with you two…” she says.
“Yeah…I guess.” I grab a pen and begin tapping it on the table. The subject has me all sorts of flustered. “You don’t think it’s too fast though?”
“What I think,” she says, leaning forward to rest her elbows on my desk, “is that it only matters what you and Wyatt and your little girl think.”
I feel bile rising in my throat and try swallowing it down. “It’s just…people talk.”
“Bitch,” she squeaks, slapping a hand over her mouth when she remembers her kid is in the room. “Sorry, Lulu.” She shakes her head at herself. “Bitch,” she mouths, “this town has been talking about you since you turned up pregnant damn near eight years ago. Face it…they ain’t gonna stop till you’re dead. And maybe not even then.”
“Oh, God,” I say, reaching for the trash can at the end of my desk, mostly dry heaving.
“Eww, dat natty,” Lucy says, stepping back.
“Sorry,” I say knotting the bag and getting up to set it outside of my office door until I can take it out. “I’ve been car sick.”
Kate narrows her eyes. “You got home yesterday.”
I shrug. “I’ve been sick since we left Thursday afternoon.”
“Have you now?”
“Why do you look so smug?” I swish my mouth with the little bottle of Listerine that now lives in my purse before spitting it into a disposable cup.
“No reason.” She sucks her tongue to her teeth nodding to herself. “When was your last period?” She picks at her nails, calm as can be, like she’s just asked about the weather.
I feel an icy chill. “A woman can be sick without it automatically meaning she’s pregnant.”
“Mm-hmm.” She nods. “When was it?”
“I don’t know.” I grab my calendar out of my top drawer to check—that can’t be…
“Well?” she asks, getting up to look over my shoulder.
“December.” I’m trembling so hard I can’t keep the little planner in my hands. “Kate,” I hiss, my eyes welling with tears. “We were careful. Every time. It can be stress, right?” I nod, trying to calm myself. “It has to be stress.”
Kate’s eyes widen like saucers. “Holy fuck!” she says, not even caring that her child is now toddling around repeating the word. “Remember when your pussy gobbled up that condom?”
I stretch my collar, suddenly finding it hard to breath. “His come was still in it. I checked.”
“I think she may have swallowed a little.”
“No.” She’s wrong.
“I’m gonna be an Auntie again.”
I take a deep breath. Followed by another, trying desperately not to pass out while my friend cheers at my demise. This can’t be happening. Not again.
“Are you okay?” she asks, finally noticing I’m damn near catatonic. She waves a hand in front of my face. “Seriously, Whit? What the hell? It’s a baby…not a cancer diagnosis.”
“I can’t,” I say, shaking my head.
“You love him.”
I nod.
“He is crazy in love with you.”
Again, I bob my head. “Seems to be.”
“I don’t see the problem.” She lifts her child into her lap for effect. “A baby is a blessing. Wyatt’s not like Jeremy. He’d never leave you high and dry. That man’s going to be an amazing father, if you’re pregnant.” She shrugs her shoulders unconvincingly. “I mean, it might still be stress, right?”
“He’s going to think I tried to trap him!” My heart is pounding, my fist itching to do the same when Kate bursts into hysterical laughter. Sometimes I really want to punch her.
“I’m sorry.” She beats a hand on her chest, dramatically trying to wind down. “But did you just insinuate that man’s gonna think you have some condom-snatching talent of some sort?” She snorts, pointing a bossy finger at me. “That pun was totally intended, by the way. I want full credit in all future retellings.”
“I’m the one who put it on,” I hiss at her.
She shrugs. “And his dumb ass is the one who fell asleep and forgot to remove the damn thing before going soft.”
“It wasn’t his fault.”
“It was no one’s fault, Whit. That’s my point. It was an accident. Those do happen.”
“What am I going to do?”
Kate picks up my phone from the charging dock and holds it out to me across the desk. “You are going to call him, right now while you have me here for moral support, and you’re going to tell him.”
Moral support, my ass. She just wants to witness the train wreck.
I shake my head while accepting the device. “Maybe you could just go get a test from the drug store? Then we would know for sure…