“They’re fine.” I swallow.
“Oh, come on. That must be hard shit to live up to.” Michael taps my arm.
“Not really.” Lie.
“How could it not be? Are you gonna be a doctor?” He edges closer till our legs are touching.
“No.” My voice is small.
“Did your mum apologise for that text about not graduating uni?” Michael’s voice is proportionately louder to my diminishing one. He seems to tower over me.
“No.” Quieter than the last.
“Do you have a steady boyfriend who’s about to propose?”
Kapow!
Boom!
Boof!
Owee!
I am in a cartoon. No, I don’t have a boyfriend who’s about to propose. I have a baby whose fate I have to decide on. I have a guy I really like in my hotel room, who has finally said he has a crush on me but is about to go away on tour while I nurse a baby.
Unless … I don’t.
I think about Kate. Can I kill a human when a human my best friend loves is being murdered by a disease?
Can I?
“C’mon, Stace, answer me.” Michael bounces the bed a little, snapping my attention back to the present. “I can keep your secrets, you know.”
That’s when I hear it. Kate’s bedroom door opening and shutting. The click of the pipes in the bathroom. The thuds of her footsteps as she walks back to bed.
She can’t know I have Michael here. She doesn’t need reminding of Dave, and she sure as hell doesn’t need to know I’m not hooking up with some random dude on the beach when it was something she had been so adamant about.
I whip around to face Michael. “Pretend to have sex with me.”
His jaw drops, his brow furrowed. “What?”
“I don’t want Kate to think you’re here, or that it’s some other guy I’m just … talking with.” I throw my hands up. “It’s complicated, but she needs to think I’m screwing someone. She was really keen on me making out with a random guy, having fun. Okay?”
Michael is silent for a moment, worrying at his lip. “And why can’t she think I’m here?”
“It’ll remind her of Dave.” And I don’t know that I can deal with talking about you being here with me. Not when I keep thinking about your lips.
“Stacey, do you like me?” His intense brown eyes bore into mine and I’m naked. To my very soul.
“I … you’re a good friend.” I nod, slowly.
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it,” he hisses, pushing up the bed until he’s right in front of me. His face is all hard lines, his eyes glittering like stones.
“Yes.” The word is an ant. It’s that tiny.
“So why can’t we do something about it?” he yells, and I press my shaking finger to his lips. They’re soft, and big, and warm, and hell do I want him in this moment more than I ever have before.
“You’re in a band … you’re going on tour,” I mumble, quickly jerking my hand back and picking at the threads on my dress. “And again, I don’t want to tell Kate about you because of Dave, and …” The words sound lame, even to me.
“That’s wrong; you know that, right?” Michael’s eyes flash. “You’re so freaking embarrassed of me that you won’t tell your best friend that we’re—what? Friends?”
“Michael …” I press my hand to his arm. What can I say? I want to be with you, but I’m pregnant, and I have a lot to deal with right now? I want to be with you, but I don’t think I can kill this baby and you can’t give your career a worthwhile shot if you have a girlfriend back home, let alone a pregnant one? “I just … I just want to give her some space to deal with this, and her dad, okay?”
“And in the morning? What then?” His fierce eyes shine into mine, interrogating me.
“I … I don’t know.”
He shrugs my hand off his arm, turning his shoulders in on himself.
We sit there in silence. I look out the window again. How can the world look so pretty when it’s really so damn ugly?
“Do you know how I knew you liked me?” Michael whispers. I shake my head, refusing to make eye contact. “It was one of the things you told me that night at the party.”
I swallow. I’d told him I liked him?
“And you told me you thought I wasn’t serious about you, because I was about to go away, and because I’d recently come out of a two-year relationship, and because I’d never made a move”—Fact, I mentally tick the boxes off in my head—“and I told you why I hadn’t.”
I freeze. “And … why was that?” I chance a tentative glance at him, hopeful.
