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Mandi laughs, says goodbye, and escorts me from the restaurant while practically humming with excitement.
"You do know I won't have a very good surprised face considering I know, right?" I check.
"Girl, please. For me, you'll put on the best-surprised face ever. Now come on—let's go get you dolled up so I can get you there in time for the big surprise."
I frown as we walk across the street to where her Mini Cooper is parked. "Pass. That was a friendly suggestion from my mom, who thinks she's the expert on all things Dante Parisi. My hair is fine. Just take me over. Besides, I don’t want to be there too long—that seafood made me nauseous."
She stops and frowns with her door open. "It did? Damn, do you have food poisoning or something? Please tell me you Don’t, Giules. This is supposed to be a super fun surprise for you, and I'd rather you didn't vomit all over the chic cake I got custom-made for you."
I buckle myself in while she starts the car, still casting me a concerned look.
"I won't throw up." I roll my eyes. "You know I can drink like a champ and have a steel stomach. I don’t want to primp for an hour or so. I'll be there—an hour is more than fair for a little get-together. I have work to get back to, you know."
Honestly, I'll probably be hurrying through work as fast as possible to get to Roberto before he leaves tomorrow, but I'm not about to tell her that. Neither of us is telling anyone.
Mandi twists her lips to one side as she drives to her apartment not far from this street. "Okay, I can accept one hour. It's going to be a fun hour—nothing too wild, just a lot of friends and a little family and…well, you know," she giggles. "Presents and cake and shit. You'll love it."
"If someone tries to sing the birthday song to me, I'll throw up on them on purpose."
She cackles and pulls into her assigned parking spot, and we walk up the stairs to her apartment. I'm feeling way more winded by them than usual and lean against the wall outside her door as she unlocks it, grimacing as my stomach roils.
Damn, what if I do have food poisoning? I got it once in college, and I really don’t want a repeat of Mandi shouting, "Aim! Fucking aim!" while pulling my hair away from my face while I chucked it all up.
When we enter her bathroom, I see that she already has makeup out and her curling iron plugged in. I give her a deadpan look and point at it.
"That's a fire hazard."
"Your butt is a fire hazard. Sit. I need to work some magic."
I do sit, but the uncomfortable feeling in my stomach doesn't abate. Instead, I swallowed back bile and frowned as she combed through my hair. Normally the scallops and truffles don’t cause this sort of reaction.
"Okay, now do you want big swoopy Hollywood curls or more like beach waves—"
Before she can finish speaking, I bolt from the kitchen chair she's dragged into her bathroom and throw open the toilet lid, retching violently. Mandi squeals with surprise and disgust but hurries to me quickly to pull my hair back and rub my back.
"Shit! You weren't kidding. I thought a place that fancy wouldn't possibly give people food poisoning. Oh, you poor thing!"
I heave again and groan. "God, I'm sorry. This came out of fuckingnowhere."
I throw up for another minute, but my friend goes oddly silent. Then she clears her throat.
"Uh…what if it isn't food poisoning, Giules?"
"Then I guess I have a nasty bug, and you need to disinfect absolutely everything." This time, when my stomach tries to empty itself, nothing comes up, but it's still unpleasant.
She hesitates again. "I've known you for years. You never get sick. Please don’t hate me for asking this because I'm only going off of a hunch based on how tired and a little sentimental andemotionalyou've seemed lately, but…when was your last period?"
I finally finish dry-heaving and straightening, making a face. "What?"
"That's code for 'I think you might need to take a pregnancy test,'" Mandi says, rubbing my back.
"I know what it's code for. It just doesn't make sense. We used a condom."
Her blue eyes go big. "Whoa. Wait. Back up. When? Who? Holy fucking shit—was it Roberto?" She gasps so hard that I'm surprised she doesn't pull a muscle.
I feel my face warm. "Yeah, well…we hooked up when I was in Chicago. But we used protection."
Mandi purses her lips, brows perched high on her head. "Condoms are only 98% effective, you know. I mean, really, if you take into account them ripping or other weird complications, it's more like 87% effective—"
