Lucia
Three weeks is long enough for your body to stop running on adrenaline. Long enough for terror to soften around the edges, like bruises fading from purple to yellow green. They’re still there, still tender, but easier to hide if you keep your sleeves down and your voice steady.
It’s also long enough for the truth to find you.
I’m wiping down table six when the nausea hits. Not the sharp, immediate kind that comes with panic. Not the violent flip of my stomach that used to happen when Marco’s keys hit the counter too hard, or when the air in a room shifted and my body knew before my mind did.
This is different. This is slow. It rises in my throat like heat, quiet and persistent, like My body is trying to ground itself without asking permission.
My hand pauses mid-wipe. The rag hangs there. The laminated surface blurs for half a second.
“Lu?” Jenna calls from behind the counter. “You okay?”
I drag my face into something harmless. Something neutral. Something people don’t look at too long.
“Yeah,” I lie. “Just hungry.”
Hungry is the safest lie in the world. People accept it without asking questions. Hungry means you’re normal. Hungry means you’re not falling apart in public.
I swallow hard, breathe through my nose like I can push the nausea back down by force, and keep moving.
The diner smells like grease and syrup and coffee that’s been burning on the warmer too long.
Comforting, if you let it. The kind of place where people complain about the weather and tip poorly and act like the biggest tragedy in their day is a runny egg.
I’m still learning how to exist in spaces like this. Still learning that a slammed door can just be a slammed door. Still learning that my shoulders don’t have to live up by my ears.
I hate that I’m learning all of this under fluorescent lights with strangers watching me refill their cups. My uniform collar itches. My hair is pinned up the way the manager likes. My smile is practiced, pleasant, noncommittal. A smile that says I won’t inconvenience you with my humanity.
Outside the window, the city keeps moving. Midday traffic. People in clean coats, carrying grocery bags like they’ve never had to decide whether leaving would kill them.
I drop checks. Refill coffees. Nod at jokes I barely hear.
And underneath it all, my body keeps whispering, Not right. Not right. Not right.
By the time my shift ends, my feet ache and my stomach feels hollow in a way that isn’t hunger at all.
I walk home fast. Not because I’m late. Because my brain has started connecting dots, and once it starts, it doesn’t stop. It never stops.
My efficiency apartment is on the third floor of a narrow brick building that smells like old laundry and someone’s garlic dinner. The hallway light buzzes faintly. My key sticks in the lock like it’s resisting me.
Inside is small enough to feel manageable. Small enough to feel like I can keep control of it. Kitchenette. Bed. Tiny table. A secondhand couch that squeaks when I sit on it. One window that looks out over an alley, and a fire escape I’ve checked twice even though I don’t need it.
Habits don’t disappear just because the threat does.
I drop my bag. Kick off my shoes. And stand there, staring at nothing, while my mind does what it always does when it’s afraid.
It runs the numbers. My period is late. Not by a day. By enough that I’ve stopped checking casually and started checking obsessively. Like staring at the calendar on my phone will force time to correct itself. Like I can shame my body into behaving.
My fingers don’t feel like mine as I grab my phone and open the calendar app. Scroll. Back. Back. Back.
I count in weeks the way you count down seconds before something hits. Three weeks. Twenty-three days. And suddenly, my throat tightens, because my body remembers what my mind has been refusing to name.
The hotel. Warm sheets. Warm hands. His mouth at my throat, unhurried. His voice low and steady. Not taking, not demanding, waiting for me to choose.
Me, choosing. Me, saying yes like I deserved to want something that didn’t hurt.
I close my eyes. Try to breathe. My mind reaches automatically for the monster I know.
Marco.
Because Marco is familiar. Marco is the threat I spent years mapping, predicting, surviving by becoming quieter and smaller and better at not needing.
It would make sense if this was his. A final chain. A permanent tether.
My stomach rolls hard enough that I have to brace a hand on the counter. No, no, no.
I force myself to keep scrolling. Two months. More than two months.
