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“Oh my God,” I say, pressing a hand to my heart as dread sets in. “Oh my God, oh my God.”
Callie looks over at me, eyes wide at the panic in my voice. “What is it?”
I count one more time for good measure, and again, I come up with the same number. Slowly, I raise my head to look at her, unable to believe this is happening. “My period was due five days ago.”
Tenminuteslater,we’restanding side by side at the bathroom counter. In front of us is a pregnancy test that Callie found in the back of the cabinet. I already peed on it and now it’s facedown, waiting for us to read the results.
“Are you ready?” she asks.
I feel sick to my stomach. “No.”
“Do you want me to look at it first?”
I think about it, then shake my head. “Let’s look at it together.”
Callie takes my hand and squeezes. I squeeze back hard. With her free hand, she picks up the test and flips it over. I stare down at the results window, my vision tunneling down to a pinprick until I see nothing but the two pink lines in front of me.
“Holy shit.” Callie drops the test on the counter as if it’s burned her. “Holy fucking shit, Azalea, what the fuck?”
I can’t form words. I clutch her harder, leaning all my weight on her as my head turns light. “Cal, I’m—I’m gonna pass out.”
“Okay, here. Here.” She slowly lowers herself to sit on the ground, bringing me with her. She ends up leaning against the edge of the tub while I press my face into her shoulder, hyperventilating. “Breathe. It’s okay. You’re okay.”
This feels just like every panic attack I’ve ever had in a plane or elevator or that time I accidentally locked myself in my closet when I was little. I’m trying desperately to fill my lungs with air, but there just isn’t enough oxygen in this tiny bathroom.
Callie gently eases out from beneath me and grabs a paper cup from under the sink. She fills it with water and then comes back to the floor, tapping it against my lips. “Drink this,” she orders.
I gulp it down, closing my eyes to concentrate on the cold liquid slithering down my throat. It calms me slightly. “More,” I rasp.
She fills it again, and the next cup gets the knot in my chest to loosen. The spots in my vision begin to dissipate and my gasps for air become fewer and farther between.
I drink the third cup slowly, taking small sips as I work to even out my breathing. Callie rubs circles between my shoulder blades. When I set the cup on the edge of the tub, indicating that I’ve had enough for now, she breaks the silence. “Are you guys not using condoms?”
I laugh without humor. “We do most of the time. But the first few times, we hadn’t bought any yet. We thought it was fine since I’m on the pill.”
“You were on the pill with Drew and you still used condoms,” she says. “Even when he tried to get you to go without.”
“I know.” I purse my lips, thinking back to that first night with Maverick. It was the most intense desperation and longing I’d ever experienced, and all I cared about was having him as close to me as physically possible. To know that he was there, that he was with me. In the heat of that moment, the thought of stopping was unbearable. “It was a stupid thing to do.”
We lapse into silence again. I look down at my stomach, trying to picture what’s happening inside of me. I don’t know much about pregnancy, because I wasn’t planning on needing to know anytime soon. Whatever is happening to my own body right at this very moment is a mystery, and that sends a fresh wave of panic over me. “What am I going to do?”
Callie eyes me carefully. “I mean…you don’t have to have it.”
“That’s true,” I concede, but the thought brings me no relief. Doing some quick math, I say, “It would be born in the summer, right? I couldn’t go to pharmacy school.”
“Yeah, you could. That’s what daycare is for.”
“How would I afford daycare while going to school full-time?”
“Okay,” she says, holding up her hands, “can we back up for a minute? You keep sayingI, but you didn’t get pregnant by yourself.”
I bring my knees up to my chest and wrap my arms tightly around them. I wish Maverick were here, but at the same time I’m glad he’s not. I’m not sure I want to know what he would say. “Maybe he—he might not want to be a dad right now. He—” Tears that have been lurking just below the surface rise up suddenly, spilling over onto my cheeks. “He might not want to be with me anymore.”
She leans toward me, smacking her palms on the tiled floor. “Azalea. Don’t be dense.”
“What? It’s not like we were expecting this.” I think back to last summer and how he coped with losing his career by pushing me away. The memory hollows my insides. “I have no idea how he’s going to react.”
“That man worships the ground you walk on,” Callie says. “He’s probably going to get down on one knee and propose to you the second he finds out.”
