“No way,” I said, shaking my head. “It doesn’t work that way.”
“All it takes is once,” she shrugged. “And it sounds like you did it a few times…with a guy who has proven to be very fertile. Are you on birth control?”
“No.”
“So you could be pregnantright now, Maggie.” Delia’s eyes darted down to his t-shirt. “Actually…I was gonna say your boobs look bigger. What if you got pregnant that first time?”
“We used a condom.”
“He used a condom with Nell’s mom too, right?”
I went very still.
Delia looked at me.
“We used a condom,” I said again, like that would give me more time.
“Condoms aren’t a hundred percent,” she said.
“Which would mean I could have been pregnant since September,” I said.
The word sat there between us.
Delia put her coffee down very carefully.
“The first night,” I said. “At Rick’s. When I didn’t know he owned the place and I just—walked in because the light was on.”
“Mmhm.” Delia nodded.
I looked at the second bedroom door.
I’d moved here for a life I was building for two…with the promise of three. I’d bought the furniture, made the space, told myself there was time. I’d been living alone in this apartment for three months with the extra room full of boxes I hadn’t unpacked yet because some part of me had been waiting to know what it was going to be.
“If it was the first night,” I said slowly, “I’d be almost five weeks along.”
Silence.
“We need to go to the pharmacy,” I said.
Delia was already standing up.
“I need creamer anyway,” she said. “You should keep that on hand from now on—I have a feeling I’m going to be hanging around here a lot more if we’re making plans for your kid.”
EIGHTEEN
nash
Tourist season meantNell spent most weekend evenings over at Claire’s…and tonight, that meant I got to go to Maggie’s for the first time.
We’d talked about it that morning before she left—Nell playing with her toys in her room, Maggie and I picking up little pearly buttons off the living room floor.
“I’ll come by after close,” I’d said. “If you want.”
She’d looked up from the button she was holding, a soft smile on her face. “I want.”
Simple as that.
So at a quarter to midnight, when the last tourists had cleared out and Marco was wiping down the bar and Tess was counting out tips, I told them to close up and walked the six blocks to Maggie’s building in the October cold with my hands in my pockets.
