The door clicks open, and Brooke steps out. She doesn’t say anything as she sets the test on the counter, the small white stick that suddenly feels heavier than anything I’ve ever held.
“Three minutes,” she says softly.
Three minutes.
One hundred and eighty seconds.
It feels like a lifetime.
Brooke kneels down beside her bag, rummaging through it with a kind of forced focus, pulling things out, putting them back in,pretending to be occupied. I can tell she’s not actuallylookingfor anything. She just needs something to do with her hands.
Me? I just stand there in the kitchen, staring at that tiny white stick on the counter like it’s a bomb about to go off.
I try to go back to cleaning but I can’t. the plastic stick is like a beacon, like an accident you can’t look away from. I'm imagining my future, beaches and trips or babies and diapers. It feels like my heart’s beating in my ears.
And somewhere in the middle of all that noise, a thought sneaks in. One I didn’t expect.
Do I want it to be positive?
I don’t know. I don’t think so.
Because you don’t have a kid just because you’re in love or because you’re scared to lose someone or because a part of you likes the idea of a tiny piece of both of you existing in the world. You have a kid because you’reready.
And I’m not sure I am.
Especially not here. Not in a city like New York, where rent eats half your pay check and everything costs twice what it should. Brooke can’t exactly work from home, hell, she’s barelyhomeas it is. Part-time isn’t an option when your job involves being halfway across the world most weeks.
And childcare? God. I’ve heard the numbers. It’s more than rent. More thancollege tuitionin some cases. One of us would have to stay home. One of us would have to hit pause on everything we’ve worked for.
Would that be her? Would that be me?
I don’t want it to be me, I don’t wanna be a stay-at-home dad, especially since I make more than Brooke. But how do I say that without sounding like a sexist ass?
I swallow hard and tear my gaze from the stick on the counter. Three minutes suddenly feels like more than a test result. It feels like the rest of our lives condensed into a single choice, a choice we never actually made.
I glance at Brooke again. She’s standing now, hands nervously smoothing over her jeans, her face pale but determined.
“Three minutes are up,” she says quietly.
It’s now or never.
Neither of us moves at first. The test sits there on the counter between us, a tiny, ordinary piece of plastic that suddenly feels like it’s holding the weight of the universe.
I take a step forward. She does too. We stop face to face with the test in the middle, but neither of us reaches out.
“You look,” she whispers.
“No, you.”
We trade nervous, fragile smiles and then the silence returns. Finally, she lets out a shaky breath and reaches forward.
Her fingers hover over the test, trembling just slightly before she picks it up. My heart is pounding so hard I swear she can hear it.
And then she looks.
Her breath catches and I watch as her face shifts, a dozen emotions flickering across it too fast for me to read.
I can’t tell. Not yet.
