rryancooper:

Landon’s advice, while a little more straightforward than Ryan was expecting, was absolutely true. So true that it made him cringe away, actually feeling the weight of this decision like a punch to the stomach. “I know, Lando. You think I don’t know how incapable I am of raising a kid? I mean look at me.” He gestured to his disgusting appearance. If the news of Eden’s pregnancy could send him into such a downward spiral, Ryan could only imagine what he would become after six months of listening to a baby cry when he was supposed to be sleeping or studying. “I’d have to drop out of school, I’d have to work full time, I’d never see any part of the world that isn’t stupid fucking New York.” At this point, Ryan was mostly thinking out loud, listing all the reasons to back out of this that he’d been piling up in his mind. There was no way he could do this. A baby would change literally everything in his life, and Ryan couldn’t see a single positive outcome. Landon was right, he didn’t have a fatherly bone in his body, and it would be wrong to fake it.

However, refusing to be a father to his child also meant refusing to be with Eden any longer. He couldn’t have it both ways and that thought hurt him more than any physical beating he’d ever received. Eden was the only girl in the world who had ever accepted him for exactly who he was. She was beautiful, brilliant, fun, and she made Ryan happier than he had ever thought was possible. Ryan did not want to be a father. He couldn’t be one. But he also was entirely certain that he couldn’t be without his light. “I don’t want to lose her.” He admitted quietly, knowing that Landon wouldn’t understand this dilemma. For his best friend, the choice seemed obvious, but for Ryan it seemed like a lose-lose situation. Now it seemed he had to choose which was the lesser of the two evils.

It took a moment for Landon to think of something to say. He might never understand that intense need to keep someone around, but he could understand having to choose between what’s right and what’s easy. “Well… if you want to keep Eden, and you don’t think you can change her mind about this… you’d better get your shit together.” He stood up and reached out his hands and pulled his unsteady roommate to his feet. “If you’re going to do this, you’re going to have to do it right. You can’t be like my parents, or your parents, you can’t just have a kid and then not give a shit about it. You’ll have to clean up your act and do this if you’re doing it.”

Landon wasn’t quite sure where this was coming from, but he assumed his anger at his own parents was fuelling it. His mom had pretended to be able to be a mom and had just up and left without a word one day, literally tearing their family in half straight down the middle. His dad had lost all will to live, and turned himself into a workaholic zombie who thought of nothing but numbers for the rest of his life. Ryan’s parents were neglectful too, and he was obviously not doing so well because of it. “You can’t do this if you keep this shit up. But… you could do it.” It went against everything Landon believed in to say all of this, but if Ryan was going to ruin his life, he may as well not ruin the kid’s life too.

rryancooper:

This was where it got harder to explain what had happened during Eden and Ryan’s last interaction with one another. Partially because all of the alcohol had made his memory a bit fuzzy, but also because he hadn’t really understood her argument in the first place. “I tried, man…” He remembered bringing up Europe, and graduation, and all the other things that they were supposed to do that a baby would stand in the way of. Keeping it was not impossible, as Ryan had enough money to get a cheap apartment in the city, and hopefully he would be able to get his job back at the record store. However it would not be easy, or fun, and would probably end in Ryan becoming more like his father than he ever feared he would be.

Now, as all of these realizations flooded Ryan’s drunk and tired brain, he felt his stomach lurch and quickly grabbed the small waste basket by his side. At first nothing came out, which only made him more frustrated with everything in the world, but finally after a few minutes of dry heaving, the last bit of liquor in his stomach made it’s way back into the room. Coughing and wiping his mouth, he looked back up at Landon. “Sorry…” He said and then put the trashcan aside. It took him a second to remember what he was saying. “She told me that there are no mistakes.” Ryan rolled his eyes now at the memory, still finding it ridiculous and illogical. How could this possibly be a good thing? How could Ryan Cooper being a father have any outcome but a negative one. “God damn it…” He sighed and shook his head in disbelief of what he was about to admit. “I think I’m gonna have to have this kid…”

The dry-heaving and vomiting were not the most revolting things to come from Ryan’s mouth that day. That last sentence definitely took that award. Even though Landon was fully aware that leaving a girl alone with a baby she wanted to keep was probably one of the worst things a person could possibly do… the thought of raising a baby at this point in their lives (or at all) seemed like a much worse fate. A baby is the ultimate commitment. You are attached to that kid from the moment they enter the world until the day you die. It just seemed like Eden was asking a lot of Ryan, when he was very clearly unable to handle it. And maybe he shouldn’t have, but Landon felt that it was his duty to tell Ryan so.

