Chapter 223) The Test

“Shared joy is double the joy;

shared sorrow is half the sorrow. ” 

Swedish Proverb

Newcrest
Right outside the Hanson's home

“Patches …” a young male voice said, the tone a mixture of worry and urgency, halting the young woman in her place, who was on her way home from work, as her uniform signaled, but she never turned around.

Clearly, she had neither expected him to show up, nor was she ready to face him.

“What are you doing here, Chase? I told you I don’t have time to hang out … and I am super-tired.”

“Why are you working nights again? You promised me to take the early shifts at the cafe, before school.”

“I am. We had a bunch of people call in sick, so I am doing double-shifts. I can use the money.”

“We have to talk. I am not letting you ignore me any longer. Do you have another dude? Is that it?” Chase pressed.

She turned around, visibly surprised and startled.

“What?! That’s so immensely stupid. I would have broken up with you, were that true. I am not like that. And do you have to lurk around in vegetation and scare me?” Hailey responded, quickly recovering, since dating a vampire meant you can never be sure when and where they may pop up.

“Well, might as well be broken up. You won’t let me kiss you, touch you, you don’t want to talk …”

“Fine! Then we break up! Happy now?!” Hailey yelled, tears shooting into her eyes, as she tried to turn away and run off, but his vampiric reflexes didn’t abandon him this time and he grabbed her, held on to her.

“Hailey – wait! Let’s talk! I don’t want us to break up. I just want to know what’s wrong! Please tell me!”

“Okay fine – you wanna know what’s up? I thought I was pregnant. Luckily it was false alarm but it scared me to death. I thought my future was over, and yours too. I thought all our plans were done for in an instant because of one blue line too many. And I thought you would think I tried to tie you down or get your money or something and I realized, this is something that COULD really happen and I never want to feel like that again. I was scared how you would react, how my parents would react, your parents. Not that they’d be mad, but so very disappointed in me. That’s much worse to me. That’s what’s wrong with me.”

“What? That’s fucking stupid. You ignored me for weeks for some PMS mood that turned out to be nothing?”

“Asshole!” Hailey turned and blinded by tears and tried to walk past him again to her front door, but again, he stopped her.

“I am sorry … Hailey – wait …”

“Leave me alone! Go away!” she sniffled.

“What the fuck, Hailey!? Why would you not tell me?! If you thought you were pregnant, why would you not come to me right away. I would have become a father, had it not been false alarm. That’s huge. Don’t I deserve to be part of this? Even if it’s nothing?”

“Tell you? Deserve to be part of this? You think this was some happy occasion? I just about had a heart attack when the drugstore pregnancy test came back positive. Then the blood test at the Gynecologist was negative, we re-tested and I am 100% not pregnant. My doctor said me missing my period was stress, from the finals and the college application thing, me working so much to actually have money for college and that drugstore tests sometimes give false results. Anyway, how do you tell your celebrity boyfriend something like that, after I tried so hard to make sure you know I am not a gold digger. I would just have seemed like I was trying to trap you or something and really, what could you have done? Help me freak out, thinking for a moment we’d be parents at 18? Goodbye college and dreams? I just needed time.” Hailey ranted, her voice tipping over at times from the emotional rollercoaster.

“Fuck Patches! We may be young, maybe I am different because of what I am, but we’re in a relationship and I am damn serious about us, 17 or not, I am fucking committed and all in. If I learned anything from my parents and grandparents, it’s that you do shit like this together. Don’t ever push me away and never lock me out. I just about lost my mind not knowing what’s going on. And now I feel like shit because you seem to think you cannot trust me.”

“Sorry Chasey – you’re right. I just really didn’t know what to do! I am sorry about all this and I am sorry about pressuring you into having sex with me so much … had I been pregnant, it would have been my fault.”

“Pressured me? A 17 year old hetero boy being pressured into nookie with his stunning girlfriend? That is an oxymoron and does not exist, Patches. You can’t rape the willing, as my dad would say. I wanted that as much as you did, if not more, I just didn’t have the balls to initiate half the time. A pregnancy is always 50/50 if it was consensual and baby, it was.”

“Hold me, please.”

“Finally! Come here.”

Chase pulled her into his arms and they stayed like that for a long time, Hailey cried softly, for relief, making Chase feel just as relieved but also helpless, while he remembered his grandmother still talking about the pregnancy she and his grandfather had lost over 50 years ago now before they had his dad. To this day she still called him her ‘rainbow baby’. Maybe even just thinking they were pregnant was special to girls? So Chase told Hailey softly

“One day we’ll have a baby together, Patches, on purpose. First we’ll have fun together in college, then we’ll start our careers, while still having tons of fun, then I will surprise you with the best, most romantic proposal in the history of proposals, year or some later we’ll have the biggest and best wedding ever. And when we are tired of loving on each other all day every day, we’ll have a baby to love on. Until then, we’ll just be extra careful. And you have to come on that trip with me and Colton now. It’s a Cameron special, all expenses paid ‘thank-you-for-putting-up-with-me-and-my-weird-family’ thing. Maybe a change of scenery is exactly what you’ll need.” Chase fluttered his eyelids at Hailey, who couldn’t help but smile.

“Oh my gawd, fine, okay okay, chill. But seriously Chase, what 17 year old boy thinks about weddings and babies?” she smiled faintly as she pulled away to face him.

“One that knows what he wants, and with whom he wants it, I guess. One who is very special. Yup, yup.”

“That’s an understatement. You definitely are special. I am sorry, Chasey … about everything. I guess I blew everything out of proportion and screwed up.”

“Don’t worry about it. We’re all good. I am just glad we figured this out. But remember from now on we’re a team. We can do anything we want, as long as we are together. And I am sorry you went through all that alone. Next time, I’ll be there every step of the way and we’ll freak out together, pee on sticks together, sit in gynecologist offices together …”

“Next time?! There will NEVER be a repeat of this and if we have to use every form of protection known to man at the same time! And what exactly is the point of you peeing on a stick anyway?”

“Solidarity?”

“You are too much.”

“As my dad always says, better too much than not enough.”

“I love you, you crazy man.”

“I love you too, obviously, or I wouldn’t have put up with all that abuse.”

“I am glad you came by. I really didn’t know how to get it all out. I was so afraid it would freak you out as much as it did me and then you would say those dreaded words, the ones breaking up with me.”

“We’re not the types to break up. We are so opposite and so many people wouldn’t give us a snowball’s chance in hell, and we are both too stubborn to let them be right.”