Chapter 5: Resolution
For a long moment, neither of them moved. The viscous proof of their lapse was beginning to cool, a sticky, troubling intimacy between their legs. Jemma’s breath evened out first, and the fingers on his back tensed, then relaxed.
“Okay,” she said, the word flat, practical. “Get off me. Couch is gross.”
Her tone, sliding back toward her normal, no-nonsense self, broke the frozen spell. Alan lifted his weight off her, the separation a damp, sucking sound in the quiet room. The air conditioner sputtered, kicking out a weak stream of chilled air that raised goosebumps on their damp skin.
They didn’t look at each other. Jemma stood, wincing slightly as she unfolded her legs, and padded naked toward the bathroom, grabbing her crumpled tank top from the floor as she went. Alan sat on the edge of the couch, his elbows on his knees, staring at the blue TV screen until his reflection became unbearable. He clicked it off. The sudden darkness was heavy, alive with the echoes of the bass and their own ragged sounds.
He found his boxers and jeans in the gloom, pulling them on, the fabric strangely foreign. The bathroom light cut a yellow slash across the hallway floor. He heard the shower turn on, the pipes groaning in the walls.
Cleaning up meant a tense, shared hour of avoiding each other’s eyes. Jemma emerged from the bathroom in sweats, her hair damp and spiky. Alan had thrown the stained couch cover into a ball in the corner and opened a window, the night air doing little to dispel the new, complicated scent in the apartment. They sat at opposite ends of the kitchen table, the same table where they’d shared a hundred cheap meals and dumb jokes.
“So,” Jemma said, stirring a spoon in a mug of tea she hadn’t made. “That happened.”
“Yeah.” Alan’s voice was hoarse.
“You left the video menu up, you dumbass.”
A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “You didn’t have to click play.”
“Curiosity killed the cat.” She took a sip, then set the mug down with a decisive clink.“Look. It was a thing. A weird, stupid, porn-inspired thing. We’re adults. Sort of. We don’t have to make it a thing-thing.”
He looked at her then, really looked. Her green eyes were steady, but there was a tightness at the corners he’d never seen before. A flicker of the same panic she’d had just before he came. “What about… what you said? ‘I’m not on—’”
“Plan B,” she cut him off, her voice firm. “I’ll get it tomorrow. CVS is open 24 hours. It’ll be fine.” She said it like she was convincing herself. “We just… act normal. Tell no one. Not a soul. This stays in this nasty apartment.”
“Act normal,” Alan repeated, the concept feeling impossible.
“Yeah. You’re still my best friend. I still need you to spot me for pizza.”
He nodded slowly. The alternative—the idea of whatever they’d just done poisoning their easy, messy friendship—was worse than the fear he felt curling in his gut. “Okay. Normal.”
They went to bed in their own rooms, the wall between them feeling impossibly thin. Normal proved to be a shaky performance.
For the next two days, they orbited each other with careful, brittle politeness. The teasing was forced. The silences were loud. Jemma got the pill. She took it with a grimace and a glass of water while Alan pretended not to watch from the sink. The pharmacist’s warning about potential side effects felt personal, awful.
A week passed. They managed a few laughs over a truly terrible movie. Alan spilled a beer on the carpet and Jemma called him a clod, and for a second it felt real. But he couldn’t stop watching her. Every time she shifted in her chair, every slight grimace, felt like a portent. She was quieter.Pale. He chalked it up to the pill, to awkwardness.
Two Saturdays later, the performance shattered.
It was a muggy afternoon. Jemma was standing at the open fridge, staring blankly at the contents. Alan was on the couch, a textbook open but unread on his lap.
“Did we finish the salsa?” she asked, her voice strange.
“I think so. Why?”
She didn’t answer. She just stood there, one hand on the fridge door, the other pressed flat against her stomach. Her shoulders hunched. Then, with a sudden, violent turn, she lunged for the sink and vomited.
The sound was harsh, painful. Alan was on his feet instantly. “Jemma?”
She ran the water, coughing, spitting. “Ugh. God. Bad pizza last night, I guess.” She sounded furious, but it was a thin, brittle fury.
He remembered the pizza. He’d had two slices. She’d nibbled the crust of one, claiming she wasn’t hungry.
Over the next three days, the signs stacked up with silent, brutal efficiency. The smell of his morning coffee, which she usually adored, made her gag. She slept fourteen hours straight on Sunday, a dead-weight sleep he had to check on twice. On Tuesday, he caught her staring at the tiny, empty bottle of juice on the counter with an expression of pure, unvarnished terror.
That evening, she vanished. She didn’t answer her phone. For two hours, Alan paced the apartment, his mind spiraling through every worst-case scenario.
The front door clicked open just after nine. Jemma walked in, her face like chalk. She dropped her bag on the floor. In her hand was a small, white paper bag from the pharmacy down the street.
She didn’t speak. She just walked past him, into the bathroom, and closed the door.
The wait was an eternity measured in the slow drip of the leaky faucet. Alan stood frozen in the center of the living room, surrounded by the relics of their former life: the pizza boxes, the videogame controllers, the textbooks. He thought of the couch, the blue screen, the feeling of her clenching around him, the sheer, stupid finality of his release. It’ll be fine, she’d said.
The bathroom door opened. Jemma emerged. She held a small white stick between her thumb and forefinger. She looked at him, and her piercing green eyes held no sarcasm, no playfulness, no bravado. Just a deep, horrifying shock.
