Page 54 of The Breath Before Forever

“I can stay out of sight, keep my headphones in, yadda yadda,” Vera replied. “Unless you want me to go, I can call the car—”

“No, I want you to stay. Did you at least give Vaslav more heads up than me?” Hannah asked.

That was where things got tricky.

“I did,” Vera replied.

Carefully.

Hannah hadn’t missed it.

“Why did you say it like that?”

It was that moment when Vera decided it was time to share her own secret. Reaching into the messenger bag she had hung earlier on the wall, she produced the remaining unopened pregnancy test that had been left over.

Hannah squinted at the test. “I think it’s too late for another one of—”

“It’s for me,” Vera interrupted. “I came here to take it.”

All at once, Hannah’s jaw fell open.

Flies could have made a home.

Vera chewed on her bottom lip, eyeing the pink and white box with the strangest anxiety growing in her chest from deep inside her heart. “Vaslav found the tests,” she explained, “and made me take one. Not long after you left, actually. We had a fight, I had put the test in my pocket—”

“Was it positive?” Hannah asked.

“Did you miss the part where he made me take a test?”

“I figured he must have thought they were yours,” Hannah replied. “I mean, if I was a guy and I thought my wife was pregnant with my kid but was hiding it, I would want to know, too.”

How simple.

Would every man overreact as much as Vaslav had? Vera didn’t quite think so, but it was a distinction she couldn’t make for Hannah without explaining the why for said reaction, too. So, she did neither.

“He did think they were mine. We don’t want kids, Hannah.”

She didn’t explain why. That was too deep.

Vera got it, though.

She understood.

Vaslav, so hated by his own mother, who also hated her, came from a long line of the same history cycling again and again. He didn’t want to be a father if he thought there was a chance he would be a bad one, but he had too much pride to say as much. Even so, he had a right to make that choice.

No judgement stared back from Hannah. Just solemn stillness that made Vera feel heard and understood.

“The test he made me take ...” Vera trailed off, knowing what came next wouldn’t sound good. She had to get it out, though. Someone except her needed to know. “I didn’t check it for a couple of hours, and by then, you couldn’t even read the screen. I was two weeks late for my last shot; three times last week, I smelled something cooking and almost didn’t make it to the bathroom before I puked. And look.”

Lifting the hoodie she wore, Vera peeled up the shirt underneath for her friend to see the way her breasts seemed to overfill her sports bras lately. She wasn’t ashamed of Hannah seeing her body; they spent years dancing and training side by side, changing from one outfit or costume to another. Modesty was the least of Vera’s problems.

“They hurt, too,” Vera added.

Just to make the point clear.

Hannah cringed. “Yikes.”

“I’m probably pregnant,” Vera said.