Giftchild (10 page)

"Fine," I said.

Rodney wrapped an arm around my shoulders and took my camera away, looking through my last few photos. "Better luck next time," he said.

"Whatever," I said. I held his camera out at arm's length and turned the lens on us. "This is the winner. Smile."

Our foreheads knocked together as we both faced the camera. I clicked the shutter, and then turned the camera around to see.

Rodney was making a fish face.

I put a hand on my hip. "You ruined my masterpiece."

"Retake," he said, holding my camera out just as I had his. But instead of turning toward it, he ducked down and kissed me just as I heard the click.

When the kiss ended, Rodney still held me close. I could feel his breath on my cheek, and my heart pounded. "Now there's evidence," I said.

"Of what?" Rodney asked. And he pulled back grinning, like he was daring me to say it. Of our relationship. Of how we were so totally not even pretending to only be friends.

I hesitated; he waited. Then the wind scattered leaves across the floor, and the ceiling above us groaned.

I grabbed Rodney by the hand. "We are leaving," I said. "Now."

Rodney laughed, but he followed.

Safely outside again, we completed our lap around the building, stopping next to some concrete slabs that might have been parking barriers once upon a time.

I knelt next to one of them, taking a picture of the corner of the broken roof against the clouds. I could feel Rodney behind me, looking at my screen, breathing on my ear. My heart hammered harder, and I dug my teeth into my lip, willing it to slow down.

We couldn't go on like this. I had to talk to him. Now. I wheeled around. "What are we doing?" I asked.

Rodney was staring up at the building again. "Trespassing for the sake of art."

I punched his arm. "You know what I mean. We're supposed to be friends, but—"

When Rodney turned back to me, he was no longer smiling. "Penny," he said, "It's okay. We don't have to have this conversation."

I was finally trying to be open with him, and
he
didn't want to talk about it? I threw up my hands in surrender. "So roses are okay, but not discussions?"

He rubbed my shoulder. "I'm just saying, if
you
don't want to talk about it, don't push it. I'm fine with everything. Really."

I crossed my arms. That was Rodney's specialty—being fine with everything. But would he be, if he knew? "Forget about me for a minute. What do
you
want?"

Rodney sat down on a slab of concrete, leaving me space beside him. I sat next to him, and he put a hand on my arm. "All that stuff about breaking up being inevitable, that was your idea. I just went along with it because it was what you needed."

Was that true? Why didn't he
say
something? "You agreed to just be friends, though. Even if it was my idea."

Rodney wavered. "Maybe I did," Rodney said. "But now I think we were idiots."

I'd proved that pretty well on my side. "So are we together, then?"

Rodney looked like a man treading carefully over slippery rocks. "We can be," Rodney said. "If that's okay with you." He looked at me, waiting.

It wasn't about what I wanted. It was about what I'd done. A slow burn crept over my face. "First I have to ask you another question."

A trace of worry passed over his face, but he gave me one solid nod. "Go."

I scratched at the edge of the concrete slab with one fingernail, loosening some pebbles. "I've been thinking a lot about what I can do for my mom."

Rodney rested his elbows on his knees, adjusting to the change of subject. "Did you come up with anything?"

"Yes," I said. "I kind of want to get pregnant."

Rodney whistled. He leaned back slightly, as if absorbing the blow.

"I was just thinking about it . . . since you and me . . . you know . . ."

He hesitated. "Are you asking me to father a child for your mother?"

It was all I could do not to cover my face with my hands.
Own up to it
, I told myself. "You don't have to."

Rodney squinted at the sky. "Obviously."

Burn.
"I'm just saying—"

Rodney looked at me, like he couldn't believe what he was hearing. "You're serious?"

It would be so much easier to play this off as a joke, but I couldn't. Rodney would know the difference. "I am."

The rays of the setting sun shot through what was left of the dirty windows, illuminating the inches between us.

I watched Rodney carefully, but he sat calmly, watching the building, giving nothing away. "Say something," I said.

