Under The Bridge

I woke up in the morning dreading what I had planned for the day. I had to talk to Brad and I wasn’t sure how things would go, especially considering how excited he was about the prospect of being a dad and the decisions I had come to about our relationship with the past few days of reflection.

With a heavy heart, I got dressed and put my hair up. I stopped and bought coffee on my way to Brad’s place for the two of us. He was expecting me; I’d called him the night before to let him know I’d be coming by to talk about everything. I didn’t tell him about the abortion, I felt like I needed to explain that in person.

“Hey!” He said answering the door and taking his cup of coffee, “I’m glad you decided to come over, I want to talk to you, too.”

We sat at his kitchen table and looked at each other.

“Brad, I need to talk to you about the pregnancy. I-”

“I need to talk to you about that, too.” He said holding my hand across the table, “I know you’re freaked out about it. And I think that’s good.”

“What?”

“Who WOULDN’T be nervous and freaked out at the prospect of being a parent? I mean, I get it Faith. It’s easy for me to see this as a good thing and get excited about it but you’re the one who has to push that thing out of you. So I get it.”

“That’s not really why-”

“But listen. I am going to be there for you, okay? You can move in here, you can quit your stage management job and work at Bruno’s. I’m sure Bruno will give you maternity leave. I’ll ask for a raise and I’m sure Phil would promote me to manager if I told him what was going on and showed him in the next few months I could handle it. Things will be okay, Faith. We can be parents.”

I stared at Brad and suppressed the anger that was slowly boiling inside of me.

“How, Brad? As a bartender and a manager of a record store? Have you done any research about what it means to give birth and raise a kid?”

“Of course I have!” He said indignantly.

“Really? Is that why you tried to feed me unpasteurized cheese? Do you realize that it costs, on average, $30,000 dollars to cover the costs of giving birth in a hospital now?”

“Well, no, but I have health insurance and it’ll cover most of that. And how was I supposed to know pregnant women can’t eat CHEESE!?”

“I don’t have health insurance, Brad. And I’ll be the one that has to pay for that. I don’t even make that much money in a year before taxes. And once it’s born it’ll be even more expensive with diapers and bottles and baby food and baby monitors and-”

“Look, the health insurance thing has been something I’ve been thinking about, okay, and I figured out a solution.”

“And that is?”

Brad wiped his sweaty hands on his knees before getting up and kneeling in front of me. He opened a small ring box and smiled at me.

“We can get married. I can put you on my health insurance if you’re my wife.”

Brad looked at me expectantly, waiting for my answer.

“Well, Faith? We’re in love, let’s do this.”

“No.”

I shook my head. Brad’s face fell and he lowered the box slowly. I regretted letting the conversation get away from what I needed to tell him.

“Brad, please sit down.” I said looking at him. He was still kneeling and it was making me uncomfortable.

He got up sadly and sat back down at the table.

“I’m not going to marry you. Wanting health insurance isn’t a good enough reason to get married.”

“That’s not the only reason…” Brad said sadly.

“I don’t think getting married because of a pregnancy is a good enough reason, either, Brad. I took some time, like you suggested, to think about things and you’re not going to like what I decided.”

“I want to marry you because I love you, not because you’re pregnant.”

I shook my head again.

“Brad, I’m NOT pregnant.”

Brad looked at me with silent confusion.

“What, yes you are. I saw the pregnancy test.”

“No, I’m not…not anymore-”

Brad looked at me with so much sadness that I stopped talking.

“Did…did you have a miscarriage?” He asked.

I opened my mouth to tell him “no” but closed it again. It was the perfect way to end this entire ordeal with minimal damage. And then I nodded. For the record, I felt uneasy about that the second I did it.

“H-how?” He asked meekly.

“I don’t know. Sometimes it just happens.”

Brad held my hands again.

“This doesn’t change the fact that I want to marry you, Faith. We can get through the grief of this together. I love you and we can try again.”

And then I just effing lost it. Any uneasiness I had felt previously was out the freaking window and I no longer cared about Brad's feelings.

I pulled my hands away from Brad and started screaming at him.

“WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!? HOW MUCH MORE CLEAR DO I NEED TO BE!? I. DON’T. WANT. TO. MARRY. YOU. I don’t want to quit my job! I don’t want you to put me on your health insurance! I didn’t want to have a kid with you and if you weren’t so damn in denial about my feelings you would have realized that!”

