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Callie comes to the door, and when she sees me, her eyes go wide. “Uh…”
“Hey.” I try to push past her, but she blocks my entry into the apartment. “Why are you being weird? Let me in.”
“Zale?” she yells over her shoulder.
“Yeah?” Azalea’s voice comes from the back of the apartment, where her bedroom is.
“Maverick is here.”
Something in Callie’s tone raises alarm bells, and so does the answering silence. There’s no response, no approaching footsteps. I stare at Callie, and she stares at me.
“Tell me what’s going on,” I whisper.
“I can’t,” she hisses back. She stoops down to grab her purse and shoes from beside the door. “I’m gonna leave for a while.”
“What? Why?”
“Listen.” She straightens up and pokes me in the chest, not particularly gently. “Donotfreak out on her. If you make this harder for her, I swear to God, I will never speak to you again.”
For some reason, I think they must have found out that I’m considering playing baseball again. I don’t know who would have told them, but that’s where my mind goes. “Is she upset about that?”
“About what?”
“About me trying to get back into baseball.”
Callie’s jaw drops open, and she puts her face in her hands. “Oh my God.”
“What? I’m only thinking about—”
She grabs my arm and leans in close. “I hear her coming,” she whispers. “Don’t bring up baseball. Don’t bring upanythingand for God’s sake, don’t have a knee jerk reaction you’ll regret.”
I barely have time to process what she’s said before she’s brushing past me, shoving her feet into her shoes and hurrying down the stairs without a backward glance.
When I turn back to the door, Azalea is standing there. I’m elated to see her for about half a second before I process her red eyes and weak, shaky smile. “Hey,” I tell her, stepping into the apartment and kicking the door shut behind me. I set the flowers and cupcake on the entry table, then wrap her up in my arms. “Hey. It’s okay.”
“You don’t even know what’s wrong.”
Callie told me not to bring up baseball, and since I feel like I’m completely in the dark as to what’s going on here, I decide to heed her advice. “Your dad, right?”
“No,” she says flatly. She steps back, putting some distance between us, and my stomach drops. I mentally run through the list of people we know who could possibly be sick or dead. Or maybe she wants to break up with me? I didn’t even consider that, but—
My racing thoughts are interrupted when she takes a deep breath, arms crossed tightly over her chest like she’s protecting herself from something. “Maverick,” she says, “I’m pregnant.”
At first it feels kind of like when I found out Mom had been given a few weeks to live. I’m rendered speechless and still as the earth shifts beneath my feet. Then, for some reason, I have the thought that she’s joking. But Azalea isn’t much of a joker, and she definitely wouldn’t joke about something like this.
“You—” I stare at her. “Really?”
She nods.
“Okay,” I say, trying to wrap my head around it. “Okay.”
“I’m so sorry.” Her voice is nearly a whisper, and she’s looking at the floor. “I don’t know how it happened.”
I take a deep breath and think about what Callie told me just a couple of minutes ago.
Do not freak out on her.
Don’t have a knee jerk reaction you’ll regret.
