Instead of taking the bus back home, she went to the public beach where she and Omkar had gone on their first date. She didn’t call Omkar to tell him to meet her there when he was done with school for over an hour. Instead, she watched the waves, trying to make sense of the deluge of her mixed emotions. It made no sense to her why she could feel so much dread at the idea of being pregnant, but when the doctor had given her the good news, it hadn’t felt like good news at all. She chided herself in her head. “What the fuck, Aria … If you’re knocked up, you don’t want to be, but if you’re not, you want to be. What the fuck is that about?” When the doctor had given her the news, it had felt like a loss even though there had never been anything there to lose in the first place … A loss of closeness or belonging, maybe.

Aria felt bad about herself again. The potential of pregnancy had made her realize the extent to which her life wasn’t in order. The life she was living did not even remotely resemble a life that a child should be brought into, and that bothered her now, more than it ever had.

It wasn’t a baby that Aria wanted; she was conscious of that. She had seen so many girls like her, who had been deprived of love growing up, having babies to try to fill the hole within themselves. They imagined that if they had a baby, there would be someone to finally love them unconditionally and be with them and give them a sense of belonging forever. But it was a fantasy. The minute the baby was born, that fantasy would prove false. Somewhere in the physical wear and tear of motherhood, they would realize that motherhood was a one-way street of having to fulfil the baby’s needs even when no part of them wanted to. If these mothers made it past the phase of infancy and managed to enmesh their children into the dysfunctional dance of being there for them instead, it never turned out well. That same child that they looked to for unconditional love and belonging would eventually turn against them, brimming with resentment for being born only to suit their mother’s unmet emotional needs. Aria didn’t want to follow in those predictable footsteps.