He shakes his head and gives a soft laugh. “It’s … what matters is that we could make this thing work, Stacey. You just need to give it a chance.”
He leans back against the bedhead with his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. I sigh and join him there. He thinks I’m embarrassed of him, when it couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s him who should be embarrassed of me.
What was …?
“Why is the bed moving?” I hiss at Michael. He’s rocking back and forth with his legs, pushing against the headboard so the mattress moves back and forth ever so slightly.
“Ugh,” he offers up what can only be described as the sort of grunt a cow might make while having sex. The mattress squeaks. He slams the palm of his hand against the headboard and looks at me, nodding, letting me know it’s my turn.
I smile. “Harder!”
He gives me back a grin in return. A part of me melts. How can a guy have dimples that freaking sexy?
The bed squeaks as Michael rocks and hits the head of the bed, over and over.
“Try it,” he whispers, jerking his head toward his hand. I scrunch up my nose.
I slap the headboard myself. That feels good. Really good.
“Do it again,” he whispers. “Think about your family, being all crap and overachieving and stuff.”
“Yes!” I scream.
Shae’s moving out of home.
Slap.
It feels amazing.
“Now how ’bout how Dave is a dick for hurting your friend?” Michael grins.
“Yes!”
Slap.
“Yes!”
Life is unfair for making Kate so miserable.
Slap.
That stupid guy who put this baby inside me.
Slap.
Me.
Slap, slap, slap.
“Ugh!” Michael grunts again just as I give an almighty “yes” that I am sure will either have Kate putting on headphones or sending me a text telling me to can it.
There’s something cathartic about slapping things. For the first time in one and a bit weeks, I feel a sense of peace wash over me.
I let out a contented sigh and lift the edge of the blankets, snuggling down underneath the quilt. Michael rests his head on the pillow, his body stretched next to mine. After a few moments, my breathing slows, returning to a normal rate. I turn to my side, facing away from Michael. He moves one tentative hand to rest on my waist.
I like the way it feels.
A lot.
“So that’s what you sound like?” I look over my shoulder. One corner of his mouth rises in a smile.
“I sound better.” I shuffle back so my body is pressed against his. He is warm.
Firm.
Nice.
“You know, you could always show me—”
“Hey! Don’t ruin post-sex cuddles.” I frown and wrap his arm around me tighter.
We lie there in silence for a few moments, me watching the bright lights still dancing around out the window, concentrating on his hot breath in my hair, behind my ear. He gives me goose bumps.
“You are the most confusing person I know,” Michael whispers.
Ain’t that the truth.
December 10
THE WARM sun beats down on my face. I open my eyes, fighting the stickiness that falling asleep while wearing mascara brings. I run my tongue a
long my teeth, the gross feeling of furry and—
Oh God.
Last night.
Michael.
I inch my leg behind me, hoping to feel his warmth. Maybe we can make this work, somehow. Michael seems to think we can.
One inch: warm bed sheets.
Two inches: the bed cools.
Three inches: nothing.
I flip over. His side of the bed is empty, the quilt pulled up, and the sheets tucked in, as if he had never even been there in the first place.
On his pillow lies a note, man-scrawl scratched across its surface in blue hotel-room pen.
I’ll keep your secrets.
I just won’t be one.
Ouch.
December 17
NOTHING SAYS I’m a glamorous eighteen-year-old who has just finished school quite like lining up at the doctor’s for the second time in a month. Because the pap smear wasn’t enough. Ugh.
I take my phone from my handbag and click the screen on. Nope. Nothing. No new messages.
I don’t know why I think there will be. I’ve been waiting for a text from Michael all week, but since I was the one who pushed him out the door, who made him think I was embarrassed of him? I guess it was really no wonder.
He’s not good for me. I have bigger things to worry about.
Me: Why did the calf cross the road?
I hit send before I can stop myself. What am I doing? I’ve made it perfectly clear to Michael that I’m not interested, meaning I have him right where I want him.