“You’re just upset about the miscarriage. The hormones are making you like this. You don’t mean it.” He said staring at me in awe.

“OH MY GOD!” I sighed angrily and put my head in my hands, “Brad. I didn’t have a miscarriage. I got an abortion.”

Brad didn’t move for a beat and then he was suddenly angry and pounded his fists on the table. I backed my chair away a little.

“YOU KILLED MY BABY!?”

“Excuse me!?” My anger spilled over even more, “YOUR baby?”

“I swear to God, Faith! You’ve done some petty terrible things to me but I would NEVER have thought you’d go this far!”

I took a deep breath and tried to calm down. The last thing I needed was for this to turn into a huge fight full of yelling.

“First of all, Brad, I didn't do this TO you. The decision I made was not some twisted attempt to punish you or hurt you some more. The level of selfishness you must have to make that assumption is, quite frankly, astounding. Second of all, it’s my body, NOT yours and I’m only telling you out of a courtesy, not because I was obligated to. Finally, I made this decision by myself without you because you had NO IDEA what this would mean for me OR you and I did what was in both of our best interests. I know you may not see that now, but you will some day. This was not…this was NEVER up to you! And if I had it to do all over again, I never would have taken that pregnancy test in front of you! Or even tried to be in a relationship with you at all!”

Brad gave me an angry, dirty look. He looked down at the table and was quiet for a long time.

“No…you’re lying…”

I crossed my arms and sighed angrily.

“I don’t love you, Brad. I lied that night at work. I…thought I could force myself to love you or have feelings for you the way you had them for me but they never developed. I care about you but I will never reciprocate the feelings you have for me. It was a mistake being in this relationship with you.”

“No, you’re just in denial. You don’t want to admit-”

“No, Brad. I’ve spent the past four months trying to convince myself to love you. This situation made me realize that I don’t want to be with you in any capacity.”

“How can you say that?” Brad had tears in his eyes. I softened a little.

“Because it’s not fair to either one of us. You deserve someone who is capable of loving you, who loves you completely and is willing to provide you with all the things you want. You deserve to be with someone who isn’t with you out of guilt. That person isn’t me, Brad. It never was.”

“So that’s it? You’re just going to leave me?” He stood up angrily.

I stood up slowly and hitched my purse onto my shoulder.

“Yes.” I said matter-of-factly, “It’s over, Brad. Truly. I want you to move on, for real. You deserve someone else.”

“How can you just leave!? I want to MARRY you.”

“No, you want to marry the person you think I am. You want to marry the woman you knocked up in an effort to get her to agree to have a child you knew she didn’t want. You want to marry someone who doesn’t exist.”

I went to leave and Brad grabbed my arm.

“Ow!” I looked Brad in the eyes.

He let go and held his hands up.

“Can’t we try to salvage this?” He asked.

“Brad, why can’t you see how terrible this relationship was for both of us? We never communicated about our problems; we just had sex whenever we’d fight. We have almost nothing in common. You don’t respect my career aspirations at all.  We both have resentment for each other. Whenever I do something you don’t like you try to guilt me into doing what you want…this isn’t healthy. Healthy relationships don’t feel like this.”

“Why can’t we just start over and try to communicate more?” He asked desperately, following me to the door.

I stopped and turned around to look at him and placed my hands on his shoulders.

“I know this will be hard for you to hear, and trust me, I don’t take joy in telling you this but a relationship with you is not a good enough reward for having to work that hard in a relationship. This relationship is not worth enough for me to try and make it better.”

Brad shrugged me off and started shouting again.

“How the hell would you know what a healthy relationship is? I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to you!”

“No. You’re not. And I know because I ruined a healthy relationship because of the sick one we have with each other, Brad. It’s time for us to part ways.”

I turned to leave and Brad grabbed my hand.

“Faith-”

“Can you just do me a favor?” I asked him pulling it away.

“What?”

“Before you start hounding me about this, can you just take a few days and really think about what I said? If you love me as much as you say you do, you will do that for me… and then you’ll let me go.”

I left his apartment and took a deep breath. I felt free for the first time in a long time. As I was walking back to my apartment, Molly’s words from months ago started to bounce around in my head. It was time for me to get my shit together.