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Not once. The thought never even crossed my mind. It was an impossible, one in a million chance.
One is still more than zero.
My mind races right alongside my heart. I grab my phone and unthinkingly send out another message.
OLIVIA: You still at the store?
QUINN: Just about to check out. Why?
OLIVIA: I need you to pick up a pregnancy test.
The three disappearing dots icon as she types makes the nausea even worse. What’s she going to flip out on me? Send me a slew of swears about how dumb I am? Remind me how babies are made? Tell me I’m a?—
QUINN: I got you.
Those three words force tears to fall. No questions. No judgment. Just the assurance that I need.
* * *
Quinn must have raced her way to the house, because she gets here in no time. Her knock raps against the door. Loud. Staccato. It’s always like that, but there’s an extra urgency today.
I answer the door and she barrels in. She is a flurry of pharmacy bags clinking with cans of soup inside, what’s likely her boxes of tampons, and hopefully a negative answer to a question that I never thought I would have to ask again.
“Alright—before anything else, how are you feeling?” She drops the bags to the floor and puts her hands on my shoulders. Her eyes meet mine and I know in an instant that, no matter what, Quinn will always have my back.
“I don’t know,” I sputter out. “I just—I don’t know.”
“Well, I got one of every kind of test, plus the soup you asked for and the ice cream you didn’t ask for but that you totally need.”
“You’re the best.”
“I know I am.”
I scoop Violet up into my arms so I can put her in her room. Quinn trails behind me like a soldier with a set of bags I can only assume hold her menagerie of pregnancy tests. I stash Violet in her rocker and Quinn joins me in the bathroom.
Like the agent of chaos she is, she dumps all the tests into the bathroom sink. They scatter everywhere across the surface like misshapen dice. Ironic, really, since it’s all up to sheer dumb luck whether or not what they tell me will keep my life as it is—or change it forever.
“You just gotta dive right in,” Quinn advises. I blink, realizing I’ve been staring at the boxes and not moving. “Whatever happens happens. I got your back.”
Quinn isn’t often serious. It isn’t in her nature. But when she is, it’s a sure sign she means every word that she’s speaking. It’s one of the many things I appreciate about my best friend: I never have to question her sincerity.
I don’t pay attention to the brands. I grab a box, one that looks aggressively clinical in white and black packaging. My hands shake so hard I can’t even open it. I fumble, dropping the box.
“Fuck!”
Before I can stoop down and pick it up, Quinn does it for me. She slides her fingers into one of the folds and opens up the box, pulling out a plastic-wrapped test and a too-thick folded set of instructions.
“Breathe, Olivia.”
Her tone is measured as she opens up the plastic and pulls out the test. I stare at it, like it’s an alien bug. I don’t want to touch it and, when I do, I wait for it to morph into some kind of monster right in my palm.
Of course, it doesn’t. It’s just a cheap, factory-made test. It can’t hurt me.
Mostly.
I don’t tell Quinn to leave as I squat on the toilet, awkwardly orienting the test between my thighs. It isn’t the first time I’ve taken one of these—but the first time was years ago, when I was a hell of a lot younger and ten times more naive. I’d been foolishly excited at the possibility back then. I was with a boy I loved, potentially creating a new life. A picket fence, two-point-five kids, and a family dog—that was my future.
How silly I was.