He shifted uncomfortably. "That's a sweet thing to want to do for your mother," he said. "It comes from a place of love. I get that."

"But?" I said.

His voice was strained. "But we can't do that. I mean, not that I mind the process . . ."

I smacked him on the arm and he put a hand on my knee. The line of the light passed across his sleeve.

"I'm sorry," he said. "You get why, right? I mean, it's one thing for your mother to adopt a stranger's baby, but for the baby to be ours . . . that's weird."

My cheeks burned even brighter. I'd been a total idiot not to talk to him about this beforehand. "I get it," I said. "It's okay." I felt like the concrete slab was slowly sinking. What if I was pregnant already?

It was once. Just once. Women who were trying to get pregnant sometimes had to try for months. You couldn't even get an appointment with an infertility specialist unless you'd been trying for a year.

"So," Rodney said slowly. "Was that an ultimatum?"

"What?"

He gave me a sideways look. "Are you going to find someone else to . . ."

"No," I said. "Don't be stupid. There's no one but you."

He elbowed me. "I suppose there're always sperm donors."

I smacked him on the arm again. "Be serious."

"Hey," he said, waving a hand at me. "You're the one who wants to get pregnant. If you want to talk crazy, we can talk crazy."

"No," I said. "You're right. It's a bad idea."

"Terrible," Rodney said. "Sweet, but terrible."

"So we're still together," I said. "Even though I'm crazy?"

Now he leaned over, bumping me with his shoulder. "What's this still? I thought you said we
weren't
together." I opened my mouth to answer, but Rodney rolled his eyes. "It's fine," he said. "I'm used to the crazy."

He took my hand and led me toward the car. "Not that I'm complaining," he said, "but how long had you been planning . . . you know."

Heavens. He
still
couldn't say the word.

I spoke too quickly. "Not that long," I said.
Crap
. Birth control took a while to work, didn't it? "I mean, a while, but not, you know?"

He looked at me sideways. Of course he didn't know. That made no freaking sense.

"Um," he said.

I had to put an end to this, before he started thinking about the exact moment that things changed. The day after Lily decided to keep the baby. "I guess I'd been thinking about it for a while."

Rodney looked surprised. "You could have fooled me," he said. "I thought you didn't think about me like that."

My chest throbbed. I'd backed myself into a corner. If I told him the truth—that I'd tricked him, that I'd as good as lied—I'd lose him. "I came to my senses, I guess."

Rodney opened the car door for me, but now his face had turned serious. He had to have noticed that I'd dodged his question. I could almost see the wheels turning in his mind. He was going to put it together.

When he sat down in the driver's seat, I rubbed the back of his arm. "Are you sure you're okay?" I asked.

Rodney's jaw set. "I'm fine," he said.

But his formerly easy grip on the steering wheel tightened to a grasp. As we drove, he was the one who was quiet. And I tried to silence the voice that said he was putting together the pieces of my lies in his head. They made a warped puzzle, and I wasn't sure how to diffuse his doubts without assembling the whole ugly picture for him to see.

Chapter Eight

Week Two

When we pulled up to my house, Rodney left the engine running. "Don't you want to come in?" I asked.

Rodney shook his head, avoiding my eyes. "I should get home."

My hand shook on the door handle. "Maybe we could do something tomorrow?"

Rodney adjusted his sun visor. "I've got family stuff."

I hesitated. Rodney never had family stuff. His dad was a big time realtor and his mom ran an insurance agency—they were always working weekends, and when they weren't, they were too tired to actually do anything. "Are you sure?"

Rodney sighed. "I'll call if I have time, okay?"

"Okay," I said. I leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. I expected him to pull away, but instead he leaned in, catching me by the shoulder and kissing me on the mouth.

I lingered, drawing the kiss out as long as I could. I'd never meant to hurt him. Maybe he'd get that message, even though I didn't know how to say it out loud without making it worse.

A minute later I saw the blinds rustle in our front room window. I pulled away. "Later," I said.

He nodded, still refusing to look at me, and put the car into reverse. I shut the door and waved to him from the driveway.
Wave back
, I thought.
Please wave back.
And he did, but he still wasn't smiling.

