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I looked down to find myself stirring my glass full of orange juice and soda. It was a habit I hadn’t broken, but it was okay. I was drinking that to keep the girls off my back anyway. I didn’t want people to know I wasn’t drinking. It would raise way too much suspicion, especially since I had known most of these girls my whole life, and they knew that out of all of us I was the biggest drinker.
“This is so much fun,” one of her cousins said, stumbling over. “Cheers!”
I held my glass in the air and tapped hers, smiling as I took a sip. It wasn’t very often that I was sober while everyone else was drunk, and I wondered if I acted that way when I was intoxicated. Maybe it was a good thing I was being forced to stop drinking. It would keep my embarrassment to a minimum. Lindsey climbed down off the chair and dragged herself over to me, making an exhausted face. She plopped down in the chair next to me and squeezed my leg.
“This is so much fun,” she said. “Thank you for putting it together.”
“Of course,” I said. “Sorry I can’t get wild with you.”
“Yeah, what are you drinking?”
“Orange juice and sprite,” I whispered.
“Nice touch,” she said, tapping her glass to mine.
“So, how are you feeling?” she asked. “I haven’t checked in with you at all tonight. I mean, are you starting to feel any better with your stomach and stuff? I’m not looking forward to this when Jordan wants to start a family.”
“Honestly, I still feel awful,” I said.
“Oh, no,” she pouted. “When is it all supposed to get better?”
“In eighteen years,” I said, laughing.
“That was a terrible, old person joke,” she said, bursting into giggles. “Don’t tell me you are becoming an old person already.”
“No,” I sighed. “Just a person lost in life, trying to make sense of it all. The doctor said I should start feeling better in my second trimester.”
“That’s not too far away,” she said. “Then we can start going for walks and getting you up and moving around. Hopefully by then, you will be feeling better. Otherwise, I am going to have a talk with that baby. It needs to give you a little reprieve.”
“It’s payback for all the stress I’ve put on it in recent weeks,” I said.
“Are you still throwing up?”
“God, yes,” I said. “The morning sickness, which is falsely named by the way, seems to be getting worse by the day. The medicine only works sometimes, and now, I am getting randomly sick all throughout the day. I am afraid to go to the grocery store because I’m too far away from the bathroom.”
“You could have stayed home tonight,” she said. “I would have understood.”
“It’s alright. My doctor told me to double up on my medicine tonight so I could make it through the night.” I laughed.
“Maybe getting up and doing some yoga or going for a walk will help,” she said. “Exercise is like the cure-all for me. When I am sick, I go running, even if I have to drag myself out of bed to do it. By the time I’m back and showered, I’ve sweated the sickness right out of me.”
“I don’t think that I can just sweat the baby right out of me,” I said, laughing. “Maybe when I am reaching my due date, but definitely not right now. The doctor has me on light duty until I reach my second trimester. He doesn’t want me doing anything strenuous.”
“We could get you one of those motorized buggies to ride around in.” She laughed.
“Don’t laugh,” I said. “I am pretty much exhausted from sun up to sun down. I might just take you up on the buggy. You can ride on the back and navigate.”
“That would be amazing.” She giggled. “We would terrorize this city, one mile per hour at a time.”
“My focus is completely shot,” I said. “I tried to read the other day and ended up having a day dream that turned into a real dream when I fell asleep at the kitchen table. I also put my keys in the freezer and my purse on the shelf in the pantry the other day. It took me forever to find my keys. I felt like such an idiot finding them nestled in with the peas.”
“My grandma used to do that, but she had dementia,” Lindsay said, giggling.
“I feel like it,” I said. “And don’t even talk about emotions. I am like the queen of emotions right now. I cry over everything, and when it’s worth crying over, I sob. Sometimes, I can’t even catch my breath, I get so upset. I sat in the kitchen earlier tonight, worried that people were going to find out I was pregnant by the guy that just dumped me, and I cried my eyes out. I feel like I am going insane sometimes.”
“That’s okay,” she said. “Crying is good for you. You never cried when we were growing up. You are getting all the backlogged tears out of your system.”
“I don’t think it works that way.” I laughed.
