Saturday, February 22, 2025

The bathroom at the diner smells like bleach and the industrial soap Dad orders in bulk. Susan locks the stall door, sits, and stares at her underwear.

Blood.

Not much. Just spotting, really. But enough.

Her period's late. Nearly three weeks behind schedule. She'd been trying not to think about it–stress from midterms at community college, extra shifts covering for Marcy's maternity leave. Stress could delay things. Everyone knew that.

But New Year's Eve keeps playing in her head.

The truck cab. The fogged windows. Jake's hands on her skin, her dress hiked up, his jeans shoved down. The awkward geometry of the center console, the heater rattling, both of them breathing hard and desperate and certain they'd stop before it went too far.

Except they hadn't stopped.

"I'll pull out," he'd whispered against her neck. "I promise."

And he had. She was sure he had. They both were.

But sitting here now, staring at the blood, Susan doesn't know what to feel. Relief? Shame? Both?

Susan pulls out her phone. 2:47 PM. Jake's probably still at the dining hall, finishing his Saturday shift. She opens their text thread–good morning messages, class updates, I love you, miss you, goodnight. Nothing about New Year's Eve. They haven't talked about it since.

Her fingers hover over the keyboard.

Susan:

Can you call me when you're done with work? Not an emergency. Just need to talk.

Susan:

Can you call me when you're done with work? Not an emergency. Just need to talk.

Can you call me when you're done with work? Not an emergency. Just need to talk.

She hits send before she can second-guess it.

The diner's Saturday lunch rush is winding down when she emerges from the bathroom. Dad's at the grill, Mom's running the register, Aunt Carol's wiping down booth tables. The regulars: Mr. Peterson with his coffee and newspaper, the Gonzalez family with their three kids, teenagers from the high school clustered in the corner booth.

"You okay, honey?" Mom asks, glancing up from counting bills. "You look pale."

"Fine," Susan says automatically. "Just cramping a little."

Mom's expression softens. "That time of month? There's Midol in my purse, back office."

Susan nods, grabs the Midol, takes two with water from the fountain. Cramping. Period. Normal. Everything's normal.

Except she can still feel Jake's hands on her skin. Still hear his voice: We're getting married anyway. We both know that.

Her phone buzzes at 3:15 PM.

Jake:

Just saw your text. Calling in 5 min. Everything okay?

Jake:

Just saw your text. Calling in 5 min. Everything okay?

Just saw your text. Calling in 5 min. Everything okay?

She takes her phone to the back alley where they keep the dumpster. Cold February air, gray sky threatening snow. She leans against the brick wall and waits.

Jake calls at 3:20 PM exactly. ROTC punctuality.

"Hey," she says.

"What's wrong?" His voice is tight with worry. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. I just…" She closes her eyes. "My period started. This morning."

Silence on the other end. Then: "Oh. Oh, thank God."

"Yeah."

More silence. Susan listens to him breathing, imagines him in his dorm room or walking across campus, that MAGA hat he always wears, trying to figure out what to say.

"You were worried," he says finally. Not a question.

"I was three weeks late, Jake. Three weeks."

"I know. I've been… I was counting too."

"You didn't say anything."

"Neither did you."

Fair point. They'd both been living in careful silence since New Year's, talking every night but dancing around the thing neither wanted to name.

"I kept thinking about that night," Susan says. "About… how far we went."

Jake's voice drops. "We didn't… I mean, I pulled out. You know I did."

"I know. But we… it was close, Jake. Really close."

"I know."

Susan watches a car drive past on Main Street, headed toward the shuttered hospital building at the edge of town. The "FOR SALE" sign has been up for eight months now. Nearest emergency room is sixty miles away in City Memorial.

"I was scared," she admits. "Not just about being pregnant. About what it would mean. What people would say. What we'd do."

"We would've figured it out," Jake says. "Whatever happened, we would've figured it out together."

"Would we?" The question comes out sharper than she intends. "You're three hours away at State. I'm here. My parents, your parents, Pastor Rick, Father Michael—everyone would've known. Everyone would've judged."

"Sue–"

"I took my promise ring off that night, Jake. Took it off and put it in my purse before we… before." Her voice cracks. "I broke my promise to God. We both did."

Jake's quiet for a long moment. When he speaks again, his voice is thick. "I know. I've been carrying that too. Every Sunday at church, every time I pray… I feel it."

"Do you regret it?"

"No." The answer comes fast, certain. "I know I should. I know it was wrong, going against what we believe, what we promised. But I don't regret being with you. I just… I wish we'd waited. Done it right."

Susan closes her eyes. The Catholic guilt her mom's side of the family carries, the Pentecostal shame from Jake's church–they're different flavors of the same thing. Both pointing to the same conclusion: they sinned.

"My period starting," she says. "Does that mean… are we okay? With God?"