But when I walked into the living room, Mom was.

I closed the door carefully behind me. "Watching us?" I asked.

Mom looked embarrassed. "Not intentionally. I heard the car and wanted to see if it was you or your father. I didn't expect there to be anything else to see."

I shifted from one foot to the other. "Yeah," I said. "Um, Rodney and I are kind of together now." Still. Hopefully.

Mom nodded like she was expecting that, which, since she'd watched us make out through the window, she probably was. "So is this new? Or were you afraid to tell me?"

I sure hadn't been meaning to break the news today. "No, it's new. Today, actually."

Mom looked surprised. "He could have stayed for dinner."

Right. Because
that
wouldn't have been awkward. Even so, I wished he'd stayed, if only so I'd know how badly I'd messed things up. "I asked him in, but he needed to get home."

Mom nodded slowly, watching me. That's when I realized I'd been backing up toward the door, literally into the corner. She had to have noticed that I didn't seem happy. "You really don't mind about this? I mean, you always said getting serious in high school was a mistake."

Mom opened her mouth and closed it again, like she wasn't sure how to answer. It was then that I realized Mom might not have known it was serious. I hadn't even considered that it might not be. This was Rodney. Any commitment put our whole friendship on the line.

That was why I'd avoided it for so long.

"I like Rodney," Mom said finally.

My stomach squeezed. "Yeah," I said. "Me, too."

Mom gave me a funny look. "I would hope so."

Oh. Right. I tried to think of something natural to say, but just ended up flailing my arms a little.

Mom stood up, heading for the kitchen. "I suppose it'll be fine," Mom said. "Athena dated Taren all through high school, and she survived."

Survived?
Sure she did. But they broke up.

My cheeks went red. At least Rodney wouldn't be dumping me for refusing to sleep with him.

I spent Saturday morning holed up in Dad's office, working on photos. Rodney might have been busy with family stuff, but he wasn't too busy to dump his pictures of the abandoned building into our shared folder so I could see them. I added mine, then combed through them, pulling my favorites into my editing software.

Among my shots, I found the one Rodney had taken of the two of us kissing. From a photography standpoint, it was painfully bad. My head was closer to the camera than Rodney's, casting a shadow over part of his face. But I pulled the photo into the software anyway, and applied some filters to give it a stylized grain. I blurred the edges, so only our faces remained crisp. We looked dramatic like that, like the world spun around us, with only the two of us standing still.

We looked like we were in love.

I saved the edited photo to the folder, and added a note next to it.
What do you think?

By Saturday night, Rodney had responded.
Don't fish. (You're gorgeous.)

I bounced up and down in my chair. I was just being paranoid. He was just tired, or legitimately busy. If he was really putting things together, he wouldn't still be calling me gorgeous.

I spun around once in my chair, and almost whacked my knee against Dad's filing cabinet.

"You're happy," Dad said.

I turned around to find him standing in the hall.

"Yeah," I said. "A little."

Dad looked over my shoulder at the picture of Rodney and me on the computer screen.

"Nice work," he said.

My face flushed, and I closed the window. "Thanks."

Dad scuffed his toe on the carpet. "Your mom told me you two are dating."

Yes! Still! I smiled at Dad, and toned the answer down for him. "I guess so."

He gave me a questioning look. "How exactly is that different from what you've been doing?"

I squirmed, eying the screen where the photo had been. "Kissing."

He folded his arms. "Right."

My blush deepened. Dad didn't know we'd been doing that before, did he? It wasn't like we'd been big on the PDA, but we hadn't exactly been hiding, either.

Dad got this concerned look on his face. "I can't help but worry about you," he said.

Now my cheeks burned. "Dad," I said. "It's fine."

But Dad wasn't giving it up. "I just want you to be careful. You guys have been friends for years. When you already know the person you're dating, things can move fast."

His warning hit me like a punch to the gut.
No kidding, Dad. Thanks for the heads up.
"I'll watch it," I said.