“You’re lucky. It’s not gonna be a bad one and should heal nicely if you keep some aloe vera on it.”

Lucky? Is that what we were calling it these days? It sure didn’t feel like it at the moment.

Nick sat next to me at supper and reached for my hand under the table. I pulled it away although that might have been a little unfair to him. I went into this relationship knowing I might eventually run into some of the girls he had been with, but I wasn’t prepared for the way it made me feel. There was nothing he could do to change the past, but I was jealous and at the moment simply felt like being pissed.

I pushed my food around and noticed Nick did the same. That couldn’t be a good sign because he normally ate like a horse.

When everyone finished supper, I helped clear the dishes and clean the kitchen. The closer I was to talking to Nick, the more nervous I became. When I was finished, I walked into the living room and Nick motioned for me to follow him out the front door. He took my hand in his once we were outside and he led me over to the swing on the front porch we had sat on a hundred times.

He turned to face me and took my other hand in his. He squeezed them both. “I love you, Payton.”

The wild look in his eyes frightened me. “There’s something going on, isn’t there?”

He didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to because his face said it all. “You’re scaring me, Nick.”

“That girl says she got pregnant by me that night at the party. She had a baby a month ago and she says it’s mine.”

Sick. I was gonna be sick, like immediately. I jumped from the swing and heaved over the porch railing into the flowerbed. Nick sprung behind me and grabbed my hair as I leaned forward, just the way he had the first night we met.

I heaved up everything in my gut, and then some more, as I heard Nick tell me over and over how sorry he was and how much he loved me. I straightened up when I felt like there couldn’t possibly be anything left in my stomach.

He wiped away the tears rolling down my face as he talked, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying for the roaring in my ears and I recognized it as one of the first signs I usually got when I was going to pass out. “I’ve gotta lie down.”

I dropped down to the concrete porch and propped my legs up on the exterior wall of the house so I could get some blood to my head before I blacked out. I threw my arm over my eyes because I knew I was about to make the ugly cry face. “You told me you always used condoms. Always without fail.”

“I swear I did every single time. Until you.” Nick dropped down beside me and cradled my head in his lap. “Payton, I don’t remember that girl at all. The only thing I have to go on is what she says, so this baby may not even be mine. I told her I wanted to do a DNA test.”

“Let’s at least be honest about this. If she said you screwed her then you screwed her. Stop acting like you’re a damn victim here. You played and now you have to pay.”

“You’re pissed and I get it. I’m pissed at myself for being so stupid.”

I’m sure there was a word for what I was feeling but it wasn’t coming to mind and pissed didn’t even begin to cover it. I strained to get up and then looked at him. “I can’t handle this. I’ve gotta go.”

“Payton, you can’t leave. We need to talk about this.”

“There’s nothing to talk about because I’m telling you that I can’t handle someone else having your baby.”

He grabbed my arm and I jerked it away as I burst out crying. “I wanted to be the one to have your babies, not her.”

He caught me and pulled me to him for a hug as my cry escalated into uncontrollable sobbing. “We can get past this and make it work.”

I was crying too uncontrollably to disagree, but I shook my head violently.

“Please, don’t say we can’t. We can get through this because I love you and I know you love me.”

“What about next time? What do I do when the next girl shows up with your baby and then the next and you eventually have your own little baseball team?”

“You need time to cool down.”

Time wasn’t gonna fix this FUBAR situation. “Oh, I’m cool. I’m so cool with this that I’m gonna tell you what you can do. Go get in that car you’ve used to screw all these girls and drive down to the pool hall so you can find your next pregnancy scare.”

“You don’t mean that, Payton.”

“I do. I mean every single word. Go find that slut, Samantha, and maybe you can screw her tonight. I bet she’d love to have your next baby.”

“Okay, I will but I need you to move your car out from behind my screwmobile so I can get down to the pool hall and find her.”

I stormed toward my car and screamed over my shoulder. “Well, then let me get the hell up outta yo’ way, Poppycock.”

26 Regrets

Nick

No! There’s no way that just happened. Except the gut wrenching sickness in the pit of my stomach was proof it had. It was official. My past just collided with my future and it had won.