“You can’t have a kid. I mean, you can, but you… you’re not the father type, Ryno. I know you feel like you don’t have a choice, but you do. It might be better for everyone if you just… don’t… you know?” He realized that this probably sounded harsh, but it was true. He looked at his friend, smelling like alcohol and garbage and vomit, lying on the floor of his dorm room, wearing the same clothes he’d worn days ago, whining about his life. It wasn’t hard to picture him like this with a baby screaming in the next room. Leaving Eden alone with it wasn’t the answer, and Landon didn’t claim to know what the answer was, but this didn’t seem right either. Ryan was a lot of things, but fatherly was not one of them.

rryancooper:

“Evidently, yes, that is what happened.” Ryan said although he still wasn’t entirely convinced that this was all real. The room was spinning a bit and he pulled a small bottle of booze from the back pocket of his jeans and took a few long gulps. The bottle, now empty, fell to the floor beside him and he belched. Usually, a drunk Ryan was an angry Ryan, but lately nothing was how it was supposed to be. Nothing except for Landon, it seemed. Despite all the shit that had happened he still had his best friend sitting with him and willing to listen. “I don’t know how the fuck this happened.” He said and then shook his head “I mean, obviously I know how it happened. It happened because I’m a fucking moron…” Ryan’s voice trailed off and he let his head fall against the door again with a thud.

There was a bit of a silence between the thud, and when Ryan realized he’d left out the most vital bit of information. “She wants to keep it.” He told Landon, looking down at his cut up knuckles and picking at the dry blood around them. It occurred to him then that he probably smelled like garbage, or shit, or something equally unpleasant. “Like… She wants to be pregnant, and have a baby, and raise it. A baby that is mine.” It seemed like there was no way this could be happening to him. Almost like he was telling Landon a story about some poor shmuck in one of his classes. All his life he was careful, at least when it came to sex, and now that he’d made one or two slip ups, in the heat of the moment, with the love of his life, he had to face the ultimate consequence. The universe was chaos, and it was not on Ryan’s side. “What the fuck am I supposed to do?” He croaked out, sounding uncharacteristically pathetic and fighting the urge to break down in tears in front of his only real friend.

Landon was sure of nothing at this point in time, other than the fact that he was the last person Ryan should be asking for advice on this subject. Obviously, his reaction would be to leave. To get the fuck out of there and never look back. But for whatever reason, Ryan had always been attached to this girl, more so than he’d ever known anyone to be attached to another person. He loved her, and Landon knew better than anyone that love always ends badly. But he refrained from saying ‘I told you so’ and sat there, thinking of something, anything, to say that might help his terrified friend.

“Have you tried reasoning with her?” Landon asked, deciding questions were better than answers at this point in time. “She’s a waitress, and a student, how does she think this is going to work?” Okay, that part was probably just him pointing out the obvious, but Ryan had to know that there was really nothing he could say. “Really though, your options here are kind of stay or go. Keep the kid or keep your life.” Wording it like that gave away his opinion on the matter, but he doubted it would matter much. From what he knew about Ryan, which was almost everything, he knew that all of this was looking like it was going to end with his best friend becoming a father. Landon’s stomach twisted, and he realized that if he was this afraid, he couldn’t blame Ryan for trying to drink it all away.

rryancooper:

It wasn’t until Ryan was kicked lightly in his side that he realized he wasn’t alone, and also that he might have broken one or two ribs during one of his random bar fights. As Landon loomed over him, waiting for any sign of life, Ryan groaned loudly into the carpet, flopped over onto his back, and squinted at the ceiling light that was glowing behind his best friend’s head. The room began to spin as he sat up and leaned his pounding head against the door. “Oh yeah I’m just fucking great.” He said, mostly in mumbles but Ryan was sure he got his sarcasm across.

There aren’t many ways that you can break horrible news to somebody aside from just coming out and saying it. So far the only person Ryan had discussed his problem with was Eden, and she didn’t seem to consider it a problem like he did. Landon, on the other hand, was somebody that he knew he could trust to be on his side. It was no secret that his roommate and best friend was a man who hated love. If Landon was afraid of commitment, there was no way he’d ever be in favor of college students having a child together. A mental image of Ryan and Eden with their blonde haired offspring made Ryan’s stomach turn and he thought he was going to throw up for a minute before he finally spit it out. “Eden’s pregnant.” He said, the words sounding unnatural and horrifying.

At first Landon felt relieved and grateful that his roommate was, in fact, alive. But as he turned over on his back and stared up with a bloody face and dead eyes, Landon wasn’t so sure about that. Vital signs only proved that the body was alive. The mind and the heart and the soul were a different story altogether. And Ryan’s mind/heart/soul seemed distraught and broken before he even opened his mouth. As he did, though, and told Landon his secret, Landon’s mind/heart/soul stopped working too, and he had to sit on the ground, across from Ryan, facing him, and staring in disbelief.

“You… you got her pregnant?” Landon asked, wondering how that was even possible. Landon always made sure that girls were on the pill and that he had a condom. He knew sometimes things could happen anyway, but he’d never known someone that had happened to until now. Of course, Ryan wasn’t as scared of commitment and relationships and love as he was, and had probably somehow forgotten along the way to be careful about these things. So really, this is what he got for being so careless. And if it were anybody else in the world, Landon probably would have laughed and muttered out something along the lines of ‘sucks to be you’ before returning to his study of Jane Austen. However, this was Landon’s roommate, and his best friend in the whole world, and he scooted slowly closer as he listened for the explanation for this.