I stand carefully and tuck the test into my hoodie pocket because keeping it close feels less like pretending. The mirror catches me mid-motion—eyes too bright, mouth too steady. I tip my chin the way I do before I walk back to a bench full of bodies and problems and pretend my hands don’t shake.
“Okay,” I tell the fan, because it’s listening. “Okay.”
A knock rattles the apartment door—three quick, two slow. Sophie’s knock. Of course she feels the wobble through a text that said onlyyou around?
I open the bathroom and the world smells like coffee, rain, and Sophie’s perfume—bright citrus that insists on morning even when the day doesn’t deserve it. She steps in with a tray of lattes, hair a dark, determined halo under her hood.
“Found the only barista in the city who believes in eye contact,” she announces—then really looks at me. The tray dips. “Oh.”
I don’t try to smile. I hold up the folded towel like a white flag and open it. The stick lies there—quiet, undeniable. Two pink lines breathing the room’s air.
Sophie sets the coffees down with surgeon care and crosses the tile in two steps. Her arms are around me before I can decide if I’m ready. I am. I fold into her like a building finding scaffolding. She’s small but steel; her chin digs into my shoulder with exactly the right hurt.
“It’s okay,” she says into my neck, warm and fierce. “Okay to be scared and okay to be happy and okay to be both at once.”
My laugh breaks into something that isn’t a laugh. I get my arms fully around her and breathe curls and citrus and the smell of someone who’s sat on a lot of locker-room floors with me and refused to let me disappear.
When we separate, she palms my cheeks, checking pupils like after a hit. “You with me?”
“I’m here,” I say—true and thin. “I’m… here.”
She nods, decisive. “Then hear me:Whatever you choose, I’m with you. No qualifiers. If you want a ride, a wall, a fire to set—I’m your girl.”
My throat does the tight thing. “I don’t even know what choosing looks like yet.” I glance at the towel; the test looks back, absolute. “I’m supposed to be at compliance answering questions about optics.”
Sophie makes a face that could curdle sponsorship dollars. “Optics can eat me. You breathing comes first.” She nudges a latte toward me. “Sip.”
I do, because following instructions is all I can do this second. It’s too sweet and exactly right.
“If I say the word living in my throat—if I say it?—”
“It won’t explode the room,” she says, softer. “I checked.”
“I have a job,” I say instead, both statement and shield. “A whole life I built not to need anyone.”
“And you still don’t have to need anyone,” she says. “Needing something isn’t being needy. Also, newsflash: people need people. Even you, Robo-Trainer.”
It pulls a real, small laugh. Space opens in my chest. I nod toward the towel. “There’s… a him.” Safer than his name, like I’m not summoning a storm. “He said the right things last night. He meant them.” My mouth twists. “I want to believe it enough not to check the door for exits.”
Her eyes go kind and sharp. “Then let him try. But also:youget to be the headline in your life. Not his. Not theirs.”
I inhale until my ribs protest. The apartment listens. “Whatever I choose,” I repeat, and it lands in my bones.
She squeezes my hand once. “Whatever you choose,” she echoes. “I’m with you.”
We stand in the bathroom with the fan humming, rain tempering down, and two coffees cooling. For a second, the world is exactly the size of her promise.
Sophie props a hip against the counter as I pull up the clinic number. The website is cheerful about accessibility and confidential care and a stock photo of a woman smiling into the middle distance. I pressCall.
Hold music floods the room—tinny piano pretending to be a river. Every thirty seconds a recorded voice thanks me for my patience like it’s handing out stickers. I put it on speaker and set the phone between the cups so I don’t have to hold it with fingers that want to tremble.
“We can go anywhere,” Sophie says lightly. “Downtown, uptown, three neighborhoods over where no one knows your haircut.”
“I know,” I say—and meanthank you.The fan hums counterpoint to the piano. My pulse syncs with neither.
A live human arrives in my ear, a voice made of blankets. “Midtown Women’s Clinic—how can I help you?”
“Hi.” The word scrapes. “New patient. I… need to schedule an appointment.” The pause afterIis a canyon. “As soon as possible.”
