Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 154525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 773(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 773(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
He kept it outstretched until she finally took it with a huff.
“Aren’t you going to ask me if I want to?”
“No, because you should want to. It shouldn’t be a discussion. That was on me that we weren’t safe in Chicago, and I promise it won’t happen again after today until we’re married and you want to get started on that team of mine. Right now, though, you’re eighteen. I’m nineteen. Neither of us is in a place to have a kid. You’ve got huge things coming up in your life, and I want you to do them. Without a distraction like kids or the responsibility that comes along with it. I still have a lot of shit to figure out on my end, too. No, it shouldn’t be a question of whether you want to take it, I think.”
“Except it’s my body, not yours.”
Nico blinked. “A baby is a choice we should be making together, don’t you think?”
“You had your say in the matter when you came inside me.”
Nico couldn’t argue with her point, being it had validity. It didn’t mean he couldn’t try. “Frankie...”
She gave him a disgusted glance and ripped open the Plan B box. “Do you at least have fucking water?”
“Don’t be mad at me, babe.”
He said that as he reached into the backseat for the other bag of shit he got from the pharmacy. Waters, his pretzel chips, and a pack of gum, which now he would really need given his lack of cigarettes. Back in the front, he handed her the bottle to crack open.
She did and promptly threw back the first of two pills in the Plan B package.
“The other one needs to be taken—”
“Yeah, I know,” Frankie snapped. “I took sex-ed, too. You know, I haven’t even had my period in like eight months.”
Nico took that in. “That’s concerning.”
“No, it means I’m not ovulating, since you want to tell me what to do with my body. You might as well learn how my reproductive system w—”
“Whoa,” Nico interrupted, “don’t even start with that. First, you could be ovulating right now. The period comes after the egg, Frankie. You wouldn’t know if you were gonna get your period this month if you were ovulating today.”
She chugged more water, saying nothing.
“I’m sorry, I know you’re mad at me,” he murmured.
“You think?”
“I don’t want to fuck up your life.”
She gave him a look from the side, all that anger bleeding into something he couldn’t recognize. “You know how you could fuck up my life?”
“I can list a few ways, starting with making you a mother before you turned nineteen.”
She rolled her eyes. “Right, you’re ridiculous. Never mind, I don’t even want to have this conversation with you.”
“No, let’s have it. The hard ones are probably the ones we need to have the most.”
“Fine,” she spat, tossing the water bottle into her bag as well right along with the Plan B package, “let’s have it.”
Nico waited. “Well? You go first. I said what I had to.”
“I just think it’s funny—”
Oh, here we go, Nico thought. Whenever a woman started a fight with that statement, absolutely nothing would be funny that followed.
“—how you had no problem telling me to mind my own business about Carina’s choices,” Frankie said, not holding back her biting tone in the slightest, “but when it comes to me and mine, you want a say.”
He just stared at her, saying nothing.
“A little two-sided, don’t you think?” she asked.
“That I don’t want a child between us to be a regret of yours in ten years when you finally have the foresight and understanding of what it made you miss out on?” he asked back. “And it’s not even a thing right now, Frankie. It can take days for sperm to get to the egg, and days for the egg to get fertilized and implant. Despite popular belief, the learning part of school was not where I fucking struggled. I picked up everything. So, we’re sitting here talking about a hypothetical baby that isn’t even a thing right now. It’s nothing.”
“Even if it’s a clump of cells, it’s not nothing.”
He couldn’t wrap his mind around that. “Why, because it’s yours?”
“And yours,” she shot back hotly. “It would be yours, too. That means something.”
“Yeah, that I should have a say.”
“No, that’s not what it means. It means something to me that it’s yours, but it makes no difference on whether you get to tell me what to do about it.”
“And yet,” he returned quietly, “you took the pill.”
Frankie sniffled hard and wiped at her cheek with the back of her hand. No tears came, but he could tell she fought them back. “Because you’re right, and I hate that.”
He chewed on his inner cheek. “I am sorry.”
“This is the one time you get a say,” she whispered.