I snort softly now, alone in my bathroom.
So much for that.
I hadn’t tested earlier because my body and I have never been reliable colleagues. My cycle has always been erratic. Stress makes it worse. Heartbreak does interesting things to it too. February had passed in a blur of deadlines and pretending I was fine. March arrived with nausea I blamed on coffee and exhaustion I blamed on life.
Busy is my favourite avoidance technique.
It’s only this morning, standing in my bedroom fighting with a pair of jeans that absolutely did do up last week, that I finally stop lying to myself.
I pick the test up again. Just to be sure.
Still pregnant.
“Okay,” I say out loud.
This is happening.
I’m not crying. I’m not romanticising it. I’m also not panicking, and that feels worth noting. This is a situation. Situations can be handled.
Geoff will need to know. Soon. Not theatrically. Not with apologies or assumptions. Just facts. He deserves that. We both do.
I add a few bullet points under his name on the list.
– Be direct
– No minimising
– No emotional buffering
I stand, wash my hands, and look at myself in the mirror. Same woman. Same face. Dark eyeliner I trust and hair styled in a way that invites assumptions. Punk, probably. I’m not, but they’re welcome to their theories. The only difference is the thing I’m carrying now. Something entirely new.
I pick up my phone again. Practical until proven otherwise. I type a very neutral, very unromantic search into Google.
How big is the baby at three months pregnant.
I sit there for a while, phone loose in my hand, the fruit comparisons blurring together.
Peach. Plum. Lime.
A peach feels manageable… a lime too.
I rest my palm against my stomach, not because I expect to feel anything remarkable yet. Just acknowledging that something is there.
“Right,” I say quietly. “Pea-Lime. You might as well have a name if you’re going to bethis disruptive.”
That earns a snort from me, because I’ve barely had five minutes with the idea and I’m already naming it. That feels… telling.
“Okay,” I murmur. “What do you think we should do, Pea-Lime?”
I saywe, which is another point against my own objectivity.
I let the options line up properly this time. I could book an appointment and end this before it grows into something with a timetable and opinions. That path exists. It’s real. It’s allowed. It would be clean and finite and would return my life to roughly the shape it had yesterday.
I sit with that.
It doesn’t horrify me. It also doesn’t settle.
Because the other path is there too. Messier. Longer. Louder. But also possible in a way it never was before.
