Chapter 8

2111 Words
Chapter 8 Four Months AgoThe standard issue faculty apartment was nearly as echoing and empty as when they’d first moved in nearly ten years ago. Bare white walls, gleaming pale hardwood floors. Neither she nor John had expected to stay so long in four cozy rooms, or to have so many books and memories to pack when it was finally time to go. None of that mattered on this cool, rainy afternoon, though. No worries about the piles of boxes lining the walls of the bedroom and every other room. No concerns from his lab or her own office at the university. No endless questions or decisions about their sweet bungalow waiting for them in Atlanta. Branwen didn’t want or need to think about anything outside their warm bed, John’s warm skin and soft breath against her cheek. Days like this had been all too rare in the rush of wrapping up their work and getting ready to change everything else about their lives. “Have you ever thought about what could be going on right now?” John said, brushing Branwen’s hair out of her eyes. “What do you mean? Outside? Today is for staying inside.” He laughed, pulling the covers over both of them and leaning back, pulling her head onto his chest. She breathed deeply, loving the stronger smell of him. They had the whole afternoon and night to stay in bed and talk or make love again. She’d needed time with him, time away from all the chaos, more than she’d realized. “You know, if we were trying to make a baby,” John said, shattering Branwen’s languorous mood. “I think about that sometimes. I know we’re not going to, I just wonder.” She raised up to look him in the eyes. Talking was fine, welcome even. Just not about this. Not now. “No, we’re not going to, John. Let’s not get into that again. Okay?” “Okay. I wasn’t saying I want to. We’ve been through that.” She moved away from him to sit cross-legged on the bed, pulling the sheet over her breasts. She didn’t want to touch him, didn’t even want him to see her. He sat up too, looking confused. “What’s upset you so? Are you worried about that?” He touched her shoulder, and she forced herself not to pull away. She’d made it clear shortly after they’d started dating that she wasn’t interested in having children. John understood, or she thought he had. Branwen had been worried about that happening. A lot. “There’s not much to worry about, John. I just don’t want to talk about it.” He covered his mouth with one hand for a second, blowing out a breath against his palm. She didn’t think he realized how clear some of his habits were. He knew she wouldn’t like his words before he opened his mouth. He was right. “What would you do? If it happened accidentally, I mean.” Why on earth did he have to bring this up when they had been so rushed and busy and frantic for so long? She felt more tense than before they’d made love. This time she did pull away from his hand and turned away too. Her stomach started to churn with anger and more than a little guilt. That didn’t stop her own words she knew he wouldn’t like. “I’d get it removed, just like any other parasite.” She got up and yanked on her robe, walking toward the window. He couldn’t possibly know she’d scheduled to get sterilized in just a few days, wanting to get it over with at the university clinic she knew and trusted before they moved. Her closest friend Kim getting pregnant while using the same birth control pills scared Branwen more deeply than she cared to admit. Please, let that be the end of it. Please. John scowled. “Without even talking to me?” “Yes, John, I would. You’d probably never even know.” John was up and moving after her, his own robe forgotten on the floor. Hands clenched into fists, spots of red high along his cheeks. She’d never seen him so angry before, about anything. Fear that he’d figure out what she had planned, that he’d even question her choices when it came to this, made her furious in return. “You’d get it removed, as you so charmingly put it, flush it away, my baby, our baby, and never even mention it to me? So much for honesty!” She whirled. That was exactly what she’d planned to do. Take care of it and never even mention it to him. “Yes! There’s no other option here, no choice to make,” she shouted, no longer caring if it hurt him or not. “In fact, I think we’ve put off doing something permanent long enough. Especially if you’re going to fight me on something like this! Honesty? After all this time, you bring up honesty? You’ve known how I feel about this since we first met!” “Yes, since day one,” he said, his voice rising. “I know that. I have always been good about it. I’ve accepted it, and I’ve helped you with it. All of it! But after all this time, all this honesty, you’d go behind my back and never even talk to me? Never let me figure out how I might feel about it?” He’d advanced until she pressed against the wall, desperate to get away. She’d never felt afraid of him, not once in all the time she’d known him. Right now she was beginning to have her doubts. Her new fear only fed her anger. “It doesn’t matter how you feel about this, John. It doesn’t matter. There’s nothing to discuss. Get the hell out of my way!” Branwen pushed by him and slammed the bathroom door. She stared into the mirror over the sink for a second, some remote part of her upset at how wild her eyes looked, how badly her hands shook. She buried her face in a towel and screamed. What John didn’t know, what no one but Branwen herself knew, was she was terrified of going through childbirth. She knew, in her bones she knew it would kill her. That fear had been with her throughout her life. She looked into the mirror again, glad to see her eyes were almost back to normal. Sharp and angry, but no longer terrified. When the doorknob moved, she did the first thing she thought of. She picked up the hairbrush and went to work on her hair. He couldn’t keep his hands