AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yeah, people are crazy for them. How is it touring with them?” Amy asks.
“Chaotic in a good way,” I say. I’m starting to sweat again. I grab a hair tie off my wrist and pull my hair back into a ponytail.
“Hold up. Lyndsey is that a ring?!” Amy asks.
I can feel the blood flooding my cheeks, “Uh, yeah. Vince proposed this morning. There was a skeleton, it was a whole thing.”
“No way! Tommy! Alex! Lyndsey’s engaged!” Amy calls. The other two promoters, Tommy and Alex pop their head into my office.
“Lemme see! Congratulations! Holy fuck, how’d it happen?”
“Um, he stuck it on a plastic skeleton.”
“That’s romantic and seasonal,” Tommy quips.
“When’s the wedding?”
“No idea. We have to get through tour first,” I say. My stomach lurches and I can feel the vomit crawling up my throat, there’s no stopping it.
“Excuse me,” I say before trying my best to seem like I’m not darting out of the room as I sprint to the tiny bathroom at theend of the hall. I throw up what little food I had in my stomach and cough into the toilet bowl.
“Fuck,” I grunt, thankful that my hair is in a ponytail.
I try not to lean against the toilet bowl too hard, my tits have been uncharacteristically sensitive lately. I get up and flush the handle with my foot before washing my hands, wishing I was one of those people who brought a toothbrush to work. My mouth feels disgusting. I splash some water in my mouth and hope that it’ll work.
The workday passes by quickly. I manage to choke down a sandwich from a deli down the block for lunch and spend the rest of the day sipping on a ginger ale to help my stomach. Sometime around four, Amy knocks on my door.
“Hey, Lyndsey?” She asks.
“Hey, Amy, do you need anything?”
She hovers at the door and blushes, “This is kind of embarrassing, but do you have a tampon?” She asks.
“Not embarrassing at all,” I say. I open my desk drawer and dig around until I find one and hand it to Amy.
“Thanks so much,” she says.
“No problem,” I say as I close the drawer.
Amy walks away and the realization hits me like a ton of bricks: I don’t remember the last time I had my period. I’m pretty regular, but it’s not like it’s something I track.
I got my IUD out over the summer, but Vince and I had been using condoms since, and it’d been working great, or so I thought. Except, there was that one time in Berlin, where we danced all night and got too swept up to remember the German word for “condom.”
Vince and I had talked about wanting kids in the future, but when we talked about the future we meant years down the line, not months! I felt another wave of nausea rise in my gut and barfed into the trash can beneath my desk.
Unlike Vince, who will run for miles when he gets anxious, my anxiety is task-based. So, I spend the rest of the day making sure my calendar is spotless and confirming set list times with Priya over email, keeping things professional.
At the end of the day, Alex, Tommy, and Amy all congratulate me and I thank them with a smile. But when I get to my car, I close the door and press my forehead against the steering wheel.
Can I be someone’s mom?! Does Vince want to be a Dad?!
I have zero experience around kids or babies, what am I supposed to do? My brain’s booked a one-way ticket on the panic attack express, so I do what I’ve done since I was nine and felt so worried I couldn’t breathe: I call Allison.
She picks up on the first ring.
“Hey! How are you, Lyndsey?”
“Um, engaged! And maybe pregnant?!” I blurt, before I can get the words out, Allison is screaming with glee.
