Page 46 of My Girlfriend is Not the Father

Jade battled back the urge to cry. ‘Friends.’

Chapter 17

Lucy

The room was so still that Lucy could hear her friends’ breath. Never had she been so silent in her life. Never had Drew been so silent in his life. And definitely never had five minutes passed by at the speed of a sloth.

A month after starting the shots, and three weeks to the day after the transfer, the three of them stood there, silently. If someone peeked through the window, they’d probably think a group of friends had gathered for a seance, to worship the power of a digital stick. She, Drew, and Mason were crowded into the bathroom and staring at the pregnancy test lying on the bathroom counter. All their hopes and dreams, and serious amounts of cash, held in the balance by a plastic stick.

‘We should look away, right? Let’s look away.’ Drew chewed on his pinky nail. The last time Lucy had seen him do that was when he was waiting for Mason to call him back after their first date. ‘Let’s go into the hall.’

Mason tugged Drew’s finger from his mouth. ‘This is going to be okay. If it’s negative, we still have three other embryos we can use. After that, we try again.’

‘We should’ve implanted two.’ Drew shoved his hands in his pocket, then pulled them back out. ‘What were we thinking?’

Um, nope. She had never signed up to carry twins.

Mason stood in front of Drew and put his hands on Drew’s shoulder. ‘Babe. We didn’t want to try for twins, remember? What if both took?’ He pulled Drew in for a hug.

This moment was definitely for the dads. Lucy wanted to give them distance, should give them some distance, but also had the deep desire to elbow both so that they’d make some room for her to join their hug circle. When thinking of this moment, she didn’t expect to feel so empty. But for the first time in this journey, she felt like an outsider, watching a movie on how a family prepares for life-changing news. She could’ve stepped into the next room, and her besties wouldn’t have noticed.

It wasn’t jealousy she was feeling, per se. Nor loneliness. No … the feeling engulfing her was something different, something relatively new, something she didn’t yet have a label for and needed to process. A longing tugged at her, a sort of wistfulness, like an unfulfilled wish … Oh. She did know what this was.

She wanted a partner.

And she knew which partner she wanted.

But everything was so complicated.

She and Jade had grown close, and Lucy really, really liked her. And deep down? Lucy knew it was more than like. She felt it, she knew it, but she’d never whispered those words to another person besides her dad and Drew. And she certainly wasn’t in the headspace to do it now.

Lucy had signed an affidavit declaring her singlehood. She had signed a medical document stating she’d refrain from sex before implantation – although based on Jade sleeping with fewer people than she could count with on one hand, the chances of an STI were slim. But in any case! Here she was, hopefully, about to be confirmed pregnant.

The timing was terrible.

But … was she using timing as an excuse? And even if she was, was that a bad thing? I mean, if she could focus on the excuses, and the reasons they couldn’t be together, due to the journey she was about to take, maybe this twisty, twirling, ‘keep her up at night’ feelings would disappear.

Ugh. Too many thoughts were running through her head. She was just crouching to rub Chucky’s ears when the sound of a buzzer cut through the silence.

Oh boy, here we go.

‘Ready?’ Mason asked, waving his arm towards the bathroom.

Drew exhaled, his cheeks nearly matching his fire-red hair.

Lucy’s gut constricted and the back of her throat itched. The room looked a few shades darker than even a moment ago, as she flickered her gaze between the guys standing with straight lips and twisted eyebrows.

Even Mason looked nervous. Stiff, normally calm and ‘cool as a Sunday morning breeze’ Mason had a flushed face. All year, she had thought about this moment. Drew would sprint across the room, nudging her out of the way in his excitement to see the results, prompting a fatherly scolding from Mason. Instead, they all stood there, frozen and unbreathing.

Finally, Lucy broke and shuffled down the hall.

The pregnancy stick held years’ worth of dreams and work. If it showed positive, their lives changed immediately, forever. If negative, they’d be crushed. No one reached for the bathroom door handle.

‘We got this, right? Come on, guys. Let’s do this.’ She tried to be chipper. She really did. But her voice fell flat, and she gulped. She opened the door and squeezed her eyes shut.

The men stood behind her, silent. The only sounds were the ticking analogue clock in the living room, Chucky snoring, and Lucy’s own heartbeat, thudding in her ears.

She blinked at the test. She should breathe now, right? Oxygen was necessary for survival. Finally, a sharp breath pinched her chest, and she stumbled a few inches to the side.