“You know what I mean….” he says, smiling. “It’s too late now.”
“But it’s not too late if it’s negative,” I say. “You’d be off the hook….We wouldn’t have to try again.”
“True,” he says, nodding, clearly making a big effort to be patient with me. “But if it’s positive—”
“How would you feel?” I grill him.
“I don’t know, Josie,” he says, shaking his head, staring into space. “Happy…excited…shocked…scared shitless…a lot of things.”
“But no regret?”
He shakes his head. “No. No regret.”
“Do you promise?”
“I swear,” he says, holding up three fingers, even though he was never a Boy Scout.
“Okay,” I say, looking at him sideways. “Because, Gabe, I have to tell you something….”
“Yeah?” he asks, squinting back at me with apprehension.
“I actually did look at the stick,” I confess, my heart beating wildly in my chest.
“And?”
“And it’s positive.”
“Shut the hell up,” he says, dashing to the bathroom. He returns one beat later, waving the stick with its unmistakable two bright-pink parallel lines. His eyes are shining and his face is lit with pure happiness, an expression I honestly never expected and have seldom seen him show.
“Holy shit,” he says, throwing his arms around me, squeezing me so hard I can’t breathe. “We’re having a baby.”
“Yes,” I say, laughing and crying at once. “We’re having a baby.”
—
I’M PREGNANT. I’m pregnant. I’m pregnant.
For the next several days, I repeat the words in my head, over and over. Gabe and I talk of little else, both of us struggling to digest the magnitude of what we’ve undertaken. Yet the whole thing continues to feel surreal—and I have the sense that it won’t begin to really sink in until I share the news with at least one other person.
In the past, I always imagined telling my family first, then close friends, then the rest of the world around three months. Then again, I also always imagined following the traditional order of things—as in love, marriage, baby carriage—and that’s clearly all out the window now.
So a few days later, I decide I might as well go really unorthodox and tell Pete the news first. In part, it’s a pragmatic decision, as we have plans to hang out for the first time in several weeks, and I know he’ll likely ask me if I’m pregnant (not that that stopped me from fibbing to Sydney when the subject came up at recess and I told her that I hadn’t yet tested). But more important, and for some inexplicable reason, I actually just want him to be the first to know.
Out of respect to Gabe, I call and make sure that it’s okay with him as I’m driving over to Pete’s house.
“Shouldn’t we wait for a heartbeat?” he asks.
“I don’t think I can wait until then. Besides, I’m sure he’s going to ask….”
“Well, it’s your call. Whatever you want to do is fine with me….”
“So you haven’t told Leslie?”
“Nope.”
“Are you going to tell her?”
“Well, eventually,” he says with a laugh. “It’ll be sort of hard to hide it, right?”
I decide not to parse his words or grill him about whether he wishes he could hide it from her, and simply tell him that I’ll call him later.
“Okay. Later,” he says, hanging up way too abruptly.
I roll my eyes, reminding myself that the fact that I’m carrying his baby doesn’t mean that he’ll suddenly change his personality.
—
A FEW MINUTES later, I walk into Pete’s house. He beams at me and says, “It’s so good to see you.”
“You, too,” I say, telling myself to wait for the right moment to break my news. But before I even remove my jacket, I blurt it out.
“I’m pregnant,” I say, getting what I’m pretty sure is my first wave of morning sickness.
He looks at me, startled, a smile frozen on his face. “Are you serious?”
“As a heart attack…or an unwed pregnancy,” I say, a joke Gabe came up with a few nights ago.
I watch the news sink in, his expression turning glazed, then somber. “Wow,” he says. “That was fast.”
“Yeah. I know,” I reply with a high, nervous laugh. “First try.”
“Congrats…I’m really happy for you.”
“Thanks,” I say.
He smiles, then leans in to awkwardly hug me, patting me on the back before helping me out of my jacket, then hanging it in his hall closet. He turns and leads me into his kitchen, as he fires off a quick round of questions. “So, how do you feel? Excited?…How’s Gabe doing?” His voice is chipper, but something about his face looks strained.
“It’s still sort of hard to process,” I say, noticing an open bottle of red wine and two glasses on his counter. “But we’re both happy. And very grateful.”
“Well…that’s fantastic news. Really fantastic.” He pours both glasses, then stops suddenly. “Oh, shit. What am I doing? You can’t have this, can you?”