She held the stick up. The digital display, clear even across the room, showed a single, undeniable word: PREGNANT.
“It didn’t work,” she whispered. The stick slipped from her fingers, clattering on the linoleum.
Alan’s breath left his body.The room tilted. All the air was gone. The word on the stick pulsed in his vision, syncing with a sudden, frantic hammering in his chest. A thousand thoughts stampeded—his unfinished degree, the shitty part-time job, his parents’ disappointed faces, the terrified look in her eyes. The crushing, concrete weight of it all descended at once.
He looked at Jemma, standing there, small and stunned in her sweats, and all he saw was the end of everything. His flight response, primal and overwhelming, took over.
“I… I need air,” he choked out. It wasn't a sentence. It was a biological imperative.
He moved past her, a clumsy zombie. He yanked the front door open and stumbled out into the hallway.
“Alan?” Her voice was small behind him, already sounding distant.
He didn’t stop. He took the stairs two at a time, the echoes of his own footsteps like gunshots. He burst out into the damp night and just started walking, fast, directionless. Pregnant. Pregnant. Pregnant. The rhythm of the word matched the frantic pulse in his temples. Abandonment wasn’t a conscious choice; it was a floodgate crashing open. He pictured her alone in that terrible apartment, clutching her stomach, thinking he’d left her to drown. The image was a physical pain. He walked faster, hands shoved deep in his pockets, shoulders hunched against a guilt that felt like a physical weight.
He walked for over an hour, through neighborhoods they’d biked through, past the diner where they’d gotten pancakes at 3 a.m. Every familiar landmark was now a monument to a life that was over. He saw kids screaming in a playground and felt nauseous.
He found himself outside a dingy, independent pawn shop with barred windows and a flickering “OPEN” sign. He stopped. He stared at the jumbled mess of electronics and tools and jewelry behind the glass. His mind, blank with panic for so long, suddenly focused to a single, sharp point.
He pushed the door open. A bell jangled. The air smelled of dust and old metal.
Twenty minutes later, he walked out. His bank account was two hundred and seventeen dollars lighter. In the palm of his hand, nestled in a cheap red velvet box, was a tiny silver ring with a diamond chip so small it barely caught the streetlight. It was pathetic. It was all he could do.
The walk back to the apartment was a different kind of terror. Shame now warred with the fear. What if she’d called someone? What if she was gone? What if she looked at this sad little ring and laughed in his face?
He took the stairs slowly this time, each step heavier than the last. He fumbled his key into the lock, his hands shaking.
The apartment was dark except for the light over the stove. Jemma was sitting at the kitchen table, exactly where he’d left her, her head in her hands. The white test stick lay on the table in front of her like an accusation. She didn’t look up when he came in.
He stood in the doorway, the awful weight of the velvet box in his pocket. He’d run. He’d actually run. The silence stretched, thick and suffocating.
Finally, she lifted her head. Her eyes were red and puffy, but dry. She looked at him, and the anger he expected wasn’t there. Just a profound, exhausted numbness.
“You came back,” she said. Her voice was scraped raw.
“Yeah.” The word felt useless.
She nodded toward the test. “So. That’s a thing.”
He crossed the room, each step a negotiation with his own cowardice. He stopped beside her chair but didn’t sit. He pulled the small box from his pocket. He didn’t get down on one knee. This wasn’t a proposal. It was a confession.
He placed the box on the table next to the pregnancy test. He flipped the lid open. The tiny chip of diamond glittered dully under the harsh kitchen light.
Jemma stared at it. A furrow appeared between her eyebrows. She looked from the ring to his face, utterly confused.
“I panicked,” he said, the words tumbling out fast, messy, true. “I saw that word and my brain just… broke. I walked out. I left you. That’s what I did. And while I was walking, all I could think was that I left you alone with that… with this.” He gestured vaguely at the stick. “And that’s the shittiest thing I’ve ever done.”
He took a ragged breath. “This isn’t… I’m not asking you to marry me. I know this isn’t that. It’s nothing. It’s a shitty ring from a pawn shop. But I needed to come back with something. To prove I came back. To prove I’m not leaving. I am so, so fucking scared, Jemma. But I’m here. I’m not running again.”
He fell silent, his heart pounding against his ribs. He’d said it all wrong. It was a mess.
Jemma looked at the cheap little ring for a long time. Then, slowly, she reached out and picked it up. She slipped it onto her right ring finger. It was too big. It slid around loosely.
She held her hand up, studying it, the absurdly small stone catching the light.
A sound escaped her—a wet, shaky exhale that was almost a laugh, but was mostly a sob. A single tear traced a path down her cheek, cutting through the numbness. She didn’t wipe it away.
“It’s the ugliest ring I’ve ever seen,” she whispered.
“I know.”
She closed her hand into a fist, the ring a hard little knot against her palm. She looked up at him, her green eyes swimming. “Don’t ever do that again. Don’t you ever walk out on me like that.”
“I won’t.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
She nodded, accepting it, or deciding to try. She looked back at her closed fist, then at the word on the table between them.
“Okay,” she breathed, to herself, to him, to the room. “Okay. So we’re really doing this.” she looked at the ring a minute. "could have spent the money on fixing the AC but... we're doing the baby, maybe someday we can talk about this ring issue."