So why am I sending him a text message?
Sometimes, you do something even when you know it’s bad for you. You break the rules; you indulge when it’s forbidden. And as you do it you think, screw it, damn the man, I’ve got this—I deserve this. I get this one small thing as a reward for all my times of good and hard work. Then you remember you don’t deserve shit. Because if you did, you wouldn’t be paying for your rebellion right now.
At times like this, it’s easy to become addicted to pain. Especially when it’s self-inflicted.
I glance around at the six other people in the waiting room. There is an elderly couple; the woman clutches the man’s arm as if she is afraid his skin will wrinkle up and drop to the floor. Well, more so than it has already.
Then there is a guy a little younger than me—sixteen, maybe?—and a woman who looks to be mid-thirties. This is a sexual health clinic, a free doctor service that deals with all things between the sheets—what problems do they have that call for a visit to the sexy doctors’?
I busy myself with imagining their problems while I wait my turn. Maybe mid-thirties lady is a porn star. And sixteen-year-old has a weird fetish for cotton wool, and wants to know if it is normal to wrap his penis—
My phone vibrates on my lap. I look down and smile. Michael.
Michael: To get to the udder side. You’re gonna have to do better than that, Allison …
I smirk. I guess that means he doesn’t hate me, at least?
“Stacey Allison.” A middle-aged man walks out into the waiting room from a poorly lit corridor behind him. At least it isn’t the same guy who gave me the pap smear. Must have rotating rosters.
I stand up and sling my handbag over my arm, then follow the doctor down the hall into a small office. It is just like every other doctor’s office I’ve ever been to: clean, full of medical equipment, the good ol’ height-to-weight chart on the wall, and a model of a vagina. Well, okay, so maybe that wasn’t in every doctor’s office.
“Hi, I’m Dr Simpson.” The doctor sits down in a chair next to his desk and gestures for me to take a seat on the one behind me. I oblige.
“I’m Stacey.” I smile, then cringe. “Sorry, you already know that …”
Dr Simpson doesn’t let my awkwardness fluster him. “So, what can I do for you today?” He smiles a thoroughly pleasant smile, the kind that makes me feel completely non-intimidated. I hope cotton wool ball guy gets this doc, too.
“Well, so …” I swallow. Oh yeah. This isn’t a social call. “I think I’m pregnant. I mean, I am. Well, I did a test, and it said I was, so I kind of presume that it’s most likely a foetus growing inside me.”
The seconds tick on into what feels like hours as the doctor licks his lips, takes a deep breath—ew! He’s a mouth breather—and then tilts his head to the side, studying me.
“And when was your last period?” He clasps his hands together over his crossed knee.
“It was …” I do the mental maths, and feel like that idiot girl in every pregnancy movie. You know the one. Oh, how didn’t I realise that my period is, like, ninety weeks late?
“It should have started around seven weeks ago,” I say. “So I’m kind of … three weeks late.”
Damn idiot. I was an idiot.
“Right.” The doctor pauses, scribbling some numbers on a chart. “Your periods are usually quite regular?”
“Yes.”
“And when do you think you conceived?” He turns his head to look at me.
“About five weeks ago.” I swallow.
“That would have put you at the peak ovulation period in your cycle.” He nods, tapping his pen against his lip. “I’ll get you to do a test, just to be sure, but yes, it certainly does sound like you are pregnant.” The doctor jerks open a drawer and rifles through its contents until he finds a small plastic cup with a yellow lid.
“Here.” He holds it out in my direction.
Oh God no. Please, no, don’t make me—
“You’ll need to urinate in this cup. Try and catch it mid-flow, not after the initial burst.” He smiles and jiggles the cup a little, as if that will make it more appealing.
Again?
I take the cup and walk out of the room, my shoulders slumped, and head toward the toilet sign I’d seen down the hall. As I pass the reception area, I try to hide the plastic cup of shame in my pocket, but it’s obvious what’s happening. The elderly man gives me a knowing nod, and the middle-aged woman winks at me. You never just ‘forget to go’ before you see a doctor and have to break up your appointment to pee. This is a urine test, people.
