this one is still a work in progress, but I like it enough to put this initial draft up.

The Stroller or Amber

It was the windows being rolled up. Windows rolled up in this heat? Fucking prick. Fucking prick with air conditioning.

Never before had Amber hated men so much. Not before she met her ex-boyfriend, boyfriend, ex-boyfriend again, father of her child, all around shitbag, Jake. Loser Jake.

Amber never loved Jake, just sort of liked the guy. He was better than being alone, and he had a big dick to boot. The sex was great, there wsa no denying that. No matter how much she hated the guy. But how about some child-support? How about some support in general. That's where she was heading when the car with the rolled up windows passed her. A nice car to boot. Must be lost.

And what a site she was, if the driver had happened to look at her. Pushing a stoller, bent over at the waist. At best glistening, at worst sweating in the summer heat. And her underarms were sweating. She hated that. It made her feel so gross, but there wasn't much she could do about it then.

Her back hurt too much to stand upright at that point and the moderate uphill slope didn't help her legs out much either. The car stuck in her head. What did the driver think of her? Maybe they had misread her, mistaken her for some poor middle class mother with a broken down car forced to walk home. Either way, they felt no need to stop and ask if she was ok. 'No, I'm not ok. Look at me."

Still, it was only five blocks. Five blocks hadn't seemed that far when she was at her own place. It had been cool there. Her closed windows hadn't given her an accurate report of the situation.

Only a half block from Jake's apartment / house / slummy crash pad her baby woke up, and in all kinds of a bad mood.

"Hold on sweetie. Just about there, then we'll have a little bit to eat, ok?" Better be there Jake. He told her about his great new job and how much money he was making and how sorry he was and blah blah. BLAH! "No", Amber told him, "I'll come to your place". She didn't want to hang around him any longer than necessary. And certainly not a return to the usual nonsense. No back rubs, no hands down her shirt or pants. No sex, and certainly no blowjobs. She was done with it.

Jake either had the money and a commitment to be not a one hundred percent shit ball, or Amber was done with him for good. It didn't take her long to work herself up into a good froth over him. By the time she was at his door she was ready to punch him, but instead took it out on the door.

Blam, blam, blam. Open the fucking door. Blam, blam. Come on, I'm dying out here. She picked her daughter up out of the stroller.

"It's ok, it's ok. shu, shu, shu." Amber bounced her ready to pound on the door again when it opened. Oh what beautiful coolness. Such relief she never thought possible. And him.

On cue (though she had never been coached to do so) their baby started wailing. The "I'm tired, hungry, frustrated Help HELP HELP!" cry.

"Oh, hey. Ugh, everything ok with her?" It wasn't that Jake didn't care. He did, well sort of. His biggest problem was that he didn't know what to do. In his life he had primarily thought of himself, so he never took notice of situations when one person would help another. He was a mechanic who had never picked up a tool, a write who had never read a book, an engineer who had never seen a math problem.

"No." 'Stupid fucking asshole'. Amber didn't see the look of shocked betrayl on his face. She wouldn't have cared if she had. She hadn't asked for the pregnancy any more than he had, but at least she was doing something with the end result. Amber was trying to raise their daughter, and every day she resented Jake more and more. "How about inviting us in?"

"Sure, sorry, yeah. Come on in. I'll grab the stroller." Amber thought, but didn't say, "way to pitch in". She tried not to be a mean person. She had always been kind in her life. Jake held the door open for his could have been wife and definately was daughter, then grabbed up the stroller.

He was tired. The new job and more money thing wasn't a lie. It came to him one evening, looking in the mirror, when usually he thought about how good he looked or why that girl didn't take to him. He was a screw-up at life. He graduated high school just fine. A middle of the road student who didn't look into college at all. Eventually he figured out that he was no longer welcome in his parents house, so he saved up two months rent and moved in with some friends. They gave him the closet/bedroom on the third floor. It was an icebox in winter. That's when he met her.

Amber lived across the street. She remembered him from high school, but he had been a year behind her.

Amber's parents didn't like him. but they made no overtures of parenting either. They didn't talk to her, they didn't even tell him to straighten up his act, shape up, fly straight, or any other piece of meaningless couceling. There was barely even a threatening look towards the kid. They let him hang around, most of the time shirtless, eating their food and fucking their daughter.

He didn't hang around his place to find out what summer would bring him in the attic. He found a place a few blocks away (five to be exact) with another group of friends. It was his uncle's new real-estate business. He had half-way fixed up a two family house, his "pilot program" and asked Jake if he wanted to help him out. He'd knock some money off the rent if Jake would help take care of the place. Cut the grass, clean out the gutters, plunge the toilet and all the stuff the landlord would have to spend his weekends doing.

