I tap out:Go ahead and test me. See what happens.
I survive the rest of the meeting in a kind of numb fog, doing my best to surface with a word of polite agreement or a thoughtful“hmm” at the right moments, Jordana periodically tossing nervous glances my way.
Curt never writes back.
“You guys want the good news first, or the bad news?”
Ian and I are both back at the apartment—the jail cell that simply refuses to loosen its fucking grasp—hovering over my phone resting on the kitchen counter. Derrick is on speaker. It’s nearly six o’clock, and he’s only just gotten a response from Jack and Curt’s agent. The house has been on the market for nine hours now, which means dozens of people have trooped through it, measuring for their awful furniture, imagining themselves sleeping inmybedroom, cooking onmyThermador range, watching their awful children play onmytire swing. It’s more upsetting than thinking about that clipboard cunt fucking my husband.
“Bad news, I think,” says Ian, looking to me for confirmation. I shrug. What difference does it make?
“Okay, well, the sellers aren’t taking your offer today,” says Derrick. “Their agent says there’s just way too much interest. At least six other buyers have already said they’re planning to bid, and there’s still an open house to get through on Saturday.”
Ian squeezes my hand. “Got it,” he says. “And how is there possibly any good news?”
“Well, they’re notrejectingyour offer either,” says Derrick. “They’ve agreed to keep it in the mix to see how it stacks up after the weekend. Sounds like they’re making Monday at five o’clock the offer deadline.”
I feel the rage start to churn. This is my fucking fault. We’re about to lose this house, and I will never forgive myself.
I sink to the kitchen floor, my face in my hands. Ian crouches next to me, rubbing my back. I will probably never know how Curt convinced Jack to let our offer even get this far. But I do know theonly reason they’re still stringing us along—Curt is doing exactly what I dared him to in my text. He’s testing me. If I really had the paper, of course I would send him a photo of it now and put us both out of our misery. All Curt’s doing is confirming that I don’t have the evidence to back up my threat.
“Be honest, what are our chances?” Ian asks Derrick.
A long sigh curls out of the phone.
“Miracles sometimes happen,” he says, “but given the intense interest, I don’t think one point three million is going to get the job done.”
27
Ian didn’t dare protest when I told him I was calling in sick today. He just nodded and placed a glass of water on the nightstand. That must’ve been three hours ago, at least. I made him close the linen blackout curtains that I hung to cover the apartment’s cheap mini blinds, so it’s hard to say how late it is now. My phone slid off the mattress and underneath the bed at some point. Getting up to search for it seemed asinine. All that thing does is deliver bad news. Or, in this case,nonews, a far more sadistic form of torture.
It’ll take three more of these agonizing days to hear anything—a slow, pointless march toward inevitable devastation. Tomorrow, hordes of happy, hopeful people will prance through the open house. Then on Sunday, they’ll return, home inspectors in tow for a look under the hood. That way, they’ll be able to waive the inspection contingency in their offers,on topof paying cash and bidding the price up to some grotesque number. Their contracts will roll in throughout Monday, dwarfing ours, until 1.3 million American fucking dollars somehow looks like an insult. How many bids will pile up this time? A dozen? Twenty-five? Nine fucking hundred?
And where will I be at the end of it? Probably still here, tangled in these sheets, my phone pinging from a dust-bunnied cornerunder the bed with a text from Derrick that I can’t bring myself to read because I know it’ll be the fatal blow:Sorry, guys, it wasn’t meant to be.
I let out a groan so loud and anguished that if the neighbors are home, they must think I’m either dying or having very weird sex, then I roll onto my stomach and let my face smush into the pillow. I ponder how long it’ll take to run out of oxygen, but of course I chicken out at the first twinge of discomfort. Now I’m shifting around, trying to relax, but a sharp pain feels like it’s literally piercing through one of my boobs.What the hell?I jolt back upright and recline onto my back, cautiously groping around my chest in the dark. When I press, even gently, both my breasts feel tender. Maybe I’m starting my period?
I squint in the harsh bathroom light. My reflection, once it comes into view, is alarming—sweaty black hair matted against pale skin, a bluish tint beneath my eyes, saliva crusted onto the corner of my mouth. Worst of all, I don’t even care.
I slump onto the toilet and inspect my underwear. No sign of blood. But I do have to pee, badly.
Before I go back to bed, I hunt around under the sink for the Listerine. I may not care that I look like death, but I definitely care that my mouth tastes like it. I push aside a spray can of Lysol and a bag of cotton balls before I see it, tucked behind the drainpipe: a pregnancy test.
My boobs are sore.
And I don’t have my period.
Crouched down, staring at the hot pink First Response box, I count back on my fingers, struggling to figure out whether I’m late. I’ve been so preoccupied I haven’t been paying attention. Maybe it should’ve come last week?
The last time I took one of these was a couple of months after I froze my eggs. It was a Sunday and we’d gone to Le Dip for brunch. I ordered my usual, but the garlicky Boursin cheese in thecenter of the omelet didn’t taste right. It was mostly bland, with a hint of bitterness. Before sending it back, I made Ian try it, and he had no idea what I was complaining about.
We were almost too afraid to say it aloud—we didn’t want to jinx it—but we both admitted we thought I might be pregnant. We thought maybe the egg retrieval had taken enough of the pressure off that it had finally just happened. On the walk home, we stopped at CVS and bought a box of three pregnancy tests. We tried to play it cool, promised each other we’d keep our expectations low. But after the first two came back negative, we were both close to tears. It seemed cruel to put ourselves through the third one, so here it still is, long forgotten under the bathroom sink. (Salt in the wound: I realized the next day that nothing tasted good because I had Covid.)
Now I chug the water that Ian left by the bed, then bring the glass to the kitchen for a refill. A half-full French press still sits on the counter, so I down that, too. The microwave clock, plus the particular shade of sunlight from the living room window, inform me that it’s nearly two in the afternoon.
Within fifteen minutes, I have to pee again. I’ve been through this routine too many other times—unwrapping the stick, holding it in place, feeling all the excitement and all the anxiety. But this time is different.
I am terrified.
