REMY
“Here, drink this.”Ariel places a glass of Diet Coke on the table and slides into the booth beside me. “Pretend there’s a shot of vodka in it. Make it a double. You need it.”
I swallow a mouthful and focus on the fizzing behind my teeth.
We’re in a bar. It was the first one we stumbled across when we left the clinic, and Ariel dragged me inside, giving me no wriggle room to protest. Not that I could even see where we were going through the tears. My brain shut down everything else the nurse told me during the ultrasound, relying on my best friend to soak up all the necessary information.
The fizzing distraction lasts for about three seconds and then the reality comes crashing back. Ariel takes the glass from my trembling hand.
“Twins,” I say out loud.
To anyone else it’s just a word. Twins. Two babies. Sure, it looks like a lot of hard work, two bottles of formula, two lots of diapers, two babies crying in the middle of the night, a double stroller forwalks. But it’s genetic. As long as there’s no history of twins, it’s a pretty safe bet that you’ll have one baby.
“Look on the bright side.” Ariel swallows a large mouthful of white wine. “Two babies, one pregnancy. Two for the price of one.”
Dazed, I stare at her until she comes back into focus. “You’re serious.”
“Sure.” She shrugs. “My mom said she’d have made life easier for herself if she’d had twins or triplets. Let’s face it, you won’t get much sleep for the first three months anyway, might as well stay up all night for two babies rather than one.”
A chuckle escapes before I can stop it. More tears fill my eyes, and the laughter becomes a sore throat kind of ache that won’t be cured by paracetamol. This is real. This is happening to me. This isn’t a movie scene where the father comes crashing into the bar, goes down on one knee, and proposes to me in front of a crowd of smiling faces.
“What about college?” I say in a small voice.
Ariel rests her warm hand on my leg. “Let’s take this one step at a time, Rem.”
I nod. I’m happy for my best friend to think for me. She’s the practical one. She comes from a large family. She’ll know what to do.
“You need to tell him.”
My pulse starts galloping away, my heart pumping around step number one, my face glowing like a shiny red apple. I swallow another mouthful of Diet Coke and catch the spillage from the shaking glass before it hits my lap.
“No.” It doesn’t sound as firm as I’d intended.
Ariel doesn’t react. “Why not?”
“I don’t want to.”
“I kinda gathered that when you said no.” She gulps another mouthful of wine; she’s drinking for both of us even though it isn’t lunchtime yet. “Why not? And before you think about repeating yourself, I’ll remind you that I can keep this up all day if necessary.”
“Did anyone ever tell you that you don’t have a heart?”
“Frequently. But Tristan still sticks around.”
I can’t help smiling. She has the biggest heart of anyone I know. If I asked her to hold my hand through childbirth, she’d be there in her hospital gown, mopping my brow, and telling me she can see the baby’s head between my legs.
Heads. Plural.
Okay, here goes. “If I tell him that I’m pregnant, and he doesn’t want anything to do with the baby—babies—that’s it. It’s over. That dream that someday, he might walk back into my life and tell me that he never stopped thinking about me, will be gone.”
Ariel ponders my confession for several long, drawn-out moments.
“He’ll think I’m a gold-digger,” I blurt out while she’s still thinking about it. “He’ll accuse me of trying to trap him into giving me money, and I don’t want him to think that about me. Better to just walk away now.”
“And bring up his babies on your own.” Ariel juggles her hands up and down as if they’re weighing scales. “I see your point.Much better to spend the rest of your life struggling to give those babies a decent life when their father is loaded.”
I slump back against my seat. “Dignity. It’s one of those words you always toss my way when you think I’m being weak.”
“True. I’m glad to hear that you’ve been paying attention. But there’s also dignity in swallowing your pride and having the balls to walk into the Rinse and tell Bastien Murray that he’s going to be a father.” She hisses the last sentence at me so that no one else can hear.