"Can I have some roomates? I'm still getting on my feet and all?" Translation: I'm a fuck up who doesn't work hard enough and blows his money on stupid shit. "Sure, I trust you." Translation: I still think of you as the eleven year old that used to love listening to all my stupid stories.

Inside Amber was already on the couch trying to calm down her daughter.

"You want me to change her, feed her or something?" He asked hesitantly. He had maybe changed her three times, not even once a month, and he couldn't figure out why there was a straw in the bottle.

Amber didn't even acknowledge the question. "Where's all your roomates? All your bros. Weren't they around here all the time?"

"They moved out. Well, I kicked out one. He was . . . well, it doesn't matter. He's gone anyway." It didn't matter then, but three weeks ago when he had over a half dozen burnouts fucked out of their minds tearing up the place it did. It was enough. Always being behind on rent and the bills could be forgiven. That could not. Jake couldn't be part of it anymore. He kicked his friend out, probably to go crash one someone's couch while they waited for the sun to go down so they could destroy their brains a little more.

Amber had brought her daughter back into the realm on contentness, stroking her hair and guiding her back to sleep. Jake didn't say anything. It was a different Amber. She was more than mad at him. Oh, how he had screwed things up. For ever he stood in the living room, looking at them, unsure of what to do. Finally, her daughter asleep, Amber looked up at him. The air conditioning had calmed not only the baby, but her as well. A little more calmly she said, "Well? I didn't invite myself over here."

"Yeah. I've got some more money now." He picked up an envelope from the table and handed it to her. "Here."

She looked inside, surprised. "What, no good video games out this month?" It was hurtful. He was stunned by the statement They had played some of those games together. For hours when they were dating, before the pregnancy. It had been such a happy time.

He was visibly hurt by the remark. "No, it's not that." He ran his hand through his hair. He had really fucked things up. "I started a new job. On weekends doing landscaping work. Sort of. I'm part of a lawn care crew. Mowing, trimming sort of stuff - "

"Weekends? What'd you quit the other place?"

"No, I'm still there." And working more hours. Forty there and twenty more mowing on the weekends.

"Oh."

"I'm hoping to either move up and do some different stuff there or get another job with this experience." He wanted to impress her, to show her the new side of him. But how do show the person you want to be when you've always been what you were?

"Oh." He had taken Amber off guard. Two jobs. She thought it was another 'old times sake' phone call. She thought the money line had been bullshit.

"I know it's been hard, and I know I haven't been the best, but - " He had said something, she was glaring at him. "What?"

Amber stood up and put her sleeping daughter down in the stroller. Then pulled Jake by the shirt into the kitchen. She wasn't going to let it be 'Jake's a fucking hero because he got some fucking lawnmowing job fucking Day'. Hard? She was going to let him know how hard it had been.

"Do you have any idea what it's fucking like? I'm twenty living at home with my parents. Do you know the shit I have to hear from those assholes? When I go to work I have to leave her with my mother. A thousand comments a day from her. Little tiny ones. They add up and every damn night I cry. I cry so hard." She was hurt. Jake reached up to put his hand on her shoulder, to comfort her, but with a terrible look from her he stopped. "But where else can I go? How do I get out of this? I'm all the fuck alone and it destroys me. I'm twenty. I should be having a great time, going out with my friends, dating guys. Who the hell would want to date me? What decent normal guy out there is going to want someone like me? Some used up stupid girl with a kid.

"My child has no father around. Never stops by, rarely calls, NEVER does a damn thing with her. You don't think that fucks with her. You don't think they'll be problems with her. You think she's not going to get pregnant at nineteen?" Amber put up her hand to stop Jake from interupting. She was going to put it all out there. "Fuck, I know that I've messed up. I know that I'm screwed up. Why the fuck else would I have let you get me pregnant? Shit." She wiped away the trace of a tear from her face. She wasn't going to show him weakness. "I want something better for her. But you don't think my parents said the same fucking thing. And what do I do? Get pregnant at nineteen." She pushed him hard in the chest. "Fuck you I know it's been hard." It was all she could take, the tears came free, still she brought her hands up to her face to hide it.

Jake was starting to understand. Working sixty hours a week didn't mean shit. He should have been doing that a year ago when she told him. 'How do I make this better?' He had more sense than to try and touch her again. He had lost that privledge, for that's what he considered it. Sometime ago he had thought it a right. That's what boyfriends get to do. Nope. Sorry buddy, that's not quite how it works out. But he had to say something to her.