The last time with Marco wasn’t even sex. Not in the way people mean it. It was frustration and impatience and him too high to finish, too distracted to want me for anything other than the control of it.
Protection. Always protection, when he bothered. Like his image mattered more than my body. Like consequences were something he only cared about only if they made him look bad.
I remember it too clearly because I remember the relief afterward. The quiet relief I didn’t speak out loud. That at least one thing couldn’t happen.
My thumb stops. The math is brutal. Clean. Unforgiving. I stare at the dates until my eyes blur.
Then the sentence slips out of me, like my body needs it said aloud.
“It’s not his.”
It should feel like relief. It doesn’t. It feels like stepping off a ledge and realizing the air below is full of something else. Something new. Something I can’t plan for.
My hands shake as I grab my coat. I don’t sit down. Sitting down is dangerous. Sitting down is how you spiral. So I walk. Fast. Purposeful. Down three flights and out into cold air that bites my cheeks and makes me feel awake.
The pharmacy is three blocks away. Close enough to be routine.
Far enough to feel like a decision. People pass me without looking.
My paranoia hates that. Hates the anonymity because it feels like invisibility, and invisibility feels like I’m being erased.
Still, I keep my chin down. Eyes forward.
Scanning windows for reflections the way I used to scan Marco’s face for the shift that meant run.
No one follows. No one calls my name. No one grabs my wrist. My body doesn’t believe it, but I make myself keep walking.
Inside, the air changes. Bright and clean and chemical. The kind of sterile that pretends nothing bad ever happens in places like this. The pregnancy tests are near the back. There are too many options. Too many cheerful fonts promising certainty, like certainty is supposed to be comforting.
My fingers hover. I pick one. Then another. As if buying two will make me less terrified of the first answer.
At the counter, the cashier doesn’t look up. Scans the boxes. Bags them. Says the price like she’s ringing up gum. Normal.
My throat tightens, anyway. I take the bag and leave like I stole something.
Back home, my apartment feels smaller. Too quiet. Too aware of me. I set the bag on the counter and stare at it for a long moment, like it might change shape if I wait long enough.
I don’t want to know.
I want to know so badly, it makes me dizzy.
I open the box. Instructions. Plastic. A tiny white stick that holds the potential to ruin or remake my life. My hands shake so much, I almost drop it.
The bathroom is barely big enough to turn around in. The light flickers when I switch it on. The mirror is cheap, slightly warped at the edges, bending my face like it’s trying to make me unfamiliar with myself.
I lock the door. Stupid. There’s no one here to come in. But my body loosens by a fraction, like a part of me still believes a barrier means safety.
I do the test. Carefully. Methodically. Like if I do it right, the universe will reward me with an answer I can survive.
Then I set it on the edge of the sink. The instructions say three minutes. Three minutes isn’t long. Three minutes is nothing. But when you’re waiting for something that can change everything, three minutes is a lifetime.
I set a timer on my phone. 03:00.
I can’t look at the test.
I can’t.
I turn away and press my hands flat against the counter, breathing through my mouth like I’m trying not to throw up or scream or both.
My mind fills the silence instantly. Marco’s eyes, blown wide and black.
The stranger’s scarred knuckles, steady around mine.
His voice in the dark. Breathe with me. His mouth against mine in that suite.
Careful at first, like he was listening instead of taking.
Like he wanted me, but wanted my yes more.
The thought hits so hard, my knees almost buckle.
Safe.
Pregnant isn’t safe. Pregnant is vulnerable. Pregnant is visible. Pregnant is something men can use.
My stomach twists, low and deep, like my body is already answering for me.
The timer beeps.
I freeze. My heart slams so hard, it hurts my ribs. I stare at the wall for one more second, because if I don’t turn around, the result doesn’t exist yet.
Then I turn. The test sits on the sink. White plastic. Small. Ordinary.
And there, like a joke, like a curse, like a miracle…
Two pink lines.