Three minutes, the packages say. I count my heartbeats instead—one hundred and twenty, one hundred and twenty-one. But the first test turns positive in thirty seconds. A blue plus sign appearing like a verdict, like a diagnosis, like a tiny plastic prophecy.
The second: forty-five seconds. Pink lines so bright they look like wounds.
The third and fourth don't even pretend to build suspense. Positive. Positive. All of them screaming the truth my body already knew.
My knees hit the grimy tile floor hard enough to bruise. The tests balanced on my thighs, four different brands all agreeing: you're fucked. The room spins, or maybe I'm spinning, or maybe the whole world just tilted off its axis. My vision tunnels until all I can see are those plus signs, those lines, those digital confirmations that yes, there's something growing inside me that shares Zane Quinn's DNA and my tendency toward catastrophe.
The graffiti on the stall door blurs. Maria was here. Now I'm here. How many women have knelt on this exact floor, holding their futures in plastic sticks that smell like chemistry and fear?
My phone buzzes against my hip, the vibration traveling through my body like electricity. Him. Because the universe has a sense of humor darker than old blood.
Zane:You okay? You left early
The laugh that escapes me echoes off the bathroom walls, hollow and sharp. I can feel his cum inside me still—not from last night but from all the unprotected times, accumulated disaster. My body a crime scene I can't clean.
Clinic prep
Zane:You've been weird all week
Weird.That's one word for the way smells have turned violent—his cologne that used to make me wet now makes me gag, coffee that was my religion now smells like burnt flesh, the whole world reconfigured into an assault on senses I didn't know could betray me.
Just stressed
I grab three tests with shaking hands, shove them into the small wastebasket. The gray plastic bag crinkles as I cover them with paper towels, like that might undo what's already dividing inside me, cells splitting into something that will destroy everything. The fourth test goes in my purse. Evidence. Proof. The bomb I'll detonate tonight.
The door opens, letting in diesel fumes and morning air. My body freezes, prey-still, waiting for them to pick a stall. I wash my hands like Lady Macbeth, scrubbing until the skin turns red, the cheap pink soap that smells like artificial roses and makes my stomach lurch.
Outside, the morning air hits like a slap—cold against my fever-hot skin. Three steps from my car, my body decides it's done pretending. The nausea rises like a tide, inevitable and violent. I barely make it to the scraggly bush beside my car before I'm retching, my whole body convulsing, bringing up bile and terror and the Mexican food from two days ago that my body just now decided to reject. The vomit splatters on the asphalt, and I'm on my hands and knees like an animal, spit hanging from my lips in long strings.
"Lena?"
Rico. Tommy's cousin. Of course, someone from Miguel's crew would witness this exact moment, when I'm on all fours in a gas station parking lot with vomit on my chin and a positive pregnancy test in my purse.
"Food poisoning," I manage, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. The lie tastes worse than the bile.
He looks at me with those dark eyes that all of Miguel's boys have—the ones that see too much, judge too quick. His gaze travels from my face to my trembling hands to the way I'm clutching my stomach. "You need help?"
"I'm fine." But I'm swaying on my feet, and he reaches out to steady me. His hand on my elbow burns through my scrub top.
"You sure? You look..." He doesn't finish, but I know how I look. Like death. Like disaster. Like a woman whose body is betraying her in real time.
"Just need to get home."
He nods, but I can feel him watching as I fumble for my keys, drop them twice, finally manage to unlock my car. In my rearview mirror, I see him standing there, still watching. Then, as I pull away, he walks toward the bathroom I just exited.
My stomach drops harder than it did during the vomiting. But it's too late to go back, too late to do anything but drive home with one positive pregnancy test in my purse and three in a gas station trash can like breadcrumbs leading straight to my doom.
The coffee shop next door pumps its smell through my vents even with the air off, and I have to pull over twice to dry heave into someone's rose bushes, my body rejecting even the memory of food. A woman walking her dog stops to stare, and I wave her off, mumbling about food poisoning while my body tries to turn itself inside out.
My apartment feels like a sanctuary and a prison when I finally make it inside. The test in my purse might as well be radioactive—I can feel its presence like heat, like weight, like a future I never asked for pressing against my ribs. I set my purse on the counter and step back like it might explode.
Tonight's the MC party. Tonight, I have to pretend my body isn't reshaping itself around this disaster, pretend my brother didn't cut me off with four words that still echo in my skull.
I practice in the bathroom mirror, trying to find a face that doesn't scream pregnancy.
"Hey, everyone, great party." My reflection looks like she's about to vomit again. There's a green tinge to my skin that no amount of makeup will hide.
"Oh, no drinks for me, I'm on antibiotics." Better. The lie sits ready on my tongue.