"I. I ugh. I know I've screwed everything else. I know your parents hate me. I know you probably do too. I know why. It doesn't make things any better, but I know how I was. And I know there's nothing I can say that's going to make things right again. I don't know if there's even anything I can do to make things right again." He had thought about the luck of timing. Had he met her a year or two later, when both their lives were a little more level, when he might have understood the importance of consequences. It could have been different. They would have really fallen in love, not just the surface love they thought was real, and probably gotten married. A little more mature and focused they would have known what they wanted from life and from each other.

Jake continued, "But I'm not going to say I'm going to do this or that. And prove something to you. It's all in your court now." He had blown it. There was a time she would have stuck with him, had he done the right things, she might have even married him. It wouldn't have been for the best of reasons, but they would have been together and fighting life together. Instead, he had abandoned her. Left her to fight it herself. Left her with a newborn. Coming to the realization of what he had done and what it said about his character destroyed him. "Your opinion is the only one that matters. Right now I'm a total loser. I'm with you there. I'm sorry."

He could not longer dodge questions from his family about the baby, about marriage, about what he was going to do with his life. 'Time to grow up. You got yourself and her into this.' His father told him. Jake had always thought of his father as an asshole (because in truth, he was), but what he said was right. So Jake had stopped talking from his family. He couldn't keep looking at the mirror to his soul they were showing him. The only one he spoke to was his uncle, and even he had almost kicked him out. He had trusted Jake and Jake brought a bunch of addicts into the apartment. 'How am I supposed to rent out the upstairs place with a bunch of tweekers living below?'

Jake wanted to tell Amber all of this. If, for nothing else, to show her that he finally understood. That he was determined to turn things around. But he couldn't. She had been through way too much for him to dump his shitty problems on her. And she didn't say anything either. What could she say?

"I, uh baked some cookies." They couldn't go on just standing there any longer. He had to say something.

"Baked, you?"

"Yeah, well it's not too hard. Of course, they're not the best either."

"You bake them for the hell of it, or because I was coming over."

"Well, I can't say I didn't enjoy them, but if you weren't coming over, I wouldn't have made them." Jake admitted.

"I'm sorry about the video game crack. I didn't mean it. It's just that. Well, I fucking hate you." It felt good to say it, and if at that moment he would have taken her, she would have let him. Right there on the table, the floor, anywhere. It would have been hot and passionate, and right. She looked at him, waiting for it, hoping for it.

But the moment evaporated quickly. "You know. You're such a piece of shit, but I have this connection with you. Jerk." And she punched him in the arm. It was the first sign of affection she had shown to him that day.

"I better get going. Meet the babysitter and all. She's a real bitch with timeliness." Amber half-smiled (because if you half-smiled you wouldn't cry).

"Could we talk? Not about. Uh. Not about getting back together. Just to talk. We have some stuff to sort out."

Amber smilled, and nodded. She would love to talk to people. She didn't have many friends left, it was hard to carry one conversations at work, her parents nearly hated her. To be able to talk to a person that had some compassion for her, that would be better than just about anything. "Yeah, I'd like that. What time to do you get off work?"

"Usually get home around three or so."

"Busses run that late? Or is it early enough in the morning then?"

"No. I catch a ride from a guy there. Give him a few bucks for gas, keep him awake and all. But that's way too late, I'm sure."

"No, I'll probably be up then."

"Julia's up then?" He said it without thinking about it. Of course she was up then. That's what little babies did. They were up at all hours. And Amber was up with her, and probably pissed at the stupid comment.

"Yeah, little girl's a night owl." Amber knew he was trying. She wouldn't yell at him for anything. "I'll call you though."

"Sounds great." And he smiled. Not with the same 'I can get any girl I want' smile, but with the 'I'm a person with real feelings' smile.

With that Amber grabbed up her daughter and stroller (oh how quickly one learns to operate by themselves) and headed outside.

At the door Jake asked, "Want a hand home. I could push the stroller to your place, then back home. Honest, I have to catch the bus in forty-five minutes or so." Amber considered it (legitimately considered it - who would have thought that half an hour ago?).

"Nah, better not. Better make sure you catch that bus." My parents aren't home. If you come over, we'll have sex. I know it. And that will screw everything up.

"Yeah, ok." I really didn't offer because I was angling for sex. But... you're right. We would have ended up having sex.

"Maybe next time thought." Friends first. Because we have to be friends because we have a child together. And maybe in a few years we can be something more.

But probably not. Jake closed the door.

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