
Jill leaned into my shoulder and placed her head on it as I instinctively hugged her and cursed myself for not learning how to forgive sooner. I couldn’t imagine the pain she felt. All of that excitement and nervousness about having a baby, the baby shower, the baby things bought in preparation for the new arrival, all for nothing. It was the ultimate low blow given by God. Her crying lasted for another minute or so, but she soon lifted her head from my shoulder and looked back at me.
“When did you find out?”
“About a month ago. I told Nick about it, and he seemed upset about it at first, but then he started drinking. A lot. He started blaming me for the baby’s death, even though I didn’t do anything wrong! I didn’t smoke or drink, or do anything that might harm him!”
“He blamed you?!” I asked as I began thinking of ways to beat this Nick character up.
“Yeah.” Jill looked down at the floor. “He told me it was my fault. But then he started distancing himself from me. He’d come home drunk and tell me how he was kind of glad that I had the miscarriage because-I’m sorry…” Jill paused as she shook. “…because he didn’t have to commit to our relationship anymore. He said that without the baby around, he didn’t have to pay any child support or anything…and he left. He left me here, alone…”
It had been a long, long while since I’d been extremely angry with somebody, but that day, I broke the streak. I didn’t have a clue as to what Nick looked like, but I wanted him on the ground and bloody and bruised. I bit my lip in spite of showing Jill how upset I was.
“Jeez, Jill. Well, I’ll stay here as long as I can, which is actually until Tuesday since I have to go back to work.” I said with a light laugh to try and lighten the mood.
Jill gave me a light smile, and then thanked me with another hug, only this was one was much bigger than the last. I returned the hug, but felt inclined to make sure that I still kept a bit of a distance between me and Jill, not because I was angry with her, but because I wanted to make sure that I didn’t fall for her again (at least, not for a while, just in case she had some other beau that I didn’t know about). The night had been a crazy one, kind of like an odd dream where you’re unable to tell if it’s fantasy or reality. I was glad to have been there for my old friend, and I was also glad that I was given the opportunity to repair our relationship. Once again, things would only get better from here…
TO BE CONTINUED AS USUAL
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