“Ava said you were sick.”
I glare back toward the living room as if I can see straight through the walls. “Tattletale.”
She stands slowly, crossing her arms. “April. What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
“You’ve been weird for weeks.” Her voice sharpens, worry threading through it. “You’ve been distant. You don’t always answer my calls right away anymore. You show up with money that doesn’t make sense.” She says, gesturing helplessly at the table, where all the bills and paid invoices are scattered around.
“It’s just money from my job.”
“Your job doesn’t pay like this.” Her eyes narrow. “So where is it coming from?”
My mind scrambles for something plausible, something safe, something that won’t blow up my entire life in a single sentence. “I got a bonus,” I answer.
She stares at me. “A bonus?”
“Yes.”
“From your asshole of a boss? I didn’t realize he was so…generous.”
I try to hide the irritation on my face from her insult toward Anthony. “He can be generous sometimes. I did a good job over the last year and got rewarded.”
Angela’s expression doesn’t change. “April.”
“I’m fine,” I insist, hating how thin it sounds. “And Ava’s doing better. That’s what matters.”
Her eyes soften for half a heartbeat, then harden again. “You’re lying to me.”
I swallow uncomfortably. “I’m not.”
“Youare,” she says, her voice cracking. “It scares me. You’re not the kind of person who lies unless you think you have to.”
The words hit like a slap. I grab my bag quickly with clumsy fingers, already feeling another wave of nausea coming. “I have to go.”
“April—”
“I’ll come back,” I promise, and it’s not even fully a lie. I just don’t know how to come back with this still lodged in my throat. “I just… I have something to do.”
Angela looks like she wants to follow me and grab my shoulders to shake the truth loose. But she can’t, not when Ava’s in the next room. She just watches me with that same helpless fear she’s been living with for months. I leave with my heart hammering in my chest, nausea, and shame crawling up my spine.
————
Nicky’s already at my apartment when I get home. I texted her as soon as I left Angela’s, and she must have let herself in with the spare key. She’s sitting on my couch with her feet tucked under her, scrolling mindlessly through her phone likeshe’s been waiting for me to fall apart, and I’m right on schedule. She looks up the moment I step inside and says, “You look like death.”
“I threw up,” I say flatly, kicking off my shoes.
Nicky’s eyes widen. “Oh, my God.”
I don’t answer. I just walk straight into the bathroom like my body already knows what it needs, like my hands are moving without permission. I dig through the cabinet under the sink until I find the box shoved behind spare toothpaste and hair ties. Pregnancy tests. A two-pack, bought months ago during a spiral when I hadn’t had sex in half a year. Apparently, I’m the type of person who prepares for things by purchasing plastic sticks to pee on. My fingers shake as I tear it open. Nicky appears in the doorway half a second later. “Are we doing this?”
“Yep.”
I take the test with mechanical numbness, cap it, and set it on the counter like it’s a bomb about to explode. I lean against the sink with my arms crossed tightly across my chest. My mind is screaming, hoping, to my surprise, that it’s negative. It’s not that I don’t want to do this for him or back out. It’s that a positive test means we can stop trying, and I really don’t want to stop having sex with Anthony.
Two minutes feel like two years. We stand in silence, waiting for the timer on my phone to buzz, my stomach only getting queasier. The timer goes off. I turn, hoping for a single line, hoping to still have a damn excuse to have him touch me, and find two pink lines and a smiley face.Positive. It’s positive.
The world doesn’t explode. The ceiling doesn’t collapse. Nothing dramatic happens at all. It’s just quiet confirmation, and the overwhelming sensation that my life is now sliding onto a different path that I, for some reason, agreed to.
