Excerpt: Stages

The air in the hallway felt stagnant and heavy. It weighed London down, pressed against her shoulders and held her captive across from the stranger who had been, was supposed to be, her boyfriend. In the pause before he answered her, she could read the expression on his face. It boiled with lies and secrets, bubbled with things unsaid, burned with a betrayal he probably wouldn’t even admit. “So?” he finally said, the word poison between his dark lips. He eyed her like one eyes a spider right before it succumbs to the pressure beneath a shoe. There was the shadow of a smug smile on his face.
Before London knew what had gotten into her, she had wound up and landed her fist square against those full, curved lips, slamming them back into his teeth. Bend your knees and turn with your hips, her father had instructed her, twist your arm at the end. Her knuckles burned against their bones, two of them had split open, and yet the exhilaration of the punch made her feel as if she had just broken the tape in a race. Micah had a hand pressed against his mouth and chin, was sputtering something that London couldn’t make out. A few thin ribbons of blood seeped out between his fingers and ran down over his hand and wrist, a darker red than London expected it to be from the movies. Rich red, like berry juice that stained your palms. She was invincible. She was unstoppable. She was crying.
“What the fuck?” Micah finally managed to spit out, a narrow stream of kamikaze blood launching itself to the floor, “What . . .” At a loss, Micah resorted to wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, the blood mixing with dirt. His upper lip had split open, revealing a window of pale pink flesh beneath. His eyes now seared into her own, his gaze no longer speaking betrayal, but hearing it. “Jesus, London.”
“Where were you,” she said again, this time punctuating each word with its own period, more a command than a question. She blinked the tears out of her eyes, refusing to wipe them away. Micah pressed the tips of his fingers against the tender flesh. “You punched me. Jesus.”
“And I’ll do it again, Micah, so tell me!”
“Look, I’m sorry.” London wondered if he was speaking with his heart, his head, or his hurt pride. “I’m sorry, I should have called. You pack pretty good heat for a girl, you know that?” The impact of his compliment was whisked away as quickly as it had shown itself. Avoiding his eye, London could see a large triangle of peeling plaster on the wall that stretched up from the floor. The gray concrete below looked like a path that stretched out for miles, ending only when it reached the horizon of the ceiling. London suddenly wished she were on that path, that boring, ordinary path, bound for God knows where. Anywhere but Astoria, she thought fleetingly, alone.
But not alone, now. Never alone again. London imagined she could feel the baby inside of her, twisting at her insides, tearing them apart. For a minute she thought she was going to be sick, but the feeling passed as if it had never been there at all. How could she tell him? How in the hell could she tell him? “You should have called,” she mumbled, gingerly touching her knuckles. “Alright, alright, we okay, baby? We cool?” Micah tried to reach out and hug her and it was then that her lunch decided to make its reappearance.