Chasing Us (Dark Love 2)

“Miss, can I help you?”

Staring blankly into her face, I’d be lying if I smiled and said everything’s okay. I don’t need help, not when the weight of my mistake comes crashing down like a vicious storm.

Without warning, I fall to the cold floor, my chest heaving as vomit sprays out of my mouth hitting the area surrounding me. A scurry of assistants come to my assistance with a bucket and cold towel. The voices surround me, but my body continues to shake, the heaving persistent. Gasping for air, I struggle to breathe, another person handing me a paper bag. I take it from her, placing it on my mouth and sucking in the air.

In the midst of this breakdown, I motion for my phone. With trembling hands scrolling through the screen, my vision begins to blur, but I manage to find Nikki’s number. I dial it, passing the phone to the lady beside me. She talks

, panicked, but I rest my head against the hard concrete desperate to shut my eyes.

I don’t know how long I lay on the floor, not until I hear a familiar voice yelling for everyone to back the fuck up.

“Charlie, Charlie… look at me?”

Nikki is kneeling beside me, her brows wrinkling as she stares at me waiting for a response.

“Nikki,” I croak, barely able to say her name. “I want to go home…”

“Charlie, I really think we should call the paramedics.”

I shake my head, still struggling with my words. “No… please don’t.”

“But Charlie—”

“Nikki, stop! Just help me stand. Please.”

She grabs my arm, and I manage to stand though unsteady on my feet. I beg again to go home, but before we do, I ask Nikki for a favor as I wait on the chair with a brown paper bag.

***

I sit on my bathroom floor beside Nikki in a catatonic state staring at the three pregnancy tests, each a different brand, all lying side by side marked with the two blue lines which have decided my fate.

“Charlie. Three tests can’t be wrong. They’re all positive.”

I continue to sit in silence, not even blinking as I watch, hoping for a miracle that the lines all become one. Just one line. My vision clouds, why is this happening? The lines are staring me in the face—nothing can make them change. Closing my eyes, I pray that this is an awful dream, and at any moment I’ll wake up, and everything will be back to normal, but minutes later, I open them, the reality a huge slap in the face is still staring at me.

Nikki shifts closer to me, placing her arm around me, pulling me into her.“Look, girl, I’m sorry, but I gotta ask… whose?”

Turning to face her, I search her eyes for any sort of judgment. She’s my best friend, and if anyone understands, it will be Nikki. I close my eyes again, remembering the past few months. Who I fucked, where I fucked, when I fucked, and what the fuck did I use?

I ramble through my thoughts which are causing my head to ache, a migraine now imminent. I used condoms, I gave head, and he fucked me in the ass. My body sinks and the weight of my actions causes me to shake again. Any self-respect I had for myself disappears along with my dignity.

I’m a whore, a slut, whatever you want to call it. I say the names to myself, my head screaming on repeat. My behavior is beyond disgusting, and now I have to pay the ultimate price.

“Nikki… I don’t know.”

“Oh, Charlie, it’ll be okay. Look at Will. Rocky and I couldn’t have been in a worse situation, but we made it work and look at him. My life doesn’t exist without him.”

“But you had Rocky.”

“Yes, I know,” she admits. “But why on earth would the father not want to be part of his baby’s life? Either way, you’ve got two great men, and both will make great fathers.”

“Because it’s all too complicated. Nikki, I can’t do this… I can’t be a single mom and have to look at this child every day and see the face of its father. I don’t understand how this happened.”

It isn’t a question because no matter how it’s answered, it won’t erase anything.

“Well, sweetie, it’s quite simple… you got caught up in the hot sex and forgot about Mr. Semen and his million buddies.”

“Nikki, I married him.”