8. Sabrina
8
Sabrina
T hree minutes.
The longest three minutes in the history of time, probably.
I stare at the little plastic stick sitting innocently on my bathroom counter, mocking me with its potential to detonate my entire life.
Three minutes until the verdict.
To distract myself, I retreat to the living room, sinking onto my couch and pulling my laptop onto my knees.
Work.
Work is the antidote to panic.
I open the draft proposal for the Atherton Group rebranding campaign.
Like I can concentrate now .
I set aside the laptop and sigh.
My apartment feels too quiet, too small. It’s Wednesday afternoon. I should be at my downtown office, considering how much I’m paying in rent for the damn thing. But instead, I’m working from home, nursing a persistent queasiness I’ve been blaming on bad takeout, and waiting to see if a single night of spectacular bad judgment six weeks ago has irrevocably altered my future.
Six weeks since Vegas. Six weeks since Tatiana’s impromptu wedding to Dominic Rossi, a wedding fueled by tequila, GHB, and the kind of impulsive insanity only Vegas can inspire. I still can’t quite believe that actually worked out. They were supposed to get an annulment immediately. Ghost marriage. But then Rossi’s big sustainable resort project needed a PR boost, a veneer of stability for the investors. So, they agreed to a thirty-day temporary marriage.
I told Tatiana to make sure she got a huge payout for the thirty-day agreement. I can’t remember the numbers, but it ended up being something like half a million dollars. But then… the thirty days came and went. No annulment. Instead, they stayed married. And now? They’re disgustingly happy. Building a life together. Tatiana Cole-Rossi somehow landed on her feet in a fairy tale co-authored by high-grade pharmaceuticals. Sometimes love, or something resembling it, just needs a really weird, chemically-assisted kickstart.
But me? My Vegas souvenir is far from a happy, accidental marriage to a reformed billionaire. Oh no. My little souvenir might be currently performing microscopic gymnastics in my belly.
The irony is so thick I could spread it on toast. Tatiana takes the GHB, gets married and finds true love. I pretend to take the GHB, have one night of (mostly) sober but utterly reckless sex with the other charming billionaire, and end up… here. Holding my breath, waiting for a plastic stick to confirm my life is officially off-script and over.
It’s probably nothing, I tell myself for the hundredth time .
Stress. Bad sushi from Monday. Hormonal weirdness. There are a million rational explanations for feeling slightly off, and for my period being MIA.
Except… the nausea isn’t just slight. It hit me like a ton of bricks during the Atherton Group pitch meeting yesterday. Right in the middle of explaining Q3 social media engagement strategies. One minute I was dazzling them with pie charts and projections, the next I was swallowing hard, sweat prickling my hairline, trying desperately not to projectile vomit onto their very expensive mahogany conference table. I managed to hold it together, barely, blaming low blood sugar and making a hasty retreat. But the feeling lingered.
My phone timer buzzes.
Okay. Showtime.
My legs feel wobbly as I walk back to the bathroom. My reflection in the mirror looks pale, anxious, definitely not like a woman confidently running her own PR firm (even if it is a tiny, one-woman shop). No, I look like someone bracing for impact.
I pick up the test stick, my hand trembling slightly. I close my eyes for a second, whispering a silent, desperate plea to whatever deity handles reproductive mishaps.
Please be negative.
Please, please, please.
I open my eyes.
Two lines.
Not faint, maybe-it’s-a-shadow lines. Two clear, bold, aggressively pink lines.
Positive.
The air rushes out of my lungs. I grip the edge of the sink, knuckles white, staring at the irrefutable proof.
Positive.
POSITIVE.
Oh my god.
There’s no doubt. No other possibility. That one night. That single, stupid, condomless encounter with Leo Maxwell in his palace of a hotel suite. The night he doesn’t even remember.
My mind races, flashing back to that morning, fleeing his room, wrestling his jeans back onto his sleeping form. The shame, the panic, the certainty that he’d never know.
And now this. A permanent, nine-month, life-altering consequence.
My first instinct is pure, unadulterated terror. Me? A mother? I’m barely keeping my fledgling business afloat. I eat cereal for dinner three nights a week. My longest relationship was with a ficus tree that died of neglect. How am I qualified to raise a whole human being?
And alone? Because there’s no way Leo is part of this equation. Even before the positive test, a morbid curiosity had led me down a Google rabbit hole. ‘Leo Maxwell.’ The search results painted a picture clearer than any pregnancy test. Billionaire tech venture capitalist, yes. But also: notorious playboy, fixture on the gossip pages with a rotating cast of models and actresses, adrenaline junkie. Photos of him grinning from exclusive parties. Articles about his wingsuiting hobby... he flies off of cliffs for FUN . Videos of him BASE jumping, heli-skiing, doing things that scream ‘I have a death wish and zero dependents.’
This is not father material. This is the walking, talking embodiment of everything my own father represented: instability, recklessness, the guarantee of eventual disappearance. Telling him would be inviting history to repeat itself, setting my child up for the same abandonment I experienced. He wouldn’t want this baby. He’d see it as an inconvenience, a complication to his jet-setting lifestyle, another problem for his army of lawyers and fixers to handle. Maybe he’d offer money, a settlement, an NDA. Make the problem go away quietly. But I’m not interested in his money. Or anyone’s, for that matter. Never have been.
