The next morning she threw up again.
This time it was when she was brushing her teeth after her morning shower (there was no way she could go two days without bathing, no matter how depressed).
Everything had been going just fine up until the point that she got sick. One moment, a typical weekday morning and the next—blecchhhh.
Her stomach lurching, she leaned over the toilet and everything came up yet again. This was now officially something weird.
Two days in a row she’d been sick in the morning.
There was a term for that—wasn’t there? Nicole thought, as she went through the now familiar process of wiping her mouth and chin with toilet paper and flushing the mess away.
Morning sickness.
A wave of unreality washed over her, making her so dizzy that she had to grab hold of the sink and close her eyes.
It’s a coincidence, she told herself. Maybe I do have a touch of the flu. Wasn’t I sweating a lot last night? I woke up and my sheets were damp. It’s the flu. I probably even have a bit of fever if I take my temperature.
She tried to talk herself off the ledge, because the alternative was just too frightening.
Morning sickness.
Uneasily, Nicole touched her stomach as if she might be able to discern a subtle difference there. She asked herself what her instinct was—and then she blinked in surprise.
When was the last time I had my period?
She swore at herself for not having kept better track of it. Usually she made a note of it on her iPhone calendar, but this past month she’d forgotten to do so.
I can’t be pregnant, she thought yet again. I’ve been on the pill for months and months. But still, it happened. She knew that the pill wasn’t a hundred percent—no method of birth control was a hundred percent.
It was so irresponsible of her to have had unprotected sex with Red, even if she was on the pill.
Stunned, Nicole left the bathroom and walked to her bedroom in her towel, trying to think back to the last time she’d had her period.
She recalled being annoyed because it came at an inconvenient time at work. Was she still working on the cowboy stuff for Remi at the time? Nicole tried to do the math to figure out if she was even late.
I think I’m late.
Of course you’re late. You don’t have morning sickness without being late, Nicole.
Oh god, she thought. I’m going crazy on top of being pregnant.
Nicole knew what she had to do. She had to go get a test immediately. Whether or not she knew exactly how late she was didn’t matter anymore. Get the test and find out for sure one way or another.
She got dressed in a pair of sweats and a t-shirt, threw on her flip-flops and headed for the door.
Unfortunately, Danielle was up and about, rummaging in the fridge as she left her room. “Hey, what’s going on?” Danielle asked, straightening and looking at her with a strange expression. “Why are you dressed like that?”
“Oh, I just realized…I need to…I forgot I need to grab something from Duane Read.”
Danielle looked at her. “Nicole. What’s going on?”
Nicole wished she didn’t always have such a “readable” face. Everyone always could tell what she was thinking and feeling, when something was wrong. It was annoying to never have the ability to hide anything from anyone. “Nothing’s going on,” she lied. “Just running out for two seconds. You need anything?”
“We need to talk when you get back,” Danielle said.
“About what?”
“You know what. About Kane Wright. You can’t go through with this escapade.”
“I need to run to the pharm—to the store. And then I need to get ready for work,” she said. “We’ll talk when I get home later.”
“Nicole, I’m serious!”
“Sorry, got to run!” Nicole called, heading out the door.
The nearest Duane Read was only three blocks away, so she was there in under five minutes, careening through the isles like a madwoman, grabbing three different pregnancy tests and running to the counter.
The man behind the register rang up her purchases with a look of satisfaction on his face, as if he was thinking, “good, another New York Sex in the City slut gets her comeuppance.”
Maybe she was just being paranoid and he was merely remembering a funny joke someone had told him, but it didn’t feel that way. She felt judged.
But Nicole didn’t have time to be upset about what the guy at Duane Read thought of her. She took her little bag of pregnancy tests and ran the whole way back to her apartment building, then took the stairs two at a time until she reached her door.
Inside, Danielle waited, ready to pounce like a concerned puma. “Nicole, you need to tell me what’s going on,” she said. “You can’t do this again.”
“Do what again?” Nicole asked, brushing past her and moving toward the bathroom.