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“But it’s how it looks.”
“Right, I see that. But I’m not sure how much that matters. What if he’s the guy? What if you’re perfect together? Will you let the way things look keep you from being happy?”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”
We sat in silence for a moment, across from each other in the armchairs in front of Delia’s living room windows, our wine on the small table between us, and Delia looked like she was thinking about something. “Honey, I’m always on your side. That’s why I have to tell you when I think you’re wrong. Oliver was good for you. He’s a good guy, and you two fit together. I could see it. Even Carl could see it, and he doesn’t exactly notice subtleties.”
Delia had always had a way of cutting to the basic elements of a situation while I had to think through every detail and often got lost in the weeds. I tried to weigh whether she was right in this case, but still felt the sting of not owning my accomplishments entirely. I knew I’d done the right thing breaking up with him. It was right, at least on paper, but God, I missed him. I picked up my wine, but the first sip made me put it back down on the table.
“You don’t like it?” Delia asked, nodding to the wineglass. Her own glass was almost empty. “It’s the Vermentino you told Carl was the best thing you’d ever tasted. We bought a half-case just for you!”
“Maybe this bottle is corked?” I asked, picking up the wine and sniffing it. Even the smell made me flinch.
Delia sniffed hers and then swallowed the rest with a smile. “Something’s wrong with you, girl.” She grinned at me.
I shrugged and put the wine back down. Nothing had tasted right since I’d broken up with Oliver. “I think my heart is making my food taste funny.”
“I don’t think it works like that.”
The doorbell rang and Delia jumped up to answer it. “Pizza!” she called to the back of the house. The faint sounds of the movie stopped and small feet pounded down the hallway as Delia paid the pizza guy and handed me the boxes. “Can you get some plates out?”
We ate with the little girls, listening to their analysis of whether Sven was a reindeer or—Olivia’s opinion—a moose, and whether Olaf would really enjoy a beach vacation or if that was just something he threw in the song to make it rhyme. It felt good to distract myself for a while with their happy chatter, but I couldn’t eat much and Delia was watching me through the whole meal with a strange look on her face.
As we cleared dishes, she cornered me in the kitchen. “When was your last period, Holl?”
Not the kind of question I was used to from a dinner companion. I raised an eyebrow and frowned at her. “When’s the last time you and Carl had sex?” I shot back.
“This morning, and I’m serious.”
“Heh. Impressive. Like before work? Or—”
“Holl, do you think you could be pregnant?”
The thought hadn’t crossed my mind, but my entire body stiffened at the suggestion. “What? No, I…” My mind raced. I honestly couldn’t remember when I’d had a period last, but I knew it was before I’d begun seeing Oliver. Sleeping with Oliver. “Oh God.” A list of strange sensations and occurrences seemed to align themselves in my mind with a firm and almost audible click. I’d been nauseous. Food tasted funny and I didn’t want alcohol. I was pretty sure I’d missed a period…and Oliver and I hadn’t used protection after that first time because I’d been on the pill. “I’m on the pill,” I said, my voice a dull monotone as I tried to reassure myself.
“People get pregnant on the pill,” Delia said. “It happens.”
I stared at her, probing my body mentally, searching for some feeling that would answer the question with certainty. I could not be pregnant. It just wasn’t possible. Except that it was.
“I think I have a test,” she offered, her voice light and casual. “No reason to freak out until you know. Let me go look.” Delia disappeared to the back of the house and I sat back down at the table, watching her daughters sorting the rocks into piles as Olivia directed her older sister in proper microscope usage. God, I wanted that. But not now. My hand lay absently on my stomach, and I considered. Wouldn’t I know? Shouldn’t I feel something?
Delia returned with a box and handed it to me, and I took it to the bathroom, feeling dumbstruck. “Can I come?” she asked.
“To watch me pee on a stick?”
Her grin seemed out of place as she nodded, but I shrugged. It wouldn’t be the first time we’d been in the bathroom together.
We waited, sitting on the counter with the stick between us while Delia watched a timer on her phone. “One more minute,” she told me just as the sound of shrill voices erupted from the living room. “Mommy!”
She slid off the counter and went to the door. “Be right back,” she said.
Delia was gone more than a minute, mediating whatever battle had erupted between her girls, and I stared at the stick, afraid to pick it up and check. When she didn’t return for what seemed like an hour, I couldn’t take it anymore. She returned to find me sitting on the counter staring at the plus sign that had appeared like a beacon of doom on the stick’s white screen.
This was not part of my plan.
—
Delia had been reassuring, but her words had felt hollow and sounded empty as I thought them over on my way home from the doctor’s office that Friday morning.
