be over and I wouldn’t receive any child support. Did I even want child support? What if West decided that he wanted to be a part of the child’s life—or even worse—wanted custody?
I’d been having so many conversations in my head that I jumped when Harper called out my name. How long had I been sitting there? I looked over my shoulder and saw it was dark outside. Picking up my phone, I saw that it was almost seven o’clock. I’d been in there for over three hours. When Harper came and stood in front of the bathroom door, her eyes widened in shock and her mouth dropped open.
“Holy fuck,” was all she said, while she stood still looking around the room at all the pregnancy test paraphernalia. “Em, what is all of this?”
I cleared my throat and simply said, “Well I went to the doctor today. I won’t find out the results of the STD tests until next week.” I laughed bitterly. “But the doctor found something else in my tests.” And I said no more. That’s when Harper made eye contact with me and I burst out crying.
“Oh shit, honey it’s okay.” She dropped to the floor and held my head in her hands, hugging me against her chest while I clung to her and cried my eyes out.
“It’s not okay Harper. What am I going to do with a baby? My life is a mess, and now I’m going to throw a child into the mix.” I chocked back a sob.
She kissed the top of my head and pushed me away by my shoulders to look in to my eyes. “Your life is not a mess. You are climbing over a hurdle but you will move on from this. We’ll deal with it together. I’m not walking away from you. And even if we look like a couple of lesbos raising a baby together and all that hippy shit, then that’s what we’ll do.” I couldn’t help myself, I started laughing and Harper soon followed. How was it that she knew how to make me laugh when I felt like my life was on the brink of collapse? I was really fortunate to have Harper in my life. I loved her.
When we settled down, I glanced around and felt the mood shift back to being serious. “I don’t know how I’m going to tell West, Harper. I have a feeling this isn’t going to go over well.”
She sighed, knowing I was right. “Well, he doesn’t have much choice in the matter. We will call him in a couple of days. Do you have a due date?
“I go in next week to find out.”
“How about we call him together when you find all that out and if it becomes too much, I’ll take over the call?”
“Okay.” The tears began to prick my eyes again, but I didn’t want to cry anymore. “Tell me something—anything—to help take my mind off of this.”
“Anything?” She asked inquisitively. I couldn’t read her face.
“Yes, please!”
“Okay then. Well here’s something you didn’t know. I had sex with Kyler in high school.”
I wasn’t expecting that. “What the fuck Harper?!”
“What? You said anything? Plus you wanted to know what was going on between him and me at the reunion. Now you know” She said this all too casually.
“I realize that, but why are you just now telling me this? Don’t you think you should have said something about it oh I don’t know… in high school?!”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I didn’t know what to say. It just sort of happened and I wanted to forget all about it.”
“When?”
“You remember when I stayed home from school after the triplet bitches took that stupid picture of me?” I nodded. “And you know that Kyler came over to my house to talk to me?” I nodded again. “Well it happened that afternoon.”
“Jesus Harp. You should have told me. We’ve never kept secrets from each other.” She was looking down. “Wait. You’d never slept with anyone before. Did Kyler take your virginity?”
She shrugged again. “Yeah, but it’s not a big deal. I don’t know why girls always make such a stink about their first time. It’s just sex.”
I was getting the sense that it was a bigger deal than she was trying to make out. I’d known Harper far too long for her to be able to play something like this off, despite managing to hide this from me for all these years. “Did Kyler know it was your first