Chapter 5 Sage
SAGE
Something is wrong.
I know it before I admit it. I know it before I open the calendar. I know it in the way my body feels slightly out of sync, like I’m moving half a second behind myself.
I’m spotting Marissa on a heavy squat when a wave of nausea rolls through me so hard I have to lock my jaw to keep from gagging.
The gym smells like rubber flooring and sweat and citrus disinfectant—normal smells, everyday smells—but today they feel sharp and invasive.
I step back as she racks the bar and force a smile.
“You good?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say automatically. “Didn’t eat enough.”
That’s what I tell everyone. That’s what I tell myself.
But by the time my last morning client leaves, I’m sitting alone on a plyo box staring at nothing while my stomach churns like I swallowed a washing machine. My sports bra feels too tight. My leggings feel suffocating. My whole body feels… wrong. Just plain wrong.
Am I coming down with the flu? I got my shot. That’s the last thing I need. But it’s been a quiet flu season—spring usually is. At the gym, we’re always the second to know. Second behind the school system, usually.
A sinking suspicion nauseates me further.
I pull out my phone and open my cycle tracker. I blink. Then I blink again. Three weeks late. Not stress late. Not jet lag late. Not “I miscounted” late.
Three weeks.
I start doing math like my life depends on it. Connor and I hadn’t slept together in two months before Ireland. Two full months of distance and avoidance and curated affection for the camera. By the time we boarded that flight, we were barely touching.
My breath leaves me in a rush. No. No, that’s impossible.
Except it isn’t.
I think about the plane. The hum of the engines. The way the cabin lights dimmed. The way Ronan’s teeth felt at the back of my neck.
It was one time. One reckless, suspended-from-reality time.
I grab my jacket and bag and tell the front desk I need to step out. There’s an urgent care clinic two blocks away. The walk feels surreal. Every step feels heavier than it should.
Inside, the waiting room is fluorescent and beige and cruelly normal. I fill out paperwork with shaking hands.
Reason for visit?
I stare at the blank line before writing it. Possible pregnancy.
Seeing the words makes my chest tighten so hard I can barely swallow.
This cannot be happening. But something inside me already knows. When I take the test, my brain is already saying, “Pink or blue?” But I shake out of it, finish peeing, and wash up.
The nurse comes back faster than I’m prepared for. “It’s positive.”
The word doesn’t echo. It doesn’t shatter. It just lands and sits there between us.
Positive.
“You’re pregnant.”
I stammer, “I… I know what it means.” I nod because that’s what functional adults do in medical offices.
She talks about weeks along, referrals, prenatal vitamins, next steps. Her voice sounds far away. “Based on your dates, you’re about six weeks.”
The timeline matches up with Ireland. The plane. The man who fucked me at thirty thousand feet.
I walk out of the clinic into cold Boston air that feels too sharp against my skin. The world looks exactly the same as it did this morning. Cars move. People talk. Someone laughs across the street.
How is everything still functioning?
I sit on a bench and stare at my hands. Pregnant.
My job is physical. My job is my body. I demonstrate burpees. I spot heavy deadlifts. I push sleds until my clients collapse laughing and gasping.
What happens when I can’t?
What happens when I’m nauseous every morning? When I’m exhausted? When I physically cannot demo what I’m selling?
My brain starts racing ahead to money. Rent. Insurance. Groceries. Diapers. Medical bills. How do you raise a baby alone on commission-based income? How do you raise a baby at all?
And then the worst thought slams into me—should I even keep it?
I don’t go back to the gym.
I text that I’m sick and head home. I rent a tiny cottage in a cluster of them in a quiet part of Boston that no one ever talks about. It’s cheap, it’s clean, and that’s all I really need.
Inside, everything is painfully normal. The couch. The coffee table. The half-folded laundry. My life, sitting exactly where I left it this morning.
Except it isn’t.
I sit on the couch and press my palms into my eyes. Option one: I don’t keep it. The thought feels like swallowing glass. Clinical. Logical. I’m twenty-five. I don’t have a partner. I don’t have family nearby. My entire career depends on stamina and flexibility.
No one would blame me.
Option two: I keep it. Raise a baby alone. My chest tightens so hard I feel dizzy. I’ve been thinking about transitioning to online training for months. Less physical demand. More scalable income.
Leigh keeps offering to build me a website.
“You need digital infrastructure,” she says.
“Not just in-person hours.” Being in cybersecurity and having started in website design, she’s my go-to for all things online.
We met thanks to her renting the cottage next door.
She’s become my best friend in the past three years.
But even a website feels impossible right now.
What if I’m too sick to film workouts? What if I’m too tired to coach? What if I can’t recover physically after birth? What if I lose clients?
What if I resent the baby?
The thought makes my stomach flip harder than the nausea did. I press my hand against my stomach, though there’s nothing to feel yet. Duh.
But it’s there. Ronan doesn’t know. I don’t even know how to find him. He said he lived in Boston. No number. No “let’s stay in touch.”
That was what I wanted. It was supposed to be one extraordinary, reckless memory. Now it feels like the beginning of something I don’t know how to survive.
This isn’t the end of the world. I’m not a teenager. It feels like the end of the world, but I can figure this out.
I don’t know if I want to tell Ronan. I bet I could track him down somehow, but I don’t know if I want to complicate his life. I don’t know if I want him involved.
I don’t know anything. I feel like I can’t breathe. The cottage feels suffocating.
I lie on my bed staring at the ceiling, my hand resting flat over my stomach. Six weeks. There might already be a heartbeat. Well, a cardiac signal people call a heartbeat. There’s not even an actual heart yet—that doesn’t exist for months. But the start of cardiac tissue is there at six weeks.
The thought makes tears slide down my temples into my hair. When I imagine not keeping it, my chest caves in. The idea feels like grief.
When I imagine keeping it, I feel terror so sharp it borders on panic.
I think about Connor and feel only relief that this baby isn’t his. There will be no shared custody battle with someone who treated me like an accessory.
Then I think about Ronan. About the steadiness in his voice. The certainty in his touch.
He assumed it would remain a memory. So did I. Now that memory has weight. Technically minuscule weight at the moment, but it’s there all the same.
“I don’t know what to do,” I whisper into the dark.
I’m terrified.
Terrified of losing my body as I know it. My independence. Terrified of doing this wrong. Terrified of doing it alone. But beneath all of it, underneath the panic and the logistics and the what-ifs, there is something else.
This tiny life is mine. To have removed or to keep, it’s mine.
The truth is, I already know the answer. I’ve always known that if I were to get pregnant, I’d keep it. I don’t judge anybody for handling it differently than I would.
Handling it differently than I am.
I swallow hard. Did I really just make that decision?
Yeah. I think I did. I’m going to be a mom.