Unexpecting (Unexpecting #1)

21. Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-One

“The expectant mother should savour the excitement and anticipation once she receives the news she is indeed carrying a child. And there is always the unfortunate possibility the father-to-be might not share her joy of her being with child, especially in the beginning. Men always fear the unknown, and for male species, pregnancy and the mysterious workings of the female body is a definite unknown.”

A Young Woman’s Guide to the Joy of Impending Motherhood

Dr. Francine Pascal Reid (1941)

S ince Canada Day was on a Sunday this year, I had Monday off like most of the country and celebrated by having a much-needed sleep-in. I’d been exhausted for the last week for some strange reason. I chalked it up to my approaching period. For once, I couldn’t wait to get it. The rest of the day I spent at the house doing an also-much-needed tidying up and then headed to Libby’s that night for a barbeque. I spent most of the time with Madison since a four-year-old’s conversation was preferable to Libby’s when she was on one of her our-mother-is-a-horrible-parent rants.

Brit, Morgan, and I canceled our weekly Monday outing, which I totally regretted late Tuesday afternoon when Morgan called me all hysterical-like. It turned out she finally found out about Anil’s new girlfriend, and as I thought, didn’t take the news very well. I didn’t blame her, since Anil has had this girlfriend for most of the year, and Morgan had no idea. To cap it all off, the new girlfriend was demanding marriage, and I guess Anil was going for it. Poor Morgan.

Being a good friend, I let Morgan cry on my shoulder all night, and because Brit had Tom’s boss over for dinner, brought her home to my apartment because I didn’t want Morgan to be alone. And because I am a good friend, I didn’t make her sleep on my couch, which is full of lumps, but made up the couch upstairs for her. I left a note for Coop, Emma, and J.B. that she was there and hoped Morgan was asleep before they got home. I was sure a sympathetic voice would set her off again, and then no one would get any sleep. It was after midnight when I finally tucked her in, as exhausted from Morgan’s crying as she was.

Because of the drama of the night before, I was surprised when I woke up on Wednesday morning that the first thing that popped into my head was my period. Not that it had arrived—the fact that it hadn’t. Like I said, my period always comes. I don’t know why I never bothered to check when I had it last. Silly of me, really, but I never gave it a thought because there was no reason why it wouldn’t come.

I have to backtrack a bit. The first thing that popped into my head Wednesday morning wasn’t my period; it was J.B. I’m embarrassed to admit I had a particularly nice dream about J.B. during the night, if you know what kind of dream I mean. I’m not sure what brought it on, and I’m very glad Morgan slept on the couch upstairs instead of crashing in my bed with me or things might have been very awkward.

Anyway, I woke up with the thought of J.B. still fresh as a daisy in my mind, thinking wouldn’t it be nice, and thinking how nice it had been the last time, and then ohmyGod . It hit me.

Oh, my God!

I’m so dense. Could it be possible? Could it be possible I was so stupid that, all the while I’m thinking about when I can get pregnant, counting the days and thinking all happy thoughts, when all the while I could already be pregnant, and in the worst twist ever, pregnant by a man who definitely does not want to be a father?

I’m easily distracted, but this—this is kind of big from which to be sidetracked. I mean, come on! I might very well be carrying a real live child inside me. Okay, maybe not quite a child yet, but a glob of ever-multiplying cells.

This couldn’t be happening. I started counting on my fingers again, but that was too complicated so I rolled out of bed and grabbed the calendar I have stuck to the wall in the kitchen. It’s July 4, Independence Day for our neighbours the Americans—and isn’t that ironic that my independence might well disappear today?

Okay, I said to myself, let’s see about this. I flipped back a month. Last Tuesday was that red-letter day when David rocked my world and told me he was gay. The day before that was when I went out with Morgan—good thing I wasn’t drinking too much, but what about the Canada Day party and drinking all those margaritas?

Okay, no sense getting upset over nothing. I didn’t even know if I was pregnant. Even so, my heart was racing and my hands were jittery. It was the week before Morgan and Anil broke up that I had sex with J.B. It was the night of the wedding. How could I have forgotten about that? Not that I forgot about it; I just didn’t think it was worth remembering. Of course it was worth remembering because it was—never mind.

Could I have gotten pregnant by having sex? Duh. Did we use contraception? Yes. I went scurrying for my purse, where I keep my container of pills. If I started them on… when I opened the little pink lid, I found to my horror there were three still in their little nests, and I took a deep breath. But I couldn’t seem to remember having a period in the month of June. I must have… no, I remember I had it during the Victoria Day long weekend, because I was still with Mike then and he had talked about going away, and I put the kibosh on it because I knew he would want sex and… but that was like six weeks ago! And if there were three pills left, it meant sometime during the month I forgot to take three of my pills. I forgot one again last night, so at least four times…

How could I be such an idiot? I’m thirty-five years old. You’d think I’d have my menstrual cycle figured out by now.

But J.B. and I used a condom. I’m sure of that, because he didn’t have one and I had to go rifling through my bedside table to find one. I remember there were two in there. I hit the drawer and started pulling things out, trying to find the other condom. Not that I felt like having sex now or ever, but I wanted to at least check out that the condom was worthy of protecting me from getting pregnant with J.B.

