The music—classic rock someone thinks makes us legitimate—vibrates through the floor, through the walls, through my bones. I can feel Ghost watching from the corner, Angel dealing cards at the back table, everyone pretending not to notice that Lena looks like she's standing at her own execution.
Then Candy arrives, and the air changes like before a lightning strike.
She sweeps in wearing red—because of course she is—her confidence engineered to wound. The crowd parts, they always do, whether from respect or self-preservation varies. But tonight there's something different in her walk, something calculated that makes my spine tighten with old instincts about incoming threats.
"I have an announcement!" Her voice cuts through Kashmir playing on the jukebox, sharp enough to draw blood.
The room quiets in stages—conversations dying, bottles setting down, even the cigarette smoke seems to pause. In my peripheral vision, I see Lena go absolutely still. Not normal still—prey still. The kind of still that happens right before everything goes wrong. Her knuckles are white around her purse, and I can see her pulse hammering in her throat from ten feet away.
Candy waits until she has everyone's attention, until the silence becomes a living thing with teeth, then drops her bomb: "I'm pregnant with Zane's baby!"
The words hit like a flashbang. My body recognizes the lie before my brain does—my shoulders dropping, not tensing, because there's no truth to defend against. But the room erupts in murmurs, shifting leather and clinking glass, and through it all, I hear something that doesn't fit.
Laughter.
Not just any laughter—Lena's laughter. But it's wrong, pitched too high, edged with something that sounds like glass breaking. She's doubled over with it, tears streaming down her face, and the sound is horrible and beautiful and absolutely terrifying. Her whole body shakes with it, and people are backing away like she might explode.
"Congratulations!" she manages between gasps, and her voice carries that nurse authority that makes grown men confess their real pain levels. "That's amazing! Who's the actual father?"
The room goes dead silent. Even the music seems to pause.
Candy's face cycles through emotions—shock, rage, humiliation—before settling on vindictive. "It's Zane's. We've been together for—"
"No," Lena interrupts, straightening up, wiping tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand. There's mascara running,giving her raccoon eyes that somehow make her look more dangerous. "You're not pregnant. Want to know how I know?"
She steps forward, and there's something magnificent about her in this moment, something terrifying. Like watching a surgery performed without anesthesia—brutal, necessary, unforgettable.
"Your hands are wrong," Lena continues, her tone sharp as a fresh scalpel. "Pregnant women protect lower, where the uterus actually is. You're holding your stomach like actresses do in movies—too high, too theatrical." She tilts her head, studying Candy like a specimen. "Also, I can smell the wine on your breath from here—that's what, your third glass? And that patch on your arm? That's birth control, not nicotine. The adhesive pattern is different."
The humiliation is surgical, complete. Candy flees, her heels clicking against the floor in a rhythm that sounds like retreat, like defeat, like the end of something.
The crowd disperses, going back to their drinks and conversations, but the word "pregnant" hangs in the air like smoke that won't clear, like a ghost that just got invited to the party.
I catch Lena's arm—her skin is fever-hot, burning through my palm—and guide her through the crowd to my room in the back. The moment the door closes, she starts shaking. Full body tremors that rattle her bones, make her teeth chatter. Not cold shaking—this is shock shaking, the kind that happens when your body realizes it survived something it shouldn't have.
"What's wrong?" I search her face, trying to read the diagnosis in her eyes. "And don't say nothing. Don't lie to me."
She opens her purse with hands that shake so badly the zipper takes three tries. Then she pulls out a white plastic stick and places it in my hand like she's handing me a live grenade with the pin already pulled.
A pregnancy test. The plastic is still warm from her purse, from her body. Positive. Two pink lines so bright they seem to pulse.
The world stops. Actually stops. I can't hear the party anymore—Kashmir cuts out mid-guitar solo. I can't feel the floor under my feet. My vision tunnels until all I can see are those two lines, that plus sign, that tiny window showing me a future I never imagined. Time stretches like taffy, and I can hear my own heartbeat, slow and loud, like drums underwater. Once. Twice. Three times.
"When?" My voice comes out destroyed, scraped raw.
"Three weeks ago. The supply closet..." She doesn't finish. Doesn't need to. I remember that Monday with crystalline clarity. The metal shelf leaving marks on her back I traced later with my tongue. The desperation in how she pulled me closer. The exact second she whispered "don't stop" and I couldn't have even if I wanted to, my brain offline, replaced with pure need.
The exact second she pulled me closer and I stopped thinking because my brain had gone offline, replaced with pure need.
"Peak ovulation day," she adds, her voice clinical but her eyes wild. "Basically the worst possible timing if you're trying not to get pregnant. Or the best, if you're trying to create maximum chaos. My body was basically sending out engraved invitations to your sperm."
I'm on my knees before I realize I've moved. The floor hits hard enough to hurt, but I don't care. My hands bracket her hips, fingertips finding the spots where I held her that Monday, where bruises bloomed and faded. My forehead presses against her stomach, against the place where our disaster is already growing, cells dividing into something that will have her eyes or my stubbornness or both.
Through the fabric of her dress, she smells different here. Warmer. Changed. Something primitive in my brain recognizes it—mine, ours, future.
"Say it again," I demand against her belly.
"I'm pregnant." Her voice breaks on the words, shatters into pieces. "I'm pregnant with your baby, and Miguel already knows, and everything is about to explode."
