Page 140 of Good For Me

“Fuck my life,” I mutter.

“Let’s go down to the basement,” Will says to the others. “Riv and Daltrey need to talk.”

I duck my head, not meeting any of their curious looks. I’m surprised when my uncles follow Will. I expected a lot more hassle than that. But a moment later my dad and I are alone in the kitchen and I collapse into a chair at the table. Cash left us two beers, but I push mine away. “Whiskey?”

My dad frowns at me but he stands up and grabs the bottle without arguing. He lines up two glasses and pours a few fingers for each of us. I have mine halfway to my mouth when I realize I can’t do it. Maybe it’s stupid, maybe she’s going to leave anyhow, but I can’t break this promise to Jas.

I push the whiskey away, feeling sick to my stomach.

“What’s going on?” my dad asks.

“Everything is fucked. I…I don’t know if Jas is gonna stick around.”

He sucks in a breath. “You guys are fighting?”

I nod because it seems easier than trying to explain what happened in our bedroom.

“Pregnancies are stressful,” he says. “Maybe she just needs—”

“I don’t know what the fuck she needs,” I burst out. “I’ve been trying so goddamn hard to figure it out. To show her she can trust me. To show her we can do this. But today she just…” I shake my head, images of her stricken face in the bedroom flashing through my mind.

“Her mom showed up in town and it freaked her out.”

“Yeah, your mom told me you said they don’t have a good relationship.”

“They don’t have any relationship.” I briefly explain about her awful mom and how Jas was raised by her grandfather. How him getting sick when she was in high school inspired her to get her life on track. How seeing her mom today made her lose her shit.

“It’s like she’s still trying to make her grandfather proud. Like she never got over the guilt of worrying him when she was younger. She can’t stop trying to prove herself.”

“And getting pregnant before she finished school doesn’t really follow that plan,” my dad surmises.

“Especially not to someone like me,” I mutter.

“Kid, I thought we were past that shit. You’re a goddamn catch.”

I rub my eyes to tamp down the urge to cry. “When I met her, she was dating this huge asshole. Fucker cheated on her. On her birthday. This guy though—he was her grandfather’s accountant. Educated, has some money, boring as shit—in other words, stable. She started dating him like, weeks after her grandpa died. Stayed with him for years.”

“She thought that was the kind of guy he would want her to be with,” my dad says.

“Exactly.”

“Seeing her mom was bound to bring up some shit for her,” my dad says. He clears his throat. “You can go downstairs and ask any of those guys for a list of stupid shit they did on account of their mom being an absent drug addict.

“I get that,” I say. “I fully expected her to be upset about her mom showing up.” I swallow hard. “But she said…” Fuck. I really don’t want to cry in front of him.

“What’d she say, Riv?” my dad asks.

“I don’t know if she wants to raise the baby,” I blurt out and my dad goes still.

“What do you mean?”

God, I want that whiskey. “When she first found out, she was thinking about adoption. She didn’t actually decide to keep it until after the fire.” I can still see the way she looked in my Jeep that night, when she felt the baby move. The absolute wonder that had crossed her face. Her certainty that she was meant to be his mother.

How the hell could she doubt that now?

“Today she told me she wasn’t sure about us. When I asked what she felt about the baby, she said she would have been better off if her mom gave her up from the start.”

“Aw, Riv,” Dad says, gripping my shoulder. “That doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to raise the baby. It just means she’s scared. It’s pretty common to fear you’re gonna make the same mistakes as your parents.” He gives me a gentle smirk. “You might not get that because your parents are so amazing and wonderful in every way—”