“She’s watching a TV show. She probably won’t come up until it’s over.” The answer was grudging. Cait stuck her head out and looked down and then sidelong to where he stood atop the arbor. “What if you fall?”
“I won’t.”
She rolled her eyes but relented. “Oh, fine.”
He got a grip okay, but there was one distinct thud as his feet hit the side of the house. Cait and he both went still. The strain on his shoulders was huge. Even so, he let a good minute pass before pulling himself up and half falling through the window.
Cait immediately let down the blinds and pointed to bare floor behind her bed. “Sit down there. If Mom comes, drop flat, okay?”
“Sure.” He sat, back to her bedside stand, and stretched out his legs. He couldn’t see all of her room from here, but enough. It was almost as girlie as Bree’s at Davis’s house. A couple of posters of ballerinas were the eye-catchers. One was doing some kind of leap and seemed suspended in air. Impossible and dazzling, he had to admit. Another was being lifted by a guy, who looked gay in tight dance clothes but obviously had some serious muscle.
Otherwise, her bedspread was fluffy and powder pink, there was a barre like at the dance school screwed into one wall intersecting with the one that had floor-length mirrors on the closet doors and the whole room was completely neat. Unreal.
She plopped on the bed cross-legged and looked down at him. She was not happy. “Say whatever it is you want to say.”
“Why are you avoiding me?”
“Because I know what you want.”
They’d had this conversation before. And, no lie, Trevor did want to say again, Get an abortion. Please, for both our sakes, get an abortion so we can both forget this ever happened. But he’d seen the way she reacted last time, and whether he liked it or not, he heard what she’d said.
He felt queasy when he thought, What if Mom had aborted me? Well, duh, I wouldn’t be here. Cait wouldn’t be pregnant. Or, at least, I wouldn’t be the father. There might’ve been some other guy.
“No,” he said. “That’s not it. I wanted to say…I was an asshole. I know I was. And I want to make up for it, if I can. I wish you’d talk to me. That’s all.”
“Right. Sure. You want to hold my hand and dry my tears and be super nice guy.”
“Yeah. If that’s what you need from me,” Trevor said, feeling guilty because no, that’s not what he wanted.
“What if I said what I need is for you to leave me alone?”
He was here because he hated being helpless. He needed some control. But…he looked at her face, and saw his sister. It shook him up. What if this was Bree? What if she needed space? To decide for herself, not for anyone else?
Trevor made a getting-up motion. “Then I will.”
She burst into tears.
“Oh, shit.” He got to his knees and reached clumsily for her. She fell against him and clutched him hard. “Shh,” he kept saying. God. All they needed was for her mother to burst in here now, find him here. “Shh,” he said against her hair, more desperately. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not!” Cait whispered fiercely.
No. He guessed it wasn’t.
She finally unwound her arms and sat back. She grabbed some tissues from a box in her drawer and swabbed at her face, not looking at him. Trevor stayed where he was, kneeling in front of her.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wish there was something I could do.”
She blew her nose and gazed at him from puffy eyes. “It was nice of you to come over. And…well, to keep bugging me the way you have been. You could have, um, just figured it was my problem and ignored me.”
“I’m not that big an asshole,” he muttered. “It took two. It’s our problem.”
“And your dad’s and my mom’s, too, apparently.”
He tried out a grin. Crooked, one that he hoped said, We are in this together. “I noticed.”
“Can you believe they want us all to have dinner together? Like, what?”
“I don’t know what,” he admitted. “I guess it makes them feel good. Like they’re involved or something.”
“It’s my baby.” Her eyes slid to his. “Ours.”
“Yeah.” Oh, shit, oh, damn, oh… “You don’t want to get an abortion, do you?”