Bernadette snorted. “If you are just now learning that everyone needs a friend, after sixty turns around the sun, well, Terry, I honestly don’t know what to tell you. Look both ways before crossing the street, I guess.”
Terry chuckled. “I’ll do that.” He pulled out his phone and tapped something into it. “I gotta remember to tell my daughter about Oreo and Henrietta. She’ll get a kick out of it.”
The reminder was a sudden smack upside my head.
Chloe.
His daughter.
Hispregnantdaughter.
And since he hadn’t said a single word about that, I would hazard a guess he didn’t know that part yet. Fuck.Fuck.
15
CHLOE
Honestly,I forgot it even happened. Well, not forgot, exactly. But 3 a.m. and the pregnancy test took on a hazy, surreal quality, vanishing in the bright light of day like fog burned off by the sun. When I found myself pulling over to the side of the highway to puke, my first thought was,dammit, I’m getting the flu.
Then I remembered I was pregnant.
And then I promptly forgot again.
When I threw up the chicken nuggets I’d eaten for lunch, I picked up my phone to let my advisor know I needed to cancel my afternoon clients before remembering I wasn’t sick, I was pregnant, and pregnancy wasn’t contagious. I called my ob-gyn instead and made an appointment for Monday, the earliest day she could squeeze me in.
Every problem had a solution. But it was a lot harder to find a solution when I couldn’t seem to fully grasp the fact that I had a problem. Steven texted a couple times over the next few days to see how I was doing, and each time I was stunned anew with the realization that I was pregnant.
I wasn’t in denial.
I just couldn’t believe it wastrue.
Until the server set a mimosa in front of me at our post-sewing club brunch.
“I’m pregnant,” I said through that same hazy fog. I blinked and looked up, startled awake by my own words. “I’mpregnant,” I said again, awed, like this was brand-new information to me.
James, Essie, Hannah, and Janie stared back at me with slack jaws.
“Well, shit,” Janie said.
“You don’t have to drink that,” James said next to me. She pulled my mimosa closer to her plate. “Should we get the server back? Ask her for plain orange juice? Unless you want a mimosa.” She pushed my mimosa back to me and blinked rapidly. “I mean…what are you going to do?”
“About the mimosa?” I asked stupidly.
“About thebaby,” Essie said.
“Oh.” I stared at the mimosa.
“Chloe?” Hannah nudged gently.
“Yeah.” I huffed and pushed the mimosa back to James. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I have an appointment with my ob-gyn on Monday to confirm it’s viable. Until then…it just seems fake, you know? I mean…” I looked around helplessly. “This wasn’t supposed to be possible. I’ve never had a normal cycle. Sometimes it’s long and bloody, sometimes it’s a trickle, and mostly it’s not there at all. I could go a couple months without anything and then have two periods in three weeks. Doctors have run tests and ruled some things out, but they never could give me a reason. All they could tell me was that I would be very unlikely to get pregnant without intervention. Even with intervention, it would be a long shot. That’s what theysaid.”
I felt like I had been lied to.
“Chloe,” James said quietly. She reached for my hand and squeezed it.
I shook my head. “It’s fine. I’ve known this since I was fourteen. And at fourteen I was so busy helping with my brothers that being a mom sounded terrible, anyway. And then…I just never let myself think about it. Why hope for something you can’t have?”
Chewing my lip, I looked up and found nothing but love staring back at me. “It would be selfish of me to have this baby, wouldn’t it? The dad…We’re not together. He’s off riding his motorcycle across Argentina, so I can’t even talk to him about this. I’ll try to call him after my appointment on Monday. But I know I screwed up. I had drunk, unprotected sex.”
