Page 27

I’d never lived with a man before – other than being roommates with Michael of course – but everything between us felt comfortable and domestic. We’d gotten along well as roommates and it was clear we were compatible, but there was something else there now, an easy intimacy, or maybe it was just that neither one of us needed to hide our attraction for each other anymore.

Even benign things like cooking dinner or going for a walk felt imbued with meaning now. I was happy – happier than I’d ever been in any relationship – and I was sure it was written all over my face every time I was with Michael. When I was alone with my thoughts, I couldn’t help but daydream that we were a real couple. And maybe we would be some day.

I still went to my parents’ house for dinner every other Saturday, bringing Michael with me at my mother’s insistence. We were very careful not to act like anything was going on with us in front of my family, but my mother and sister definitely seemed suspicious. Or maybe that was just my guilty conscience. Either way, my mother had amped up her “you two should get married” narrative, seemingly nervous that I was going to lose Michael before I got him to the altar.

God knows I wasn’t going to try to explain the friends with benefits concept to my mother. After she recovered from her stroke she’d send my father over to kill us both. No one outside of the two of us needed to know that we were more than just friends.

Until the day everything changed…

I’d been feeling kind of nauseous for over a week, but I didn’t think too much of it, figuring I’d picked up another virus or something. I was otherwise feeling fine. Then my breasts got sore, the way they did when I was about to get my period, except my period didn’t come. And my breasts stayed sore. So sore I could barely stand to have Michael touch them.

When my period was a week late, that’s when I started to wonder what was going on with my body. It was never late. I’d always been as regular as could be. I tried to tell myself it was just hormonal changes or something. I’d heard from my sister Alona that her periods were changing, and she was having weird symptoms, and her doctor had just chalked it up to perimenopause.

Pregnancy never once entered my mind. Michael and I were religious about contraception. We’d never once had sex unprotected, even when we had to stop what we were doing to find a condom in another room.

Then one night I flashed back to a memory from high school. Clear as day, I could see our teacher, Mrs. Collins, giving us the sex education lecture that we all received in Freshman Health.

“Condoms are ninety-eight percent effective, girls,” the teacher told us. “But ninety-eight is not one hundred. It’s always best to use additional birth control to be safe if you want to avoid pregnancy. The only perfect birth control is abstinence.”

Unable to get my health teacher’s words out of my head, I decided to take a pregnancy test. After work the next day I stopped at the pharmacy and picked up some home pregnancy tests, telling myself the tests would put my mind at ease until I could get an appointment with my doctor to see what was going on.

It didn’t work. When I saw the two lines on the first test – and two lines on the second one too – I knew my mind would never be at ease again.

Michael

Iwas watching the basketball game when I heard swearing start from Olga’s side of the apartment. She was speaking Ukrainian, but I’d spent enough time around her to know that she was swearing up a blue streak.

She came storming into the living room, her eyes wild. Her thick brown hair was a mess, as if she’d been digging her fingers in it, and her little hands were folded into fists.

“What’s the matter, baby?”

The endearment slipped out without my conscious thought. Judging by the mutinous expression on her face, it just made her madder.

Technically, we were still only friends with benefits. I was madly in love with her, and my feelings for her grew stronger every day. I hadn’t worked up the nerve to tell her how I felt yet, mostly because I wasn’t sure how she felt about me. Olga was like a vault. She kept her emotions close to the vest.

Except for right now. There was no mistaking the look on her face. My love was pissed off. And in a panic.

Turning off the TV, I strode over to her and placed my hands on her shoulders. I gave her a gentle squeeze and waited for her to look up at me and tell me what was going on.

“Olga,” I said carefully. “What’s wrong?”

“My father is going to kill you. Slowly and gleefully, the way he learned in the military. Then my mother is going to send me to the convent. I’m going to be a terrible nun…!”

Her words broke off in a high pitched wail that I’m pretty sure every dog in the neighborhood heard.

“Why would your father kill me? He loves me, and so does your mother.”

He’d been a hard nut to crack, but Mr. Pavlenko seemed to really like me now. As for Mrs. Pavlenko, she’d been very vocal about her desire for me to marry her daughter. I was all for it, I just needed to get that daughter on board with the plan.

“They’re not going to love you now,” she said bitterly.

“Why?”

“Because you knocked up their unmarried daughter!”

I stared at Olga in shock, sure that I must have misheard her.

“What did you just say?”