"I don't know." Jake's honesty hurts more than a lie would. "I've been praying about it. Asking for forgiveness. Trying to figure out what it means that we… that we messed up but we still love each other, still want to marry each other."

"My grandmother would say we need confession. Penance."

"My mom would say we need to rededicate ourselves to purity. Renew our commitment."

"What do you think we need?"

Jake exhales slowly. "I think we need to be more careful. Not put ourselves in situations where… where we might mess up again."

"So no more lookout point?"

"No more lookout point," he agrees. "At least not alone. Not at night."

Susan watches the gray sky, feels the February cold seeping through her jacket. Three weeks of worry, three weeks of shame and fear and what-ifs, and it comes down to this: spotting in a diner bathroom, a phone call in an alley, two twenty-year-olds trying to navigate faith and desire and the space between what they believe and what they've done.

"I'm relieved," she says. "About my period. But I'm also…"

"Sad?"

"Yeah. Is that weird?"

"No." Jake's voice softens. "I get it. Like… we dodged something, but also… I don't know. It makes it feel more real? What we almost did?"

"What we did do, Jake. We can pretend we stopped in time, but we didn't. Not really."

"I know."

"We can't do that again. Not until we're married. I mean it this time."

"I know. Me too."

Susan hears voices inside the diner–her mom calling for her, probably another rush starting. The weekend crowd coming in for early dinner.

"I gotta go," she says. "Dinner shift's starting."

"Okay. Sue?"

"Yeah?"

"I love you. And I'm sorry. For… for putting you in that position. For not being stronger."

"I was there too, Jake. I wanted it too. We're both responsible."

"Still. I should've… I'm the guy. I should've stopped us."

Susan almost laughs. Almost. "This isn't the 1950s. I have agency. Don't take all the responsibility just because you're the man."

"Old-fashioned of me?"

"Very." But she's smiling now, just a little. "I love you too. Talk tonight?"

"Yeah. 9:00?"

"9:00."

She hangs up and stands there in the alley for another minute, letting the cold air clear her head. Her period started. She's not pregnant. They're okay.

Except they're not, not really. Because New Year's Eve happened, and they can't undo it, and now they have to live with the knowledge of what they did and how close they came and how much harder it'll be to wait next time.

Inside the diner, Mom's at the register, Dad's at the grill, Aunt Carol's seating the Peterson family in booth seven. Normal Saturday night in Millerton. Everyone playing their parts.

Susan ties her apron, grabs her order pad, pastes on her customer service smile.

"Table four needs their check," Mom says as Susan passes.

"On it."

The diner fills up. Susan takes orders, delivers food, refills coffee cups, makes small talk with regulars who've known her since she was born. Mr. Jenkins asks about community college. Mrs. Patterson wants to know if she's heard from Jake. The youth group kids from church wave from their corner booth.

No one knows. They can't tell by looking at her that she spent the morning terrified she was pregnant, that she's carrying the weight of broken promises and Catholic guilt and Pentecostal shame.

She's just Susan Fletcher. Good girl. Pastor Rick's Sunday school teacher. Jake Morrison's girlfriend. First-generation college student working her way through community college while helping her family run the diner.

Normal.

At 8:45 PM, the rush finally slows. Susan counts her tips in the back office while Mom reconciles the register. $87. Not bad for a Saturday.

"You feeling better?" Mom asks, not looking up from her counting.

"Yeah. Midol helped."

"Good." Mom finishes her count, rubber-bands the bills, locks them in the safe. "Your father and I are proud of you, you know. How hard you work. How you balance school and the diner and church. You're going to do great things, honey."

The words hit harder than they should. Susan blinks back unexpected tears. "Thanks, Mom."

"Jake's a good boy too. His family raised him right, even if they're Pentecostal." Mom says it like a joke, but there's real warmth there. "You two are going to have a good life together."

"Yeah. We are."

Mom pats her shoulder and heads back to the front. Susan sits alone in the office, surrounded by filing cabinets and tax documents and the diner's entire mundane administrative apparatus.

Her phone says 8:52 PM. Eight minutes until Jake calls.

She thinks about New Year's Eve. About the truck cab and fogged windows and the moment when they both knew they should stop and didn't. About the three weeks of silence and worry that followed. About this morning's blood, the relief and sadness that came with it.

They're okay. They dodged it. Her period came, just late from stress like she'd hoped.

But Susan knows, sitting here in her parents' diner office, that something shifted on New Year's Eve. They crossed a line. And even though they're promising each other they won't cross it again, she knows how hard it was to stop this time.

Next time might be harder.

Her phone buzzes at 9:00 PM exactly.

Jake:

Calling now. Love you.

Jake:

Calling now. Love you.

Calling now. Love you.

Susan answers on the first ring.

"Hey," she says.

"Hey."

They talk about classes and ROTC and the diner and everything except what they're both still thinking about. Because that's what you do when you're twenty and in love and trying to be good.

Talk around it. Pray about it. Promise to do better.

Hope that's enough.