AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I stood up from the couch. “You say that like it’s a bad thing. Look, they ate it up tonight when we played together. What do you say to chatting with me about the band? AboutNeedlehead?”
He didn’t seem convinced. “After all this time?”
“Yeah, after all this time. We’re still popular and we’ve not made music in almost two decades. There’s gotta be something salvageable there.”
“Yeah, we’ll see. Fine. I ‘spose I owe you a conversation after trying to pull a stunt on you tonight.”
“You’re an honorable man, Reed.”
“Someone’s gotta be. Not tonight, though. I need to get back to my bed. That does change with age, I’ll tell you. The others’ll be partying all night long if they can.”
“I’ll fly you to New York, alright? All expenses paid. Whenever you want.”
“It’s a deal.” He hung up his guitar and pulled his beaten-up old jacket around his shoulders. I could’ve sworn it was the same jacket he’d been permanently attached to back when we’d known each other.
Then, he left, leaving me sitting in wonder in the backstage area of a concert that I wasn’t meant to be playing at, wondering if maybe following some of my impulses wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
Luna
By this point, I hated the taste of ginger. Since the nausea had started, I’d trawled the internet for countless remedies. Ginger tea was most recommended to cure nausea. It helped, a little, but its effects were limited to the time period in which the drinking of the ginger happened. This meant I had to be drinking it pretty much constantly to ward off that awful sick feeling.
I didn’t really get sick randomly. I had a strong stomach, and presumably a good immune system. It meant that when Ididget ill, it was normally catastrophic – horrible flus and viruses that had managed to bypass my body’s defenses.
But this... this mild cloying nausea that had me stuck in my apartment for almost a week now. This was something else.
I’d had to cancel my meetings all week, so I’d had all week to sit with my thoughts. Even then, I’d avoided letting my thoughts stray in the direction of... the period I’d missed.
Instead, I’d also internet-searched the countless other reasons someone might miss their period, and tried to attribute the lack of a menstrual cycle this month to any possible other reason. I picked a new one each day and stuck with it.
But after a week of this, the possible reasons were running out. I wasn’t underweight, or too overweight, though the years had certainly thickened out my curves a bit from the waif I’d been as a teenager. I wasn’t on birth control, I didn’t have any of the hormonal balances that can cause skipped periods. The truth was, as an adult I’d always been regular as clockwork until... now.
It's rare you find yourself praying that you’re ‘just’ going through the menopause early. But that was how I found myself, grimacing as I forced down the ginger tea and looking up same-day delivery of pregnancy tests.
Was I really going to buy them? Buying them felt like giving more credence to the possibility that I could be pregnant than I wanted to. But if I did buy them, then if – when – they turned up negative, I’d be able to rule it out, and maybe then go to my doctor and get checked over.
It was incredibly unlikely. The only person I’d had sex with recently – in a while, actually – was Sylvester. We hadn’t used protection, sure. It had been old habit for us. When I was a teenager, Ihadbeen on birth control, until they’d sent my moods wacky and I’d stopped them. We hadn’t had to worry then.
But it was pretty stupid of me to fall into old habits carelessly like that. Even if I wasn’t pregnant – which I definitely couldn’t be – I needed to get myself checked for STIs. Who knew where Sylvester had been? If you trusted the media, he’d beeneverywhere.And I meaneverywhere.
My finger hovered over the checkout button, five different brands of pregnancy test in my cart. That’s how much sureness I needed that I definitely, definitely wasn’t pregnant.
They arrived an hour later. The sickness was fading, as it had tended to do as the day went on –don’t think about morning sickness, Luna, Goddamnit– and I greeted the delivery guy at the door with a feigned smile of thanks before grasping the package and retreating into the depths of my apartment.
I tore the brown paper bag open like a wild animal and threw them hatefully onto the couch. I stared at the little boxes. They were no good on the couch, I supposed. I needed to pee now, so best to get it over with.
I scooped them up and carried them to the bathroom, where I pushed aside the boxes of black hair dye to make room for them on the side. Then, trying not to think about what exactly I was doing, I took the tests one by one, and lined them up to wait for the outcome.
The first result showed up.Positive.
“Oh no. Oh no no no.”
And the second.Positive.
“Fuck no.”
And the third, fourth and fifth one after the other, in glorious synchronization:Positive positive positive.
I stared at them. “What the... actual fuck?! What the FUCK?”
