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“Hey, babe.”
“Hey,” I said in a rush, throwing down my coat to toss Gem the test.
“How was dinner?”
“Great.”
“Everything ok—”
I shut the bathroom door on Bobby’s question and took the small cardboard box from Gem’s fingers when she struggled to open it.
Gem bent over the sink. “I feel pukey.”
“Because you’re nervous, or because you puke a lot when you’re pregnant?”
She leaned her elbows on the marbled counter, her head in her hands. “Probably both.”
“Here.” I held out one of the sticks, and Gem took it before unbuttoning her jeans.
Outside, Bobby knocked on the door. “Oi, everything okay in there?”
I opened the door a smidge, enough to meet my boyfriend’s hazel eyes. “We’ll be out in a few minutes.”
He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Okay, love. Just checking.” Then he winked and walked back to the living room, and I pivoted back around as Gem peed on the stick. She held the wrapper up for the garbage, and I took it, lifting the lid of the small trash bin in the corner.
“What the…” I tilted my head and leaned closer to the garbage.
“What?” Gem asked behind me.
Blinking, I lifted the used condom wrapper, my mind skidding to a stop. “I don’t…”
Gem flushed the toilet. “What’s that?”
But I couldn’t answer. At the moment, finding words was like trying to solve a geometry proof.
In my periphery, I was aware Gem washed her hands and set a timer on her cell phone, but the reality of finding a Trojan wrapper in the bathroom garbage clouded my ability to even put a whole thought together. There were only broken fragments in my mind.
Bobby didn’t use condoms.
I was on the pill.
My best friend was about to find out if she was pregnant.
Someonein this condo didn’t want to getsomeone elsepregnant.
That someone wasn’t me.
And the someone else certainly wasn’t me.
“Is that—” Gem started, but I cut her off as I opened the bathroom door, holding the wrapper out with a straight arm, pinching it between the tip of my thumb and index finger.
“Bobby.”
“Yeah?” My boyfriend lifted his head from the garish gold pillows he’d insisted on buying when we moved in here last year. When I flicked the offending foil packet at him, his smile vanished immediately.
“I found it in the garbage.”
He stood up slowly, his eyes drifting around our condo, and I could see it all crumbling at my feet. The last three years, the amazing job I’d left to work with this man because he’d begged me to, the time and energy I’d put into this relationship. It was all gone.
