“Oh, fuck,” he mutters.
This reaction puzzles me, but a lot of what he says confuses me, so I continue, “I love you, and I want you to know I’d never do anything to intentionally hurt you or… or even so much as inconvenience you. Well, that’s not really the right word, but you know what I mean. So, right off the bat, I need to say that I’m sorry.”
He rubs his face, his hand swishing against his five o’clock shadow. “I can’t bloody believe this. This is just sod’s law, isn’t it?”
“What’s ‘sod’s law’?”
He misinterprets my question and says, “Well, this, of course.”
“I haven’t even told you what I need to tell you yet.”
Standing, he paces in front of me. “You don’t have to. I know this talk.”
“You do?” Suddenly, I wonder if he’s done some research about me. A simple Internet search would probably bring up some old articles about what happened. Or he could have been talking behind my back with Hank.
“Yes. Oh, God!” He puts his hands on his head, really despairing.
His reaction is not at all what I expected in any of the 5,000 scenarios I’ve dreamt up over the past few weeks. “Okay… But how did you find out?”
Taking his hands away from his face, where they were squishing his cheeks into his mouth, he says, “I had no idea, until just now. No clue. This is a real kick in the dangly bits. And now, of all times!”
I’m about to suggest that we’re not talking about the same thing when he takes a look at me, seemingly for the first time in the conversation and says, “I’m so sorry, Libby. I know I’m acting like a right git. But this is a real blow. And I know it’s not your fault, and I want to be supportive, but I just need to wrap my head round it. Please, don’t think me an insensitive bastard.” He sits next to me on the couch. “We’ll figure this out.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I finally interject.
He seems a little less sure of himself when he says, “I’m talking about what you’re telling me.”
“No, you’re not,” I say confidently. “I haven’t told you anything.”
“You don’t have to. As a matter of fact, please don’t say it out loud. I don’t know if I can bear hearing the actual words. But I know. I know.” He puts his hand on my shoulder.
“You know that my parents are dead?”
He temporarily loses the anguished expression he’s been wearing for the past five minutes. “Wha…? W-When did that happen? Oh, crikey! And whilst you were estranged from them?”
“No, six years ago. Almost exactly.”
“I’m terribly confused.”
“Me too!” I cry. “What are you babbling about?”
He jabs his thumb and forefinger into his eyes. “Oh! Thank God!”
“Excuse me?”
“No! Not about your parents!” He quickly grabs my hands, which I immediately pull away from him. Then he lets loose a hysterical giggle and stifles the rest of his laughter. “Not that. Sorry. That’s tragic!”
And there it is: the face.
“Spare me,” I spit, before he can say anything else. I jump up and away from him. “What did you think I was telling you?”
He laughs at himself. “I thought you were going to say you were… you know, up the duff.”
“Up the what?”
“Duff. You know… pregnant!”
“What?”
“I know! Imagine how I felt! I’m so worried about work, and everything, and then you tell me that, or what I thought was that, and I just started having kittens!”
I stare at him while he jabbers on for a good three or four minutes non-stop about how great it is that I’m not pregnant and that he’s so glad I was telling him my parents are dead, not that I was pregnant, and that he’s so relieved I’m not pregnant and that it’s just that my parents are dead.
Thankfully, the sandwich delivery person interrupts his nonsensical monologue. He pays for the food and tosses the bag on the kitchen counter, pointing to it, as if it contains a dead mouse. “And your sandwich! All those pickles and peppers and things! It all just started making sense. You’ve been to the doctor recently… You were sick earlier this week…”
“I had food poisoning!”
“So you said, but you could have been covering with that until you could get up the nerve to tell me. Oh!” He puts his hand on his forehead. “I can’t even begin to tell you how relieved I am!”
“I think the past ten minutes have been a good start.” I cross to the coat rack and begin re-draping myself.
His forehead wrinkles in consternation. “What are you doing? Where are you going? The food’s here.”
“I’m so not hungry right now, Jude.” With shaking fingers, I button my coat.
He rushes to me. “Wait! Why are you angry?”
Hot tears form in my eyes, dripping unchecked down my cheeks as I jam my fingers into my gloves and tie my scarf. I can barely speak coherently, but I manage to say (although how much of it he can understand is another story), “I can’t believe you! I try to tell you about how my parents died and how it nearly destroyed my life, so much so that I can hardly bring myself to tell anyone, and you…”
I can’t finish. I don’t even know where I was going with it, honestly. “Just… eat your fucking sandwich and enjoy the fact that you’re not going to be a father and that I’m not having your baby and that my parents are gone forever.”
I might as well have smacked him across the