I stood in my yard and watched Payton speed away out of my life and I made a decision. This was not going to end like this.

I ran into the house and grabbed my keys without a word to my family so I could catch Payton before she got away. I was speeding down the highway and was almost to Franklin when I realized I hadn’t caught her, so I picked up my phone and dialed her number.

Who was I kiddin’? She wasn’t going to take my calls, so I left her a voicemail. “Baby, I’m so sorry for everything. Please, call me so we can talk this out. I didn’t mean what I said about going to find another girl. You’re the only one I love. It’s you and no other.”

I took the next few minutes to think about where Payton would go. Definitely not home. Claire’s. I was almost positive that was where she would go and so that meant that was where I was going, too.

I pulled up at the Deverauxs and saw Claire’s car and Jessie’s truck, but no sign of Payton’s car. Dammit. Where was she?

Even if she wasn’t here, I would bet she called Claire so I went to the door and used the knocker to beat with a little more desperation than I intended. I didn’t let Claire get the door open all the way before I started questioning her. “Has she called you? Do you know where she is?”

“I assume you mean Payton and no, I haven’t talked to her. What’s happened?”

“We had a fight and she took off.”

Claire found that amusing. “You know she’s a hothead so give her time to cool down and then you can talk about it.”

She didn’t understand the seriousness of the situation. “It was bad, Claire. I don’t know if she’ll ever talk to me again.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. She loves you so of course she’ll talk to you again.”

Jessie came to the door from the back of the house. “Hey, what’s going on?”

Claire smiled at Jessie. “He and Payton have had a spat.”

It was way more than a spat. “Claire, please call her for me.”

“I’ll call her to make sure she’s okay, but I won’t betray her trust by giving the phone to you. She has her reasons for not talking to you and you’ll have to wait until she’s ready.”

Claire went to get her phone and left me with Jessie. “What did you do?”

I ran my hands up through my hair and fisted it to give it a yank. “I have screwed up big time.”

“What’s new?”

“No, Dude. I’m not playing. A chick showed up at my house tonight. She told me I got her pregnant and her one month old was mine.”

“Oh, hell. Is it?”

“I have no idea. I guess it could be, but I don’t remember this girl at all. She didn’t even look familiar.”

“What are you gonna do?”

“I told her I wanted a DNA test and she agreed to do it. She’s gonna make the arrangements and then call me.”

I saw Claire coming down the stairs with the phone to her ear and she didn’t look happy with me. “I’m not telling him that.”

She held her phone out to me. “She has something to tell you.”

I took the phone and put it to my ear. “Please, listen to me, Baby. I love you and...”

“No, you listen to me. While you’re out finding Samantha or your next unidentified number tonight, I’m going to work on my second one. Then, when I’m finished doing him, we can compare notes on how it made you feel to know someone else had that part of me.”

“Please don’t, Doll Face. It won’t fix this and you’ll regret it.”

“No, I’m pretty sure you’ll be the one to regret it more than me.”

And then she hung up on me. I dialed her back and she didn’t answer. Great. Now she wouldn’t answer my calls or Claire’s. “She’s going to sleep with someone to get even with me because she’s so hurt by the possibility of this baby being mine.” I felt the tears stinging my eyes. “She doesn’t care that this would have happened a year ago before I met her. Claire, text her and tell her to not do it.”

I passed her the phone and her thumb went to work. “I am, but I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for her because she’ll regret it.”

≈ ≈ ≈

I drove all over Franklin and didn’t find Payton or her car, so I was forced to give up and go back to Collinsville. I had to face it. It had been hours since I talked to her and if she followed through with her threat to sleep with someone else, I was already too late. The deed was done.

I pulled into the parking lot of the county line pool hall on my way back into Collinsville and decided a beer or two or twelve might help take my mind off what happened with Payton. I walked in and two of my buddies were hanging out in the back corner as usual. “Hawke! Get your ass back here, you son of a bitch.”

I walked to where my old gang sat and slid into an open chair next to Justin Walls. “Where the hell have you been all summer?”