Another buzz.
BANK ALERT: Your account balance is $23.18
Nancy looked from my phone to my face, her expression pitying.
“Don’t,” I warned her.
But the truth was quieter and grittier than that; I discovered, as most of us do when our dreams face reality head-on, that I was just another ordinary person, holding on to a tiny spark of ambition that flickered in the dark where only I could see it.
I hadn’t booked anything even close to bill-payable in months. The gigs had dried up, the emails had slowed to a trickle, and the dream I’d stitched together out of hope and hustle was unraveling one late rent notice at a time.
I twisted the faucet and stuck my forehead under it, hoping the water might cool the heat creeping up my neck, the kind that had nothing to do with the hangover. Or at least erase the last few years of my life, if we were being ambitious.
This wasn’t a rock bottom I could fix with a night out on the town or a new therapist. This was the kind where you’re staring down a hole you dug yourself and still wondering if there’s treasure at the bottom. Spoiler alert: there wasn’t. Just a bag full of last night’s bodega wine and a pile of receipts I hadn’t dared to look at.
One, I knew, was from the bar where Nick worked—my latest failed attempt at human connection, the one I somehow kept “missing” every time I stopped in, including the night before. Another went toward wine and my usual lineup of emotional support snacks, grabbed after he dodged me yet again. The rest? Who even knew? All completely unnecessary. All painfully, unmistakably overdraft adjacent.
But maybe it wasn’tthathorrible. Maybe Nick really had been busy. Perhaps the job at the thrift store would turn into a steadygig if I just… showed up more. Maybe I could make rentandbuy toilet paper this month.
And right as I was beginning to convince myself that things were not, indeed, as bad as my post-hangover anxiety was trying to convince me they were, my phone rang.
My voice came out raspy, coated in a film of last night’s bottle of Cabernet and panic. “I don’t have time for this, Doyle. I’m dying.”
Doyle Aden—professional golden child, my younger brother by a whopping 18 months, and current holder of the World’s Most Disappointed Sigh—was not feeling merciful.
“So, I listened to the five-minute podcast you left me last night—sorry, voicemail—and I’m confused,” he said. “Are you pregnant?”
I froze, my head jerking up only to slam against the faucet. My stomach twisted as fragments of memory flickered across my brain, fractured and jerky, like a projector with a broken reel. Several phone calls, a string of texts, a blurry selfie, and far too much giggling to myself—every little piece looping through my mind, unrelenting.
“Excuse me?!” I squeaked, my voice higher than intended, hands flying to my forehead as if I could press the echoes of last night back into some neat, manageable box.
Doyle laughed, which felt deeply rude considering the circumstances.
“Girl, come on. You called me seven times. And on the final one, you left… a journey. It started with singing. Then there was a rant about a one-night stand giving you the wrong number and, I quote, his ‘oily fat head.’”
A fresh wave of nausea hit me.
“You told me about the size of his—”
“Oh my God, Doyle, stop.”
“—which I could’ve gone my whole life without knowing. Then you realized your period was late. And after some very loud breathing, I got to experience the soundtrack of you taking a pregnancy test. Again. Not something I needed.”
I slapped a hand over my mouth.
“You snored for a while. Then the timer went off. And then I was treated to: ‘Oh shit. Ohhhh shit. Ohhhhhhhhh my God. Doyle! Doyle, pick up the phone! Congratulations, you’re gonna be an uncle!’”
My stomach lurched, a full-on flip that left me breathless. Nancy caught the vibe and started barking like the apartment was under siege. I scrambled out of the tub, nearly faceplanting on the tile, and muttered, “This cannot be happening.” My hand dove into the trash, fishing out the test as if it were radioactive. One word glared back at me.
Pregnant.
I whispered it to myself again, hoping the sound might make it go away. “This can’t be right.”
“Well,” Doyle said, way too calm for the moment, “take another one.”
I yanked the second test from the box under the sink and slammed him on speaker.
“I do not want to listen to another urine stream, Tally,” Doyle groaned.