out of it when they made love, a habit she normally didn’t mind. Right now she didn’t want John to see how upset she was, and she certainly didn’t want him to see he’d scared her. She’d have to work out how she felt about that later. He seemed calmer when he walked in, but she saw that telltale flush in his cheeks. This wasn’t over yet. “I’m sorry, love. I had no idea this would upset you so. I’m not trying to force you into anything. You have to know I never would. Please, talk to me.” She put the brush down and turned to him, holding her robe tight around her body. A new fear bloomed in her, one she’d never seriously considered. What if it did happen accidentally and he wanted her to go through with it? She’d been in that very mess just a few short months before she’d met John. That had been a stupid drunken affair, not any kind of partnership. No one she cared about at all. At least to herself, she had to admit the youthful choice she’d never regretted for a second was nothing like this. “Why? What is there to talk about, John? We decided this years ago.” “No, we decided we didn’t want to have children, and we’d do our best to make sure we didn’t. This is something else entirely.” “This is not something else,” she said. “No baby means no baby.” She slowly relaxed her grip on her robe and crossed her arms beneath her breasts. She had to keep him from asking one too many questions. He had a distressing talent for asking the right question at the wrong time. “Whether it’s exactly the same or not isn’t the point,” John said. “I can’t understand how you could decide something like this and leave me out of it. Do you assume I wouldn’t care how you felt? How could you not even tell me?” “Because of this, exactly this. What would be the point of long, heartfelt discussions? You know how I feel. The end result would be the same. So why would I drag you into it at all?” Leave it, leave it, please just leave it. “You really don’t see the difference?” he said, not quite angry yet but clearly struggling with it. “If we’ve done everything short of surgery to stop it, and despite all our precautions it happens anyway? You wouldn’t think any differently about it once it was done?” She felt her face go cold and white at his words. Short of surgery. Well, she wasn’t going to have surgery, so no lie there. She still had an allergy to anesthesia or it would have been done years ago. John had never said he wanted children, but he must not have been quite honest with her either. That brought her anger back to the center, and before she could stop to think she was yelling again. “No, it is not different! It’s still up to me. All the talking in the world won’t change this, so what would be the point, John? What would be the point?” He lunged toward her then, eyes furious and terrifying. Branwen finally knew a fear deeper than childbirth. “Because it affects me! Because you have no right to leave me out of something like that! Because it would be my child too!” She backed up until she cowered against the wall, ears ringing with his deafening shouts in the empty tiled bathroom. She shook worse than before and her heart threatened to pound out of her chest. John was so much bigger than her, so much stronger. Even though he’d gone pale and still now, eyes horrified instead of frightening, she had to get away. She cut him off when he started to speak. “If you can’t respect me on this, if you’re going to act like this, maybe I should leave right now.” John winced and shook his head. “No, Branwen, no. I’ve been an ass. But don’t do that. Don’t even joke about that.” “I’ve never been more serious,” she said, shaking her head. “This is not open to discussion.” Cold washed over her as she spoke. It didn’t matter how much it hurt her to say it or hurt him to hear it. She drew herself up, her full height much less than his. She finally felt calm though, no longer afraid. “You’d throw away everything we have,” John said, “all of it, rather than simply talk to me about this?” Branwen heart cried out at being the cause of such an awful, frightened voice from her lover. Her mind reminded her she’d been truly afraid of John, physically afraid, a few seconds ago. “I’m not joking. I’m not trying to distract you, and I’m not trying to get you angry or upset. I am not joking.” He’d know she was telling the truth. He could always tell whether she wanted him to or not. Right now she wanted him to. If he could scare the life out of her like that, she would use this however she had to. “If you can’t respect me on this,” she said. “I need to leave now.” She put both hands on his chest and pushed. Her heart cried to reach out to him when he staggered back, to tell him she was sorry, that she’d never leave him. She might have if the image of his furious eyes wasn’t so strong within her, if her heart weren’t still pounding from fear of him. “You don’t mean that...” It was barely a whisper, but she heard him. His face had gone from flushed to pale white, even more than he normally was. She still had no idea how to turn back. “I love you John, you know I love you. It would kill me to leave you. But having a baby–” She exhaled, blinking several times. She knew in her guts having a baby would be the end of her. Her untrustworthy body would never make it through. John took a small step toward her, as if he didn’t quite trust his legs to hold him. “Branwen?” He spoke louder, but his voice broke. He reached out, his hand trembling as he raised her chin so he could see her eyes. She felt a blazing guilt again, this time at the awful broken look in his. Tears spilled over for both of them, and they embraced hard enough to force the breath out of her. The hands and arms she’d feared so badly just a few moments ago were like a lifeline, reminding her how much she loved him, how much she needed him.
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