Are you sure you don’t have the flu or
something?” Gemma asked from across the kitchen table, stirring her burrito
bowl in thought.
Gemma lived in South Philly, but commuted
to the brewery in Drakesville. When we could, we’d have dinner together
before her shift. I tried to cancel tonight, but she insisted. My sister could
be needy.
I shrugged and pushed my untouched bowl
of food out of the way. I had zero appetite tonight.
“PMS?” she asked.
I stared back at her in silence.
“Avs,
when did you last get your period?”
“Not
since before the Arts Fest,” I admitted in a low whisper.
Her eyes turned to saucers. “That was two months ago!”
I cringed. “Maybe it’s stress?”
Gemma looked horrified.
When Gemma was in college, she had a
pregnancy scare, and I drove all the way up to State College to be with her.
She didn’t want kids, and an unplanned pregnancy hadn’t been in the
cards. She ended up not being pregnant and got her period the next day, but to
this day, she always was stressed if it was late. If Gemma had been in my
shoes, she wouldn’t have ignored the signs. She would
have taken a pregnancy test the day her period was late.
She stood up and put on her coat.
I furrowed my brow at her. “Where are you going?”
She glared at me. “Going to the pharmacy to get a pregnancy test.”
Before I could argue, she ran down the
steps and out of my apartment. I cringed at my door slamming shut behind her.
Gemma was gone for maybe fifteen minutes
before she clomped back up the steps and waved a bag of pregnancy tests in my
face.
“Come
on, let’s take these,” she said and led me into my bathroom.
Ten minutes later, we stared down at the
third and final pregnancy test and waited for the results. The first two tests
were positive, so I didn’t have a good feeling about this one. I
knew I was pregnant before those pink lines showed up on the first test, but I
didn’t want to accept it. I ignored what my body told me and tried to
will the pregnancy away. I had even been avoiding Nolan because if I had seen
him, I would have burst into tears and told him everything.
My timer chimed, and I handed the testing
stick to my sister. “Please
look. I can’t.”
She gave me a sympathetic smile. “Oh, Avs,” she cooed and squeezed my hand in comfort.
“I’m pregnant, aren’t I?” I sobbed.
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