Fortuity (Transcend 3)

“They’re here!” Mr. Hans calls late the following Friday. I start the washer with my work clothes in it and run downstairs and out the door.

My heart bursts with sparkles and glitter because Gabe takes off running this way when he sees me. “Gah! I missed you.”

“Missed you too,” he says, hugging me tightly.

My parents smile as they make their way to us with Gabe’s bag and pillow.

We settle in for dinner and all the stories from their trip. Again, like I’ve done with Mr. Hans, I turn all the questions they have about my trip into short answers and more questions about their trip.

The following day, my parents leave for home. And since I have the day off, I take the opportunity to have a heart-to-heart with Gabe.

“Hey, buddy. Can we talk?” I sit in the recliner adjacent to the sofa where he’s perched watching TV.

“Sure.” He keeps his attention on the TV.

“Can we talk without the TV on?”

He raises his eyebrows at me like it’s the craziest request ever.

“Please.”

With his customary sigh, he shuts off the TV.

“I want to talk to you about Nate and Morgan.”

“O-kay,” he says slowly.

“We never talk about relationships, well, at least not that much. You’re a bit young. But …”

This isn’t going well. It’s hard explaining grown-up love to an eleven-year-old boy. I have no clue what emotions he has had or can even begin to understand. So … I go in a different direction.

“When Morgan and Nate were here last summer, Nate and I fell in love.” Boom! There it is.

“O-kay.” The same word again in slow motion.

“When grown-ups are in love, they want to be together. Last summer didn’t feel like the right time for us to try to be together because Morgan was so excited about going home to the rest of her family again, and she wanted to be close to her mom’s grave. And … well … there were just a lot of things and a lot of uncertainty.

“But most important at the time, for me anyway, was you. I couldn’t imagine asking you to change your life any more than it had already been changed. So I didn’t say anything. I didn’t even want you to have the stress of making a decision or feeling like you were letting anyone down if you didn’t make ‘the right’ decision. And I don’t know if there was a right decision. So we made the decision without discussing it with you or Morgan. We chose to not be together—not disrupt your lives by asking for you to give up anything or move away from your home.”

Confusion camps out on his face and in the permanent squint of his eyes.

I wait for questions that never come. I wait for him to read into where this is going, but he doesn’t.

Leaning forward, I rest my arms on my legs and fold my hands, squeezing them several times. “I ran into Nate at the hotel where I stayed in Chicago. The feelings we had last summer … the love … it’s still there. Maybe even stronger. So instead of staying in Chicago the whole time, I went to his house in Wisconsin and stayed a few days with him and Morgan.”

“You did?”

I nod.

“Morgan didn’t tell me that.”

“We asked her not to tell you.”

“Why?”

“Because …”

Because I might be pregnant?

But mostly because I might not be pregnant?

I don’t know how to answer that. He’s eleven. I can’t see him really understanding. Still, I have to try. How is he supposed to learn and understand new things if he’s not given the chance?

“Do you know how babies are made?”

His face turns red. I take that as a yes.

“Why?”

That’s not a yes.

“Because I assume in the next year or two they will talk about it at school, if they haven’t already. And I don’t know what your dad and mom discussed with you, but since it’s you and me now … I think I should know what you know and what you don’t know.” I give myself an internal high five.

“I saw a video.”

I nod. “At school?”

“No. At a friend’s house.”

Oh Jesus …

“Not really a video. A gif. Several gifs.”

I clear my throat. I am so out of my league, my comfort zone, my mind! “Gifs about babies?” My face cringes a little.

“Well, supposedly how they are made.”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

“It’s weird, but I get it.”

“You do?”

He nods.

“So … first, I have to say whatever you saw is something you should not have seen. There is a lot on the internet that you should not see—that most adults should not see.”

“It was at Jacob’s house, but it was last year right after …”

His mom and dad died. Yeah, I still pause before I say the actual words too. I nod to let him know I get it, and he doesn’t have to say them.