***
I stand in my bathroom staring at a plastic stick, waiting for it to tell me a different result.
It doesn’t.
The two pink lines stay exactly where they are, clear and unmistakable, the same as the last test.
I grip the edge of the sink, my reflection wavering slightly as I try to calm my breathing. For a moment, I consider the possibility that this is all a mistake. Maybe I picked up a faulty box of tests, and stress might explain why I’m late.
But I know my body.
And I know exactly when it happened.
Nine weeks ago. One night.
But I’m on the pill. I rub the center of my forehead. I know they say it isn’t one-hundred-percent effective, but I’m good at taking it on time. Then, I remember the toothache and the antibiotics, and I close my eyes. The realization settles in my chest with a slow, heavy certainty that makes it difficult to draw a full breath.
Fuck. Why didn’t I ask them to wrap it?
It’s a textbook failure, one I’ve warned others about in different contexts, yet I let my own 'good girl' conditioning blind me to the basic science of my own body. I forgot that I could be at risk because I wasn’t having sex with anyone when I took the antibiotics.
Because it was sexier raw, genius. And you wanted the whole filthy experience.
Because you trusted them to be clean because they’re Joelle’s family and they wouldn’t put you at risk.
Stupid.
But what’s the point of asking myself questions like that now? The chicken has well and truly flown the coop, got fucked by the roosters, and returned egg-bound.
I look down at the test again, as though staring at it long enough might make the lines fade, but they remain exactly as they are. I set the stick carefully on the counter, then brace my hands on either side of the sink, forcing myself to think, because that’s what I do. I think things through. I make plans. I solve problems.
Except this doesn’t feel like a problem I can neatly organize and fix. Somehow, I’ve gotten myself into exactly the same situation that Joelle was in two years ago. The situation I was shocked she’d allowed to happen.
Now, here I am, with a baby in my belly, and I don’t even know who the father is.
I laugh, imagining how the conversation with my mother would go. Even she couldn’t smooth this issue out like a wrinkle in a napkin.
I close my eyes briefly, and memories of Mason and Brookes rise without invitation: the first time I saw them in Joelle’s kitchen, larger than life and twice as handsome, in the barn, all rough and in charge, showing me what pleasurereally meant, and after…
The way they kissed me by their truck, lingering, lit by the sunrise, as reluctant to part as I was. And the messages where they tried to keep the connection alive, and I had to shut it down. I told myself I could handle it. A few texts, nothing more. But when they asked me out, I knew I couldn’t leave them hanging any longer.
Mason and Brookes had a way of slipping past the lines I tried to draw. I told myself I didn’t like it as much as I did.
But space and time haven’t done what I expected them to.
If anything, it’s made my desire for them sharper and more difficult to ignore.
I missed their daily messages and updates on their lives. I missed their gentle teasing and their not-so-gentle innuendo.
I open my eyes again, my gaze drifting back to the test on the counter.
And now this.
My guts twist as the full weight of it settles in.
A baby.
The word feels unreal, like it belongs to someone else’s life. My parents’ expectations surface immediately. The future they’ve always imagined for me has a very specific shape, and this doesn’t fit into it.
