i.
You’re nineteen, your boyfriend is on the other side of the locked bathroom door, and you’re sitting on the edge of the bathtub, waiting. There’s a plastic stick on the sink and you still have a whole minute before it’ll tell you anything. You check your watch again, only twenty seconds have gone by since the last time you looked. You hold it up to your ear so you can listen to the time. You close your eyes and count every tick, trying to distract yourself.
But Roy’s being unusually quiet out there and you wonder if he left altogether. You almost hope he has. You’re mad at him for a lot of irrational reasons and all you can think right now is that if you get out of this, you’re leaving him.
You check your watch: ten seconds until time is up. You count it down in your head as you stand up and go to the sink. You shut your eyes as you pick the test up, take in a long breath, and open them as you let it out.
Negative.
You don’t cry, you don’t smile, you don’t do anything. You calmly unlock the door, and as soon as the latch turns over, Roy’s pushing through. Before you can say anything, he throws his arms around you, tells you he loves you. And the funny thing is, he’s the one who’s crying and he doesn’t even know what the test said.
You don’t leave him.
ii.
A month before your wedding. You shouldn’t be miserable, but you are. You fight with Roy over everything and anything. You think maybe you do it because it at least means you feel something for him, even if it’s just anger.
And things with Jim have slipped into a weird place. You aren’t necessarily mad about him complaining to Toby, just surprised, hurt. He’s your best friend and he should’ve just told you himself. So now things are just different. You can’t even explain it, but there’s something stuck between the two of you and you don’t know how to get rid of it.
So when your period is a week and a half late, you want to take it as a sign that you’re going in the right direction. You keep it a secret, because you need something that’s yours right now. So you take a pregnancy test in the bathroom during lunch that night before the casino thing. You sit in the stall, staring into the face of your watch, while you wait for the results and, to your relief, no one even bothers to check on you.
When you come out of the bathroom, Jim is sitting alone at a table in the break room. He’s eating with that slightly worried look on his face until he sees you and smiles wide, nudging a chair out from under the table with his foot and raising his eyebrows.
And so when he tells you later that he’s in love with you, and when you’re kissing him in that dimly lit office, and when his fingertips graze gently over your stomach, you can’t figure out how to say, “I’m pregnant.” So you just say, “I can’t.”
iii.
It’s nearly spring, the March weather just starting to warm up, and when you come home from work, he rolls his sleeves up and opens all the windows in the house and strides across the living room to kiss you. You feel the breeze blowing your hair about and you hold onto him tighter. You pull him up the stairs and make love with the outside world coming through the windows. Something about it makes you feel enveloped in him, makes you feel like you’re keeping the best secret.
So you tell him then, after, when he’s lying on his back and you’re fingers are tiptoeing up and down his bare chest, “So, my period is still MIA.”
“Oh,” he says, like he knows this should be revealing news but he also doesn’t know what you’re getting at.
You nip at his shoulder with your teeth, tongue reaching out to taste his skin for a second. You want him to get it. You don’t want to have to say it. You look up at him to find him looking back at you, one corner of his mouth turned up.
“I’m sorry. Are you trying to say that…?”
“Not for sure. But it’s a possibility?” When you smile, his smile broadens to impossible widths and he takes your face in his hands and just looks at you. It sort of kills you to see his hopes up so high when you know it could be nothing.
“Don’t get excited, okay? It could just be a false alarm,” you say, and then quietly, “It’s happened before.”
Something clouds his face and his hands go loose until they drop to your shoulders. “Oh.”
After dinner, he goes out to get milk and comes back with a bag full of pregnancy tests. He puts the bag down on the coffee table in front of you.
“Just indulge my curiosity, please?” And he gives you this worried but hopeful smile that makes him look twenty years younger. It makes you want to give him everything, especially this. So you take the bag and go into the upstairs bathroom.
You can hear him outside. The floorboards creaking under his feet as he paces back and forth slowly. You have three tests lined up on the sink and you’re watching the clock tick the seconds away. Your heart is going to break when the answers comes, somehow you already know this. You can already see his face falling when you come out and show him. You were stupid to bring up, to get him so excited about something you knew was only a slim possibility. But you wanted to be excited too. You wanted it to be a real possibility and telling him seemed like the best way to make that happen. But here you are watching three pregnancy tests all tell you, “No.” “Sorry.” “Better luck next time.”
You throw them all in the trash, listening to them clang against the metal wastebasket. You wash your hands for no reason other than to postpone having to tell him. You look in the mirror and will yourself not to cry. It’s not like this is the only chance you have. You aren’t even married yet. You have all the time in the world.
When you come out of the bathroom, it’s clear he already knows. He’s leaning back against the wall, looking down at his feet. You wrap your arms around his waist and tell him you’re sorry. His arms go around your shoulders and he says, “Don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault. It’s fine.”
You pull your head back to look at him, “But you were so excited. I was excited.”
He ducks down to kiss you, lets it linger for a second before he pulls back and rests his forehead against yours. Then he smiles slowly, almost deviously, and says, “Besides, we can always keep trying.”
iv.
When the nurse repeats the question, it gives you pause. Any change you might be pregnant?
You kept trying for a couple of weeks and then you both seemed to just stop thinking about it. You were planning the wedding and dealing with things at work and your minds drifted from the idea of having a baby right then. Of course you were still off the pill and everything, but you weren’t keeping track of everything like you’d been for that short period of time.
So now you look at the nurse and think for a minute and say, “Uh, yeah, there’s a chance of that.”
You can see Jim out at the front desk, hunched over a clipboard, and you’re thankful he isn’t here. You think that if you’re not, then you’re not, and no one comes out disappointed and heartbroken.
So you’re sitting up on that table, the paper crinkling underneath you anytime you move in the slightest, your ankle still throbbing. Jim is still filling out paperwork and talking to Dwight on the phone. The doctor is still in that mysterious place doctors go when they tell you it’ll just be a few minutes. The lights buzz overhead, the second hand moves jerkily around on the wall clock.
The doctor pushes through the door with a folder in his hands, reading whatever it says very intently. He looks up at you and says, “Would you like your husband to come in before I read the results?”
You bite your lip and glance through the blinds at your - well, not actually your husband, though you’ve been thinking of him like that for longer than you’d admit to anyone. “Tell me first,” you say quickly.
“Alright,” and then he hesitates and smiles at you, “Well, you are indeed pregnant.”
You can’t think to say anything after this. You feel yourself fill up with something that feels warm and golden and true. You find yourself making an odd gesture with your hands to get the doctor to bring Jim in. You hear yourself saying, “Can you get my husband now?” And adding before he’s out the door, “Don’t tell him anything yet though.”
Jim takes a minute to finish filling out the forms and his phone call with Dwight. You’re used to him always taking his time with things but right now you really wish he’d hurry up.
When he comes in, you put on your best blank face. You let the doctor give the news again, feeling the shock and wonder of it fresh. You watch Jim’s face, his eyes going wide, his mouth falling open. He looks to you and all you can do is shake your head and say, “I didn’t know. I had no idea.”
He wraps his arms around you fiercely, pressing his face into your hair, his lips to your cheek. He keeps saying, “Oh, my god,” and you keep trying your best not to cry.
You’re thirty, and your best friend/boyfriend/fiancé/husband is holding onto you, and you’re going to have a baby, and you’re not waiting anymore.
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