I felt a tiny twinge of guilt. Maybe I should be gentler with her, but I hated seeing her like this. “Do you want something to eat? Would that help?” I asked, trying to be nice, but the words still came out gruff.
She was already shaking her head before I finished speaking, in an automatic kind of way, like saying no was a reflex, but then she suddenly stopped. Her eyes lit up. “A cheese sandwich. That’s what I want.”
She bounced off the bed, brushing past me so close that I caught the strawberry scent of her shampoo. I snagged the glass of water and followed her into the kitchen. She didn’t bother with a plate, just slapped two slices of generic white bread—the squishy, underbaked kind that you could squeeze into a quarter-sized ball—on the hopefully sanitized countertop before spinning to the refrigerator. I winced when she pulled out the package of individually wrapped slices of American cheese. Two floppy slices went between the pasty bread. No condiments. No tomatoes or lettuce. Just…cheese, if it could be called that.
She held it up triumphantly with a huge smile on her face, like she had just caught a fish. “Want a sandwich? It’s delicious.”
“That’s not a sandwich, princess. I’m not sure it even qualifies as food. It’s just a pile of preservatives.”
Undeterred by the truth, she took a big bite and chewed. Silently, I handed her the water glass. She took a few sips and handed it back.
“I didn’t have you pegged as a food snob. Although now that I think about it, I don’t think you put a single pre-packaged food in the cart.” Her head tilted. “I take it you don’t have a favorite struggle meal?”
“What’s a struggle meal?” I asked.
“You know, the thing you make when you’re struggling financially or just struggling in general to hold things together. Something cheap and simple.”
I shook my head slowly. Money had never been an issue for us. My dad’s job overseeing a factory made us solidly middle class in a low cost of living area, and if Mom had ever had a problem holding her household together, she never showed it. We didn’t struggle—not the way Chloe meant, anyway.
Chloe shrugged. “I used to make cheese sandwiches for my brothers all the time. Served it up with a heap of eggs—scrambled to make them go farther—and hotdogs if they were particularly hungry, which they always were because they were growing boys. It was back when we were still trying to save the farm, so money was short. And on Mom’s bad days, it felt likeeverythingwas short. I hated to cook, and my brothers learned quickly that you get what you get and you don’t get upset. And if you did get upset, you were the new cook.” She grinned, like she thought maybe struggling was fun.
Maybe itwasfun, in a weird way. Maybe struggling wasn’t really so bad when you loved the people struggling with you. My chest pinched.
I handed her the water again, because I hadn’t forgotten what we were doing here, even if I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around the fact of it all. That Chloe might be pregnant, and the man responsible for that wasn’t here. That I was here instead, and somehow that felt both wrong and right at the same time.
“Are you struggling now?” I asked, because why else would she be eating that god awful “sandwich.”
Her warm laugh curled around me like heat from a fire on a cold night. “I’m okay. I’ll never be rich as a social worker, but my rent is ridiculously cheap and I can cover it with two jobs. Anyway, I actually enjoy struggle meals. That helps.” I madea face that told her exactly what I thought about that and she laughed again. “No, really. It’s good.”
She took another sip of water, and her gaze fell on the sink. Her brows pushed together. “Did you do my dishes?”
“It only took a minute.”
“You didn’t have to.”
For some reason, that annoyed me. Was that what she expected of me? I only helped someone if Ihadto? “You’re welcome.” There was a bite to my words.
Her lips pursed, but then she nodded. “Thank you.” After another sip of water, she said, “This might be the first time all week I haven’t felt nauseous. It’s nice.”
There was no delicate way to phrase it, so I didn’t try. “You about ready to pee on a stick?” I asked.
She snorted. “Yeah, I think I’m hydrated enough now.” She popped the last bite into her mouth. “I’m not pregnant, you know.”
“I don’t know that,” I said. “And unless something has changed in the last hour, neither do you. So how about you take the test and find out?”
“If I take the test, it will be like I’m admitting that it’s possible. Which it’s not.” Her gaze narrowed on the glass in her hand, and she chewed her lip. “It’snot.”
“Hey,” I said. I took the glass from her and set it on the counter. “Hey, it’s going to be okay. Even if you are pregnant, you don’t have to stay that way if you don’t want to. There’s a clinic a couple hours from here. I’ll drive you.”
Chloe blinked up with me with startled green eyes. “You would do that for me?” She shook her head as though to clear it. “No, I mean, that’s not what I’m worried about. I haven’t even gotten that far in my thought process. It’s just that…I’ve never been in this situation. I’ve never had to take a pregnancy test. It’s never been a concern at all for me. It just wasn’t possible.And I was fine with that! But I don’t know how I’ll feel if I take that test and it’s negative. Because itwillbe negative. I know that. But maybe I won’t feel fine anymore.”
I studied her. She was babbling in circles, and none of it made any sense to me. “Do youwantto be pregnant?”
She huffed. “Well, that would be ridiculous. It’s the worst possible timing. I’ll be done with my supervised clinical hours in May, and then I’ll be launching my career. I’m not in a committed relationship, and I don’t want to be. Of course I wouldn’t choose now, with this guy, to be pregnant.” And then, so softly that I almost missed it, she said, “I never thought I’d get to choose at all.”
Shit. I didn’t know what to say to that. Didn’t know what to do with my hands, either. Should I hug her? Christ, no. She’d probably bite me if I tried that. I patted her shoulder, testing.
She reeled back, eying me suspiciously. “What are you doing?”
