46
Before
I dropped Sawyer at home after our miserable night in South Beach, drove back to my house, and beelined directly into the downstairs bathroom. I threw up everything I’d eaten all day.
Everything.
I sat on the tile for a long time after that, head against the wall, waiting for my stomach to settle, for my breath to stop coming so quick. I sobbed for a while, feeling pathetic. I thought my insides were actually in revolt. In the morning, Soledad brought me toast and tea and sat at the edge of the mattress reading novels in Spanish, thumb stroking absently along the arch of my foot while she listened to me try not to cry.
“What happened?” she asked once, around lunchtime. I shrugged into the pillows on the bed.
I felt better by dinner, thought of calling him, decided against it.
I sat awake in bed till the sun came up.
*
The morning after that, I got sick again. Then a day of nothing.
Then again the day after that.
(That was when I started to freak.)
*
I drove all the way to a Walgreens in Pompano Beach to buy a pregnancy test, went over to Shelby’s to take it. I curled my arms around my knees on the carpet-covered lid of the toilet. Shelby sat cross-legged on the floor.
“Just look at it for me, okay?” I told her, watching the second hand creep along the face of my watch—slowly, slowly. I couldn’t get over the notion that this absolutely could not be happening to me. I almost wasn’t even nervous, that’s how sure I was that it wasn’t real. We’d been careful, hadn’t we? I’d made sure we were careful. “Just … look.”
“I’m looking,” she said, peering at the stick and frowning. She was wearing denim cutoffs and a T-shirt with the Mario Bros. on it. “But it’s not—it’s not doing anything yet.”
“How is it not doing anything?” I demanded, leaning forward to grab it out of her hand. “It’s got to be—”
Shelby pulled it back, looked more closely; she glanced again at the picture on the back of the box. “Reena,” she said then, and she looked so sorry. I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see.