Here—purple foil wrapper. Expiry—March 2009. 2009! That couldn’t be good.

I sat staring at the numbers on the back of the wrapper. Maybe the one we used was more recent, but the dread deep in my stomach didn’t think so. So I had sex, possibly not as protected as I would have liked—as J.B. would have liked… There might be a little chance I could be pregnant.

How would I tell J.B. ?

But first I had to check if there was something to tell him. I jumped out of bed again and grabbed one of the pregnancy tests I bought when I first thought of having a baby. Actually, I bought two, thinking I’d probably never believe the first one. Okay, I bought three. They were all lying in a Shoppers’ DrugMart bag under my sink. I opened the first box—I’d already ripped it open and read the instructions several times in preparation for this moment, so I was good to go. I just had to hold the end of the stick under my urine stream for a bit, and wait until either a plus or minus sign popped up. Sounded easy enough. Then I grabbed the second box. What if the first one said I was not when I really was? Then I’d have to go through this whole rigmarole again to find out the truth. Then I’d have to wait until I had to pee again. Or what if the stick said I was, and I really wasn’t? To make sure, I decided to use both at once, just to make sure. Pee on one, then pee on the other. And just to make sure the test was absolutely positive—not positive, accurate, we didn’t know if it was positive yet—I grabbed the third and prepared to pee like I’d never peed before.

″Libby,” I whispered into the phone four and a half minutes later. “I’ve got pluses. Three pluses.”

“What are you talking about?” I could hear Madison yelling something in the background. “Maddy, stop,” Libby responded, not moving the phone so it was as if she was yelling at me. “What’s a plus?”

″On the pregnancy test I have in my hand,” I told her, enunciating every word. “I didn’t even have to wait the five minutes, the plus just popped right up after a minute, but I waited to see if they went away, but none of them did, and now I’m sitting here with these pee sticks in my hand, all with the blue plus on them—”

″Yeah, there’s ones with the plus and the minus, but—wait a sec! Did you do a test? Why? And it’s positive?”

″I think so. I did three, and they all say the same thing. The blue plus.”

Libby started to laugh with delight. “Oh, my God! You really did it! You’re pregnant! But when did you get pregnant?”

″I think I am. I did the test three times. It was all in the same pee, but that doesn’t matter, does it? Should I do another one?”

Libby was still laughing, but I thought it was at me now. She said, “I think that’s overkill. My doctor told me there’s not a lot of false positives, so if one says yes, it means yes. I think you’re pregnant! But when? And who? I didn’t think you were going—” She stopped, and it was as if I could actually hear the wheels turning in her head. “Who? That Mike guy? ”

″No, thank God.”

″But who…?”

″I had sex with J.B. the night of Ethan and Darcy’s wedding.” I whispered my confession. “I think I…”

″Oh, oh, uh-oh. It’s his? J.B. got you pregnant! Did he mean to get you pregnant?”

″I don’t think so.” I was still whispering, even though Libby was yelling loud enough that anyone standing beside me could hear her.

″What’s he going to say? You are going to tell him, aren’t you? You have to tell him. It’s not right if you don’t tell him—that’s not nice at all, and he might be upset when you do tell him, but I’m sure he’ll be so pissed if you don’t and he finds out later, but I guess you could tell him it was someone else’s, or that you went to get the donor stuff, but everyone knows you’d tell the world if you’d gone and done that—”

I’d never realized how obvious it was that Libby and I are sisters.

″I have to tell him.”

″I guess you better. Go tell him.”

″Now?”

″Yes. Then call me back and tell me what he says.”

I forgot all about Morgan asleep on the couch as I ran up the two flights of stairs, tripping several times, once dropping my precious pee sticks on the stairs. I hope that doesn’t leave a pee stain, I thought to myself, then started giggling uncontrollably. I’m pregnant. I’m pregnant! I’m so excited. And nervous and scared and just freaking out in general. Or I was about to freak out. I thought I was still in shock. I was pregnant without even trying to get pregnant, which meant this was totally meant to be, sort of like the fate thing I thought with David, only this was real fate, not some make-believe fantasy I couldn’t get out of my mind. I was pregnant! Really pregnant!

I stopped just before I hit the top step. But I wanted to get pregnant with David. At least I was pretty sure I wanted to. I thought that’s where I was heading, even though I hadn’t totally made up my mind. I wished I’d made up my mind. I wished we’d done something about it so that I could say it was his instead of J.B.’s because I really didn’t think J.B. was going to be happy with me…

I wondered what J.B. would say. He had to be happy once the shock wore off, and maybe he’d want to—

Should I prepare a speech? Tell him, yes, I’m pregnant with his child, but I wasn’t expecting him to take any responsibility for the baby or me. That it was an accident, totally unintentional, and he didn’t have to do anything except if he—he was going to freak. Maybe I should wait to tell him.

But I was pregnant—really pregnant—and starting to get really excited, whoever the father might be, and I really wanted to tell someone. Now. And J.B.’s room was closer to the stairs than Coop’s. I’d tell Cooper next.

I burst through J.B.’s door without knocking. “J.B., you won’t believe it! Look at my pee—”

I trailed off when I noticed it was not J.B. in J.B.’s bed.

″Hey, Casey,” Morgan said sleepily.