“I don’t,” Adam said without looking up from the table.
“That’s just because you’re still pissed off,” Rob said to him with a huff.
“No,” Adam continued. “It’s because I saw him coming out of Sarah’s bedroom.”
“What?” Michael said as he looked at his friend.
His jaw dropped open as he stared at Adam and it looked as if someone had just driven a dagger straight through his heart.
“Why would you say something like that?” Michael asked him.
“Because it’s true,” Adam answered nonchalantly. “You thought that nobody saw you, but I did.”
“Why are you lying for this girl?” Michael said as his voice began to raise in both pitch and volume. “What are you doing?”
“I just think that Lisette deserves to know the truth, that’s all,” Adam said.
“Is that what this is about?” Michael asked. “You’re stooping so low as to betray our friendship in some ridiculous attempt to paint me as being unfaithful so that you can take Lisette for yourself?”
“Now who’s being ridiculous?” Adam said.
There was a snakelike quality to his voice now. One that made him sound slippery and dishonest.
I was becoming overwhelmed with worry as I continued to clench onto Michael’s hand, both because I felt like I needed to hold and touch him, and because I thought that if I didn’t, he might punch Sarah, or Adam, or maybe even both of them. No matter which one of the guys was telling the truth, it meant that one of them was lying to me and I couldn’t bear the thought of that. I was absolutely furious at Sarah for somehow getting herself in the middle of all of us. The only thing that I could think of to do, was to deal with her on my own and take the stage of men away from her performance. I let go of Michael’s hand, and as soon as I did, he reached for me again.
“Please tell me you aren’t believing this garbage,” he said as he held on to my hand, not wanting to let me go until we resolved this mess.
“Trust me,” I said. “I’m currently not believing anything from anyone.”
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“I just want to talk to Sarah alone for a little bit. I’m also going to take her to go get a pregnancy test so we can at least rule that out as being either truth or lie.”
Sarah rolled her eyes dramatically at me. “Seriously? Are we going to go have girl-chat or something? I’m a resident here, not a patient. I don’t need you to take me to get a pregnancy test, I already know that I’m pregnant.”
“Humor me,” I said as my patience was fading.
I pulled Sarah out of the kitchen with me while the guys all watched looking dumbfounded. I could hear them start to talk and argue once we left the room. I was relieved when we got out of earshot because I hated hearing the guys fight.
“How did you get pregnant?” I asked as Sarah and I walked through the store aisles to find where they kept the pregnancy tests.
“I think you might need to retake health-ed if you don’t know the answer to that question,” she snarked.
“You know what I’m asking,” I said in a less than friendly tone. “Who did you have sex with?”
“I already told you, Michael.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said sternly. “Michael wouldn’t sleep with you; he loves me.”
“You can tell yourself that all you want, but I’m telling you the truth. Michael came into my room a couple of nights after I got here. We had sex, he left in the middle of the night, and your other friend even saw him with his own eyes. You can’t really believe the voice of one man over the voice of two others.”
“Yes, I sure as hell can,” I said. “If that one man is someone that I know I can trust.”
“Well,” she said as she picked up a pregnancy test from the shelf and shrugged her shoulders. “That might work with me since you don’t know me hardly at all. But does that train of thought really work with your other friend? What’s his name again, Adam? Are you so sure that Adam is lying about having seen it, that you’re willing to just take Michael’s word for it?”
The only accurate point that she was making, was that I trusted both Michael and Adam. Which made things in this situation utterly impossible to deal with because it meant that one of them was lying to me. They both had reasons to lie, I suppose. Adam wanted to frame Michael as being dishonest and disloyal, so that I might then consider being with him. But if Michael actually had done it (which I still don’t believe that he had), then he would want to lie to cover up his infidelity. Either way, this whole thing sucked, and I found myself wishing that Sarah had never come to the house at all.
When we got back, she went right into the bathroom to take the test. I stood at the door to listen and to make sure that it wasn’t being altered or tampered with. Although I wasn’t really sure what you could even do to alter a pregnancy test to begin with. We waited the five minutes and then she and I stared at the pink plus sign together. Well, at least that question was proven to be answered. Sarah was definitely pregnant.
Now the only question was who was the father?
For the first several days here, it had just been me, and the boys, and Sarah. By the time everyone else moved in, I think it would have been too fast and too short a time period for her to have gotten pregnant. That meant that she must have slept with someone outside of The Sanctuary. But since she never went out and never had anyone over; it made it a bit of an unfounded assumption.
“Look,” I said as I tried to be as civil and unassuming as possible. “I know that you know who the father of this baby is. And I know that the father is not Michael. What I don’t know, is why you’re trying to do this to me.
“To you?” she shouted. “I’m the one that’s pregnant. Tell your boyfriend to come see me when you’re done yelling at him. I want to talk about how we’re going to be able to have this baby together.”
Sarah walked from the bathroom and back out into her own bedroom where she promptly slammed the door behind her.
I was upset, this woman was upset, and the guys were upset. I didn’t know who to believe because even though I knew Michael wouldn’t do something like this, I wasn’t ready to believe that Adam would lie to me and betray his friend.
17
Talking to Sarah had gotten me nowhere and taking the pregnancy test didn’t solve the problem behind all of the discord and drama of who the father was.
“Rob,” I said as I walked outside to where he was working on fixing up an old motorcycle.
