Finding Cinderella Maybe Someday

MILES
Six years earlier
I rub her back reassuringly. “Two more minutes,” I tell her.
She nods but keeps her face pressed into the palms of her
hands. She doesn’t want to look.
I don’t tell her we don’t actually need the two minutes. I
don’t tell her the results are already there, clear as day.
I don’t tell Rachel she’s pregnant yet, because she still has
two minutes left of hope.
I continue to rub her back. When the timer goes off, she
doesn’t move. She doesn’t turn to look at the results. I drop
my head to the side of hers until my mouth is close to her
ear.
“I’m so sorry, Rachel,” I whisper. “I’m so, so sorry.”
She bursts into tears.
My heart is crushed at the sound.
This is my fault. This is all my fault.
The only thing I can think to do now is figure out how to
rectify it.

---

I turn her toward me and wrap my arms around her. “I’ll tell
them you don’t feel well and you can’t go to school today. I
want you to stay here until I get back.”
She doesn’t even nod. She continues to cry, so I pick her up
and carry her to the bed. I go back to the bathroom and
package up the test, then hide it underneath the sink in the
very back. I rush to my room and change clothes.
I leave.
I’m gone most of the day.
I’m rectifying.
When I finally pull back up our driveway, I still have almost
an hour before my father and Lisa are due home. I grab
everything from my front seat and rush inside to check on
her. I left my phone behind in my rush this morning, so I
haven’t had a way to check on her at all, and I’d be lying if I
said it wasn’t killing me.
I go inside.
I go to her door.
I attempt to turn it, but it’s locked.
I knock.
“Rachel?”
I hear movement. Something crashes against the door, and I
jump back. When I realize what’s happened, I step forward
again and bang on the door. “Rachel!” I yell, frantic. “Open
the door!”
I hear her crying. “Go away!”
I take two steps back, then lunge forward and shove my
shoulder against the door as hard as I can. The door flies
open, and I rush inside. Rachel is curled up against the
headboard, crying into her hands. I reach her.
She pushes me away.
I walk back to her.
She slaps me, then scoots off the bed. She stands up,
shoving me back, pushing her palms against my chest. “I
hate you!” she screams through her tears. I grab her hands
and try to calm her down. It makes her angrier. “Just leave!”

---

she yells. “If you don’t want anything to do with me, just
leave!”
Her words stun me.
“Rachel, stop,” I plead. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”
Her tears come harder now. She screams at me. She says I
left her. I put her in bed this morning, and I left her because
I couldn’t handle it. I was disappointed in her.
I love you, Rachel. More than I love myself.
“Baby, no,” I tell her, pulling her to me. “I didn’t leave you. I
told you I was coming back.”
I hate that she didn’t understand why I left today.
I hate that I didn’t explain it to her.
I walk her back to the bed, and I position her against the
headboard. “Rachel,” I say, touching her tear-stained cheek,
“I’m not disappointed in you,” I tell her. “Not in the least. I’m
disappointed in myself. Which is why I want to do everything
I possibly can to turn this around for you. For 
us.
That’s what
I’ve been doing today. I’ve been trying to find a way to make
this better for us.”
I stand up and grab the folders, then spread them out on
the bed. I show her everything. I show her the brochures for
family housing I picked up from campus. I show her the
forms we need to fill out for free campus child care. I show
her the financial aid brochures and the night classes and the
online course review and the academic adviser list and how
it will all coordinate with my flight-class schedule. All the
possibilities are spread out before her, and I want her to see
that even though we didn’t want this, even though we didn’t
plan for this . . . we can 
do
this.
“I know it’ll be a lot harder with a baby, Rachel. I 
know
that.
But it’s not impossible.”
She stares down at everything I’ve laid out before her. I
watch her in silence until her shoulders begin to shake and
she covers her mouth with her hand. She meets my gaze as
huge tears spill out of her eyes. She crawls forward and
throws her arms around my neck.

---

She tells me she loves me.
You love me so much, Rachel.
She kisses me over and over.
“We’ve got this, Miles,” she whispers against my ear.
I nod and hug her back. “We’ve got this, Rachel.”

---

chapter nineteen
TATE
It’s Thursday.
Game night.
Normally, the sound of their Thursday-night game gets
under my skin. Tonight it’s music to my ears, knowing that
Miles should be home. I have no idea what to expect from
him or this arrangement we’ve got going on. I haven’t
texted or spoken to him in the five days since he’s been
gone.
I know that with as much as I’m thinking about him, I
shouldn’t be doing this. For something that’s supposed to be
a casual thing, it’s felt anything but casual. For me, it’s been
extremely involved. Intense, even. He’s pretty much all I’ve
thought about since that night in the rain, and it’s quite
pathetic that I’m reaching for the doorknob to walk inside
my apartment and my damn hand is shaking, knowing he
might be in there.
I open the door to the apartment, and Corbin is the first to
look up. He nods but doesn’t even say hi. Ian waves from his
seat on the couch, then looks back at the TV.
Dillon’s eyes roam up and down my body, and I do what I
can to stop myself from rolling my eyes.

---

Miles doesn’t do anything, because Miles isn’t here.
My whole body sighs from disappointment. I drop my
purse onto the empty chair in the living room and tell myself
it’s a good thing he isn’t here, because I’ve got way too
much homework to do anyway.
“There’s pizza in the fridge,” Corbin says.
“Nice.” I walk into the kitchen and open the cabinet to
remove a plate. I hear footsteps closing in on me, and my
heart rate kicks up a notch.
A hand touches me on my lower back, and I immediately
smile and turn around to face Miles.
Only it isn’t Miles. It’s Dillon.
“Hey, Tate,” he says, reaching around me to the cabinet.
The hand that first touched my lower back is still on me, but
now that I’ve turned to face him, his hand has slid to my
waist. He keeps his eyes locked with mine as he reaches
past me and opens the cabinet. “Just need a cup for my
beer,” he says, excusing the fact that he’s right here.
Touching
me. His face only inches from my face.
I hate that he saw me smiling when I turned around. I just
gave him the wrong idea.
“Well, you won’t find a cup in my pocket,” I say, pushing
his hand off of me. I look away from Dillon just as Miles
steps into the kitchen. His eyes are burning holes into the