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Emily stands so suddenly it makes my head spin. She makes wide, dramatic circular motions with her hands. “Oh my god,” she says.
“What?”
“Oh my god.”
“Just tell me already, you’re stressing me out. What’re you oh-my-godding about?”
She hesitates a moment longer before saying, “You’re pregnant.”
My hand freezes in mid-air as I’m handing a customer his extra-large peach tea. “What? No I’m not. I just had my period …” I quickly do the math in my head and suddenly my stomach drops. “… six weeks ago.”
Shit.
I’d meant to get to the pharmacy several times, but kept forgetting until after Paul and I had sex. I kept thinking I had plenty of time and told myself each day, I’d make it there eventually. But it seems I may have run out of time.
I break out into a cold sweat.
“Miss, my tea,” the man says.
I shake my head, snapping out of my reverie. “Oh, sorry,” I say and hand it to him.
“We’re going to the pharmacy,” Emily says.
I leave work early. I just can’t do the coffee smell any longer. Seeing the green hue of my skin, my boss happily lets me go home. But I don’t go home. Emily and I go straight to the pharmacy and pick up three reliable brands of pregnancy tests.
If I’m actually pregnant, I have no idea how I’m going to tell Paul. I don’t know if I could take him flying off the handle, or blame me for not using birth control. Although he didn’t do anything about it either. What the hell was I thinking? —Oh, right, I wasn’t. Not about that anyway. I was too worried about eye-crossing orgasms. Remember when I said Emily was a better adult than I was? These are the sorts of things I was talking about.
My thoughts are on a Tilt-a-Whirl, spinning through my head until I’m dizzy: If I’m pregnant what would that mean for me and Paul? What about graduating? I’m so close! No matter what, I’m finishing and getting my degree. And my parents. Jesus, they’re going to kill me.
We stop at a gas station because I’m too impatient to wait long enough to get to my apartment to see the test results. We have to step through a puddle of beer-vomit and over a homeless man lying on the pavement singing drunkenly to get into the bathroom, but I don’t even care right now.
Emily fixes her makeup in the murky mirror while I pee on each of the three sticks. I play Candy Crush on my phone while I wait for the results, panicking when a text pops up from Paul asking where I’m at. He must’ve stopped by the coffee shop and I wasn’t there.
“What should I say?” I ask Emily.
I should probably tell him what’s going on, but I don’t want to worry him unnecessarily if there’s no reason for it.
The lights flicker and buzz. There’s a glory hole in the wall and an advertisement written in black Sharpie that says, “For a good time call …” and someone’s number next to it. Great place to find out if I’m pregnant or not.
“Tell him we’re shopping,” Emily says.
“I don’t want to lie to him.”
Emily uses her nail to clean up the edges of the red lipstick she just applied. “Fine. Tell him you’re pissing on a pregnancy strip at a stop-n-rob in the slums.”
I text him back and tell him I’m shopping with Emily.
The timer goes off on my phone. Emily and I look at each other.
Here we go.
“It’ll be okay,” she says without any confidence in her delivery what-so-ever. She’s trying to be comforting but right now that’s the opposite of how I’m feeling.
The tests are on the back of the toilet. I remind myself to stop into the store on the way home for a large bottle of hand sanitizer. I pick one test up and stare down at the little square. It shows two pink lines.
I grab my stomach. “Oh shit.”
Emily takes it from me. “Holy hell.”
I pick up the next one, a different brand than the first. It has a plus sign.
“Double shit,” I say. The nausea is back.
My breath is coming in whooshes and vertigo is setting in. I try to calm myself by lying and telling myself everything is going to be okay, but I know it’s not. Nothing is okay and might not ever be again.
The third test simply says ‘pregnant’, and all I can think is, I’m so fucked.
At home I need some time alone to process everything and get right out of my head. I decide to watch TV. Maybe some mindless entertainment will help relieve some stress. Except every time I change the channel, there’s a cartoon on, or a commercial for extra-absorbent diapers. Suddenly, everything is about babies. I turn off the TV and curl up in a blanket even though it’s fairly warm in my apartment. Right now I just need the comfort of it wrapped around me, like my ratty old woobie from when I was a kid whose corners I used to suck on until the blanket was soaked in my slobber.
Time to read a book instead. This was a better idea. A nice horror about a stalker breaking into a woman’s house is just what I need. I spend all day reading and have nearly finished the entire thing when there’s a knock on my door.
I don’t want to see anyone. It’s probably my mom. She’s definitely the last person I want to see. Scratch that. My dad is actually the last person I want to see. What if it’s both of them? Where’s a tropical storm and road closures when you need it?
Filling my lungs with air, I open the door. There’s a deep ache in my chest when I see Paul standing there, looking so brilliantly handsome. But this time it’s not necessarily a good ache. Now might be the one and only time I’ve ever not been thrilled by his presence. He’s still lovely and makes me weak in the knees to see him, but I’m afraid—terrified, is probably a better word for it.
All it takes is one look for him to know something’s wrong with me.
“Is everything all right?” he asks, concern knitting a line into the skin between his eyes. He steps past me, into the apartment. I close the door behind him and lean against it. My legs are barely holding me up.
“Um, yeah, things are fine,” I say, voice wavering. “Can we talk, though?”
“Sure.” He starts to head for the couch but I stop him.
“Can we go somewhere? I’m sick of being in my apartment.”
“Of course.”
We go downstairs and get into his truck. Before, when I smelled the oil and gasoline, I’d liked it. Now every smell makes me feel sick.
The sun is setting. I hadn’t realized how late it had gotten. We go to the cliffs on a piece of private property my dad’s friend owns. No one ever goes up there and it’s fenced off from the public so I know we’ll be alone without interruption.
He turns off the engine and twists in his seat to look at me. “What’s this about? You’re starting to scare me.”
I’m scared too. Mostly of what his reaction will be. But I can’t keep this from him.
I can’t seem to get the words out so I reach into my purse and hand him the three tests.
He studies them, face unreadable.
“I’m so sorry,” I say. Tears well up in my eyes. As soon as I blink they streak down my cheeks. “I didn’t do this on purpose. I would never try to trap you.”
He still hasn’t said anything, just stares down at the tests. Several seconds pass, but they feel like minutes.
“Fuck, Rachael,” he finally says, sounding furious. I flinch. “I thought you were breaking up with me. I was half out of my mind.” He lets out a long breath and sinks back into his seat.
Wait, what? He’s more upset at the thought of me breaking up with him than me being pregnant?
“So … you’re not mad about the …?” My voice trails off.
