The Decision

"I'm pregnant."

The words hung in the air like a pungent odor, thick and stifling. Warren slowly looked up from his newspaper, its pages ruffling quietly as his hands began to tremble ever so slightly.

"You’re...what?" he choked out, his throat suddenly feeling tight and constricted.

Maya wouldn't look at him. She gazed out the window into the darkening twilight. Red and gold sunlight streamed through branches of the tree that stood tall and crooked outside their second-floor apartment, casting the room in a crisscross pattern of shadow and light.

"Pregnant," she said, wistfully, as though imagining how wonderful life would be with a child. Maya didn’t have any brothers or sisters of her own. Her mother had raised her after her father left them before Maya was born. Growing up, she never envied the other kids who had siblings at home, waiting to pick on them and call them names. No, Maya was content to be the only object of her mother’s affection and attention. Now she was going to be a mother to a child of her own.

Warren folded the newspaper and set it on the scratched, stubby coffee table in front of him. He ran his hands through his hair before burying his face in them. "Pregnant," he repeated, his voice muffled and distorted.

He spread his fingers and looked at Maya through the narrow slits. She was still just sitting there, on his favorite chair, a beat-up, old, red recliner with cracked and peeling leather that his mother had given him when he moved out, legs folded beneath herself, looking out the window, looking as though she didn’t have a care in the world.

Warren lowered his hands, clasping them under his chin, elbows resting on his knees. "What, uh, what are we, I mean, what do you want to..." he trailed off, unsure of what he wanted to say.

Maya turned her emerald eyes toward him, her short auburn hair glinting in the fading sunlight. Her voice, when she spoke, was carefully bottled anger, quiet and dangerous. "What do you mean, what do I want to do? It's our child, War. Yours and mine."

Her gaze made Warren’s blood run cold. He hated when she looked at him like that, icy and unemotional. He averted his eyes and shifted in his seat, crossing and uncrossing his legs, before stiffly standing up. He started pacing around the room like a caged beast. He examined the ceiling, the cheap, stained carpet, the curling movie posters on his "Wall of Shame," he looked everywhere but at Maya.

"I, uh, you know..." Warren sputtered as he looked at his Plan 9 from Outer Space poster. He heard Maya's legs unfurling, the denim of her jeans rustling as she stood up. "We've only been together for a...a few months, is all, and..."

"Look at me," Maya whispered in his ear. She was close enough that the fruity scent of her shampoo tickled his nostrils. She smelled clean, fresh, like a newborn.

Warren inhaled slowly and counted to five before exhaling. He turned around. Maya was standing with her arms crossed gently beneath her breasts, her head tilted slightly to one side, grinning impishly.

"Kidding," Maya said. "I'm only kidding. I just wanted to see how you’d react." She quickly wrapped her arms around him, resting her head on his shoulder so he couldn't see her stifling back tears.