In Five Years: A Novel - Rebecca Serle Page 0,36

when they die?” I say.

“Yeah? What else would you expect them to do?”

The coffee machine downshifts into maintenance, and I pour myself a full cup, adding a hefty portion of creamer.

I go to sit next to Bella at the counter.

“Doesn’t look like a beach day,” she says. She swivels on her stool and looks outside.

“It’ll burn off.”

She shrugs, takes a sip, makes a face.

“I don’t know how you drink that almond water,” I say. “Why suffer? Do you know how good this is?” I hold my cup out to her.

“It’s milk,” she says.

“It’s really not.”

“It’s me,” she says. “I’ve just been feeling funky all week.”

“Are you sick?”

She swallows. I feel something catch in my throat.

“I’m pregnant,” she says. “I mean, I’m pretty sure.”

I look at her. Her whole face is shining. It’s like staring at the sun.

“You think or you know?”

“Think,” she says. “Know?”

“Bella.”

“I know. It’s crazy. I started feeling strange last week, though.”

“Have you taken a test?”

She shakes her head.

Bella was pregnant once before. A guy named Markus, whom she loved as much as he loved cocaine. She never told him. We were twenty-two, maybe twenty-three. Our first stumbling, dazzling year in New York.

“I missed my period,” she says. “I sort of thought maybe I’d get it, but I haven’t. My stomach feels weird, my boobs feel weird. I’ve been putting it off, but I think . . .” She trails off.

“Did you tell Aaron?”

She shakes her head. “I wasn’t sure there’d be anything to tell.”

“How long ago was your missed period?”

She takes another sip. She looks at me. “Eleven days ago.”

We go to the store as we are—she in the nightgown with a sweatshirt thrown over, me in my running clothes. There is no one at the small-town drugstore but the woman who works there, and she smiles when we hand over the test. It always surprises me that we’re old enough to receive smiles now, have these moments be blessings, not curses.

When we get back, the house is still quiet, asleep. We crouch in the downstairs bathroom, just the two of us, sitting nervously on the edge of the tub stealing glances at the counter.

The timer dings.

“You look,” she says. “You tell me. I can’t do it.”

Two pink lines.

“It’s positive,” I say.

Her face falls into a sea of relief so powerful I have no choice. My eyes fill with tears.

“Bella,” I say. Stunned.

“A baby,” she mouths.

We close the space between us, and she is in my arms—my Bella. She smells like talcum powder and lavender and all things dewy and precious and young. I feel so protective over these two beating hearts in my arms that I can barely breathe.

We pull apart, misty-eyed and incredulous and laughing.

“Do you think he’ll be mad?” she asks me suddenly.

All at once, she’s in the driver’s seat of her silver Range Rover and we’re listening to Anna Begins with the windows down. It’s summer, and it’s late. We were supposed to be home hours ago, but no one is at Bella’s house. Her mother is in New York for the opening of a restaurant and her father is traveling for work.

We’re coming from Josh’s house—,or is it Trey’s? They both have pools. We’re still wearing our bathing suits, but they’re dry now. The air is hot and sticky, and I have this sense in me—born of youth and vodka and the Counting Crows—that we are invincible. I look over at Bella, sitting back at the wheel, mouth open, singing, and I think that I never want to be without her—and then, that I never want to share her. That she belongs to me. That we belong to each other.

“I don’t know,” I say. “But it doesn’t matter. This is our baby.”

She giggles. “I love him,” she says. “I know it sounds crazy. I know you think I’m crazy. But I really, really do.” She puts a hand on her belly, right on top of her nightgown.

“I don’t think you’re crazy,” I say. “I trust you.”

“That’s a first,” she says. Her hand is still resting there on her belly. I see it growing, floating out in front of her like an inflatable balloon.

“Well,” I say. “Then it’s about time.”

Chapter Sixteen

Bella says she doesn’t want to tell anyone. Not this weekend, not until she’s back in the city with Aaron. Let’s just enjoy the beach, she says. And we do.

We bring coolers, chairs, and blankets to the beach and stay there, swimming and eating salty chips and dripping watermelon, drinking beers and lemonade