I peed on at least twelve pregnancy tests. The manufacturers sell them in two and three packs, knowing there can be false negatives before the embryo has attached itself to your uterus. I kept right on peeing on the sticks though a false positive is extremely rare. Especially when all you've been doing is fucking the most fertile man on the planet. Still, it could happen so I peed on the kind with the plus sign, the kind with the lines, in the morning for the best pee, later in the day hoping for a better answer. They all said the same thing; "life as you know it is over". Finally I consulted Amigo.
"So. This is pretty feint, I mean that could just be a fluke, right?" I was holding out the test stick while she recoiled from the idea that my urine was on it. I glared at her for being such a pussy and finally she relented, curious herself. When I called her on the phone, asking her to come over and look at something I said that maybe I was a little late and maybe just maybe I might be a little bit possibly sort of pregnant. She bent over the stick and then looked right back up at me.
"It's totally two lines! I've never even seen such an obvious positive…. Not even when I was pregnant with JarHead!" she was giggling madly at me the way you do when something awful that happened to you finally happens to your friend.
"Yeah but… it's sorta lighter than the comparison line."
"No. No, it's not. That IS the comparison line. Your line is darker. Your line is like nine months along!"
"Shut-up!" we laughed for a minute, nervous hysterical laughter that did little to release the tension.
"What are you going to do?" she asked me, suddenly really seeing how bad the situation was.
"I don't know."
"You have to tell him" I don't know how she knew I was thinking I might not tell him, that I was already regretting telling her. Now it was real, now it had to be dealt with. Dealing was something so far from me.
"I'll tell him when I'm ready."
"You know I can't keep this in. I'll tell him. Can I tell him?"
"No! Why the fuck would you be the one to tell him. I'm probably supposed to have told him first." We were cross-legged on the floor of my bedroom staring at the shitty apartment style carpet. "I don't really HAVE to tell him"
"Yes you do. It's his too."
"It's in me! And he could just never know. It's almost selfish to tell him if I'm not going to…to do it anyway."
"If you don't tell him, I will." So that's how it was going to be. "What do you think he'll say?"
"I don't know."
"You're having a baby! Can you believe it??"
"I don't know."
"I wanna be here when you tell him"
"I think it's kinda private."
"Just go tell him now, he's out working on Tweaker's car."
"What do you suppose he's doing that for? Out of neighborly kindness?" I stood up. There was no sense in dragging this out. I went out in the parking lot and waited til he came over to me, wiping his hands on an oil rag. "Hey. Whatcha doing?" I asked him, trying to figure out how to break this kind of news.
"Working on a project." he said, a little pissed I was "checking in on him"
"Well. Me too." he tilted his head. "I'm pregnant." he nodded a little.
"We'll talk about it later. I'm busy."
"Okay then." I made my way back in the apartment.
"What did he say????" she asked excitedly.
"He said we'll talk about it later."
"Oh." there was a long pause while all the yippy excitement fizzled out of her. "That's kinda weird."
"Yeah. Well. Everything's been weird for a long time now."
"You've only known him for like three months."
"To be fair, sperm travels at speeds of twenty-eight miles per hour. You know I don't run, so even at a swift walk," she laughed, grateful I was being funny to distract her from the awkwardness. "my poor egg never had a chance."
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