Because of You (Because of You 1)

By five o'clock I had done some research on schools, submitted two essays for scholarships, and Wendy's had called me in to work.

I didn't get off until 11, and when I did I was slightly relieved to see that I had two missed calls, one from Derek, and he left a voicemail.

"Hey, it's Derek," he said in that quiet tone. "I just got home and I thought I'd give you a call. I know you're mad at me, so... just call me whenever you want to. Later."

Well, it wasn't much, but at least he had called.

I debated whether I wanted to talk to him or not on the way home, but I decided I may as well. After all, it would do our relationship no good if we didn't discuss our issues, and I definitely had issues with what he had spent his Saturday doing.

"I called you earlier," he said, when I called back.

"Yeah, I got your message," I told him. "I was at work, that's why I'm just now calling you back."

"Oh. I didn't know you worked today."

"Yeah, well, I thought we didn't tell each other things like that anymore," I returned sarcastically.

He sighed on the other end, and I pressed my lips together, a little aggravated that I had let that slip.

I also sighed, saying, "I wasn't calling to bust you on that, it just slipped."

"It's okay, that's actually part of why I called you. I was thinking about that today. I shouldn't have just made those plans without bothering to tell you about it."

"No, definitely not," I agreed.

"I didn't mean to," he said. "And I was going to tell you, I just didn't get a chance."

"Why did you even go?" I asked, pouting just a little.

"Her grandparents wanted to meet me. I thought they wanted to meet me because of the baby,

but she told me on the way to the restaurant they didn't even know she was pregnant, that she didn't want them to know yet. She said she just wanted them to meet me first to kind of smooth the way for breaking the news."

I felt my anger flare, more at Kayla than Derek. "Oh, so she just wanted to introduce you. I suppose she didn't introduce you as her ex-boyfriend?"

He hesitated for just a second before admitting, "No."

"I really, really don't like her," I told him.

"I know," he said.

"So her whole family thinks you're her boyfriend?"

"As far as I can tell."

I nodded, forgetting he couldn't see me. "This is going to be a bigger problem than I wanted to admit, isn't it?"

"I don't know, Nikki," he said tiredly.

I had to admit, in that moment, I wasn't feeling as blindly optimistic about our relationship. Kayla wasn't going to let it be easy, not by a long shot. For some ungodly reason, she decided she absolutely was not going to move out of my way, and Derek wasn’t holding up his end of our partnership.

"It's only going to get worse, you know," I remarked. "This isn't going to get easier. It was a nice sentiment, a sweet dream, but this is going to get harder, not easier."

"I know," he said quietly.

For the first time since our reconciliation, I forced myself to look at our situation without rose-colored glasses, without my driven devotion, and I realized that there was a very good chance that we just weren't going to last. We might have, if Kayla hadn't ended up pregnant, but we would have had more freedom to get to know each other better, no limitations whatsoever. Kayla wasn't going to let that happen.

We both sat there on the phone, not saying a word. The silence lasted several minutes before he cleared his throat.