I shut the door behind me, pull down my shorts, unscrew the lid on the cup and—
Nothing.
Waterfalls, rushing water, open taps …
Dry as a bloody desert.
I imagine the cup of coffee I’d sucked down this morning speeding through my throat, down into my stomach and my intestines or whatever the hell path liquid goes through, and filling up my bladder, all the way to the brim. I squeeze. I push.
Zero.
I wish I’d know there was going to be a pee test.
I stand up and waddle—well, my pants are around my knees—over to the sink where I wrench open the faucet and stick my head under the tap, drinking as much of the spewing water as I can. I gulp so much down I feel my stomach expanding, to the point where I could be sick.
Then, leaving the tap still running at full ball, I waddle my way back to the toilet, hover and try again.
After three minutes, I finally pee, and start the awkward should I shove it under now/is this mid-stream enough dance, followed quickly by the where the hell is my pee and—crap it’s on my hand routine.
Altogether, the experience is rating very below par.
I finally wash my hands—four times—and head back to the doctor’s office, pee cup firmly sealed. I cringe, trying to find a way to hold it so I can’t feel how … warm the liquid is. Shudder.
“Here.” I shove the cup of liquid onto the good doctor’s desk and sit down, turning my head away. Something about seeing my pee makes me feel nauseous.
When I look back, I see Dr Simpson has opened the lid on my pee jar—ew!—and stuck a little thing in it. Looks like his pregnancy test is very similar to mine.
“May I ask, is this a planned pregnancy?” The doctor fishes around on his desk for a little mouse and right-clicks, bringing his computer to life.
“Not exactly, no.” I shake my he
ad. “Or at all, really.”
He turns to me, and I swear, there is something like sympathy in his eyes. “Are you in a relationship with the father?”
“No.” My voice is quieter this time.
“Do you know who the father is?”
“No,” I squeak. My fingers fidget with each other on my knee.
Dr Simpson sighs, then leans over as if he is about to squeeze my hand, jerking his arm away at the last minute.
“Sorry, I—you remind me of my own daughter,” he says. He turns back to his desk and grabs a blood pressure monitor. “I just need to take your blood pressure.”
I thrust out my arm, and he wraps the Velcro material around it. “Just relax,” he says, and I unclench my fist as he starts pumping that little balloon.
“So you’re not sure who the father is. Could it be … one of multiple people?” Dr Simpson asks. My fingernails dive straight for my palms again. “Relax, please.”
I want to say, then stop asking me stressful questions! Instead, I reply, “No. There’s really only one.”
“Well, that’s a start. So you don’t know who it is, but you know it’s not say, one of five men.” Dr Simpson nods, as if this is indeed a fact I am to be rewarded for. Good work, Stacey. Only slutted yourself around to the one random guy. Nice to know.
“So, we’ll need to get you checked for any diseases—”
“Done that.” I nod, giving myself a mental high-five. “After it happened, I came in here and saw one of your other doctors, who gave me the tests. And I went to the pharmacist and got the morning-after pill. Which I, uh …” I fiddle with the hem of my shorts. “… kind of forgot to take.”
“That’ll do it,” Dr Simpson says with a wink. I smirk. This guy is my kinda doctor.
“Doc, I’ve had four drinks since I would have fallen pregnant”—White lie. Technically, I had two beers the night before graduation, and four tequilas the week before. To help stave off the hangover—“and I was wondering, will this hurt …?”
“While we certainly do not recommend drinking while pregnant, and I’d encourage you to stop right away, this doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll have harmed the baby. Plenty of people don’t realise they’re pregnant and do things like that.” Dr Simpson makes a few quick notes on his computer again, checks his little pee stick, then turns back to me. “It looks like you are indeed correct; you’re with child.”
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