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Oh, who was I kidding? Holli probably had an entire drawer of condoms, in varying textures and shades. I could have looked in her room that night. Instead, I’d made the stupidest possible choice.
“I’m going to call him,” I told Holli. “I know he’s not feeling well, but... fuck, does that make me a bad person?”
“If you need to call him...” Holli shrugged. “I suppose the worst that could happen is that he wouldn’t answer.”
I wiped the tears from my cheeks and climbed off my bed. “Okay. I’m going to go get my phone.”
It took me two tries to make the damn call my hands were shaking so badly. When I finally managed to dial him, he didn’t answer. Voicemail picked up after six rings, and I found myself in a very strange predicament. What, exactly, was the etiquette for telling someone you were eighty percent sure that you were pregnant? You couldn’t do that via voicemail. Texting was out. Instead, I left a lame, “It’s Sophie. Call me,” and waited with Holli for Deja to return.
Holli had made me some tea— “You’ll need something to pee, when she gets back,”— and tried to stay chipper. When she set the cup and saucer in front of me, she said, “So... I bet Neil drinks a lot of tea. Being British and all.”
“No, he drinks coffee, mostly.” I shook my head. “He’s probably going to drop dead of a heart attack from all the caffeine.”
“Well, this is caffeinated, but I don’t think a little bit will hurt the... thing.” Holli turned away from me quickly and dumped way too much sugar into her own cup. “What do you think Deja meant?”
I sipped my tea. “Meant by what?”
“She said ‘I’ve done this before.’ And then she ran out to get a pregnancy test.” Holli tried for a casual shrug. She’s never going to be a model-slash-actress, is all I’m going to say about her attempt to be nonchalant.
“Maybe she had a pregnancy scare before.” It was totally selfish and unfair of me to wish something so awful on another woman, but I was really glad to know someone personally who had gone through the same thing I was going through.
“I know, it’s just...” Holli shook her head. “No, I’m being a jerk. You’re like, legitimately worried about the contents of your uterus and I’m acting weird about my girlfriend’s past.”
“Girlfriend?” If anything could momentarily take my mind off the idea of a chubby-cheeked horror slowly siphoning away my life force, it would have to be good news about my friend’s life. “So you guys are like, official now?”
“Yeah, we’re exclusive. I don’t know, I thought she was going to drive me crazy, she’s so bossy and kind of,” Holli moved her hands all around her head, crossing and rolling her eyes. “You know. I thought we might be too similar.”
“You’re clones of each other,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, well.” She grinned at me. “Turns out I must be one narcissistic bitch, because I fucking love my clone.”
“A narcissistic model? You’d be the very first.” I made a finger gun at her. “I’m happy for you. Really happy for you.”
“Don’t worry about this.” She waved a hand at my midsection. “If you decide to get rid of it, we can hang out and have a post abortion slumber party with ice cream and cake.”
“You and cake.” I laughed to myself, even though the thought was horribly depressing, in my frame of mind. What would my mom say? What would my super Catholic family think of me?
“And if you decide to keep it, I’ll help you pick out the color for the nursery. Provided, of course, that you find an apartment with a room you can make into a nursery.” She took a sip of her tea, making a face at what I assumed was the six pounds of sugar she’d nervously dumped into it. “I mean, you can’t keep it here. No pets allowed, it’s in the lease.”
The door opened, and Deja stepped in, Holli’s keychain dangling from one hand, a plastic bag in the other. “Okay. I have the test. Are you going to do it now, or in the morning?”
“What’s the difference?” How I managed to stop myself from lunging across the room and snatching the bag from her hands, I would never know.
“Well, they say you’re supposed to take them in the morning, because that’s when the highest concentration of hormones is sitting around in your pee.” Deja held the bag out to me. “But I figured you’d want to know right now, so I got a two pack.”
“How much do I owe you?” I went for my purse, and she shook her head.
“Just go take the test, okay? We’ll figure that out later.”
That’s code for, “I’m not going to ask you to pay me, because you just lost your job,” but I wasn’t in the mood to be particularly prideful at the moment.