So no. Absolutely not. My child deserves better than a father who might acknowledge him or her with a checkbook, if at all. My child deserves better than waiting for a dad who never shows up. I deserved better.
This baby, my baby, will have one parent who is one hundred percent committed, fiercely protective, and always, always there. Even if that parent is currently hyperventilating over a positive pregnancy test.
But… oh god . My mother. Diane Taylor, pillar of the community, the woman who raised me with fierce love and an even fiercer disapproval of anything unconventional. Me, her carefully raised, scholarship-winning daughter, showing up pregnant and unmarried?
The disappointment would be crushing. She sacrificed so much for me after Dad left, worked two jobs, instilled in me the importance of independence, of never relying on a man, of planning meticulously for the future. But this… this is the opposite of all that. A grenade thrown into the carefully constructed life I built to make her proud.
A solution floats into my head, ugly and terrifying. A single word.
Abortion.
It’s an option. A practical solution. Erase the mistake. Get back on track. No one ever has to know. My career wouldn’t be derailed. My mother wouldn’t be devastated. I wouldn’t have to face the terrifying prospect of single motherhood, of potentially failing this child.
My fingers tremble as I pull up a browser window on my phone and enter the search term: Abortion clinics near me.
The results appear instantly. I find one with available appointments later this week. My thumb hovers over the ‘ Book Now ’ button. It feels like defusing a bomb. One click, and the crisis will be averted.
I take a shaky breath and click.
A confirmation pops up.
Friday, 8:00 AM.
Relief should wash over me. But it doesn’t. Instead, a profound wave of emptiness hits me, so intense it makes me nauseous again. I picture the tiny cluster of cells inside me, a microscopic flicker of potential life.
Leo’s life. My life.
A life I’m scheduling for termination like a problematic client contract.
I spend the next two days working from home in a fog. I go through the motions... client calls, emails, drafting press releases, but my mind is elsewhere. Every twinge, every wave of nausea, is a reminder.
Friday looms.
And then, on Friday morning, I get dressed mechanically. Sensible flats, dark trousers, a loose-fitting blouse. Anonymous.
I grab my purse, my keys. The clinic address is programmed into my phone’s GPS.
Walking towards the subway station, the city feels different. Sharper, louder. Every passing stroller seems like a personal affront. Every laughing child a tiny accusation.
I take the subway, reach the street harboring the clinic. I’m walking toward it. Almost there.
Then I see her.
She’s waiting at the crosswalk just ahead of me. A young woman, close to my age, probably running late for some meeting judging by her slightly harried expression. She’s juggling a coffee, a work tote, and the hand of a little girl, maybe three or four years old, with bright pigtails bouncing around her head. The little girl is chattering excitedly about a pigeon, pointing with fierce concentration. The mother glances down, her expression softening instantly into a look of such pure, unadulterated love and amusement that it stops me in my tracks.
In that single, unguarded moment, I see it. The exhaustion, yes, but also the joy. The connection. The fierce, all-consuming love that radiates between them, creating a bubble of warmth on a busy city street. It’s not perfect, it’s probably messy and hard, but it’s real .
And I want it.
I want it so badly it aches. I want the messy, the hard, the exhausting, the joyful. I want the sticky fingers and the bedtime stories and the first steps. I want the unconditional love, the fierce protectiveness I already feel stirring inside me for this tiny, unwanted miracle.
My own childhood may have been fractured, defined by the absence of a father, but maybe… maybe I can do better. Maybe I can create something different for this child. Maybe being a single mother doesn’t have to mean struggle and sacrifice, the way it did for my mom. Maybe it can mean st rength, resilience, and a love so powerful it fills all the empty spaces.
Maybe I don’t have to repeat the pattern.
Right there, on the corner of DeKalb and Fulton, amidst the morning rush, I make my decision.
I turn around.
I walk away from the clinic, away from the easy, practical solution.
I pull out my phone, fingers steady now, and cancel the appointment.
Reason for cancellation? the app prompts.
I type: Change of plans.
A massive understatement.
Walking back toward the subway, the city doesn’t seem so hostile anymore. The fear is still there, a cold knot in my stomach. The anxiety about money, about my career, about telling my mother, about doing this alone… it’s all still very real. But underneath it, something else is growing. Resolve. A fierce, protective determination I didn’t know I possessed.
This is my baby. Our baby, technically, but he’ll never know. This is my secret. My responsibility. My choice.
I’ll figure it out. I’ll have to. I’ll work harder, save more, plan better. I’ll build a fortress of love and stability around this child. She’ll never, ever feel the sting of abandonment. She’ll know she is wanted, cherished. That she’s enough.
She . I smile. Already assuming her gender, am I?
Still, hiding a pregnancy, hiding a baby , from my friends, my family, the world? It seems impossible. A logistical nightmare. A PR crisis of epic proportions waiting to happen. The world will find out eventually, of course. But the father’s identity? I’ll never tell a soul. Except maybe my little one, when he or she is old enough.
I look down at my still-flat stomach, placing a protective hand over the spot where life is quietly unfolding.
Failure is not an option. Not this time.
I can’t help but smile again.
I said I was doing this alone.
But I’m not alone.
Not anymore.