Chapter 10
MOLLY
The box feels heavier than it should. It’s just plastic and a bit of chemistry, but in my hands, it might as well be a brick, anchoring me to the cold tile floor of my tiny bathroom.
I swallow hard and open it, pulling out the plastic stick and the instruction leaflet.
I’m too stressed to read the whole thing, and I skip to the important part.
I need to pee on it, wait three minutes, and find out if my life is about to implode – two lines for yes, one line for no.
I take a deep breath and sit down on the toilet.
I position the test between my legs where I estimate the flow of pee will go, and I relax my muscles and let myself pee.
I pull the stick out and it’s wet – it’s worked.
Now for the longest three minutes of my life.
I pick my cell phone up from the edge of the sink and set the timer on it for three minutes.
I finish up on the toilet and stand up, but my legs feel shaky, so I put the lid down and sit back down.
Three minutes feels like a year and all kinds of scenarios run through my head. I close my eyes to try and block them out, but it doesn’t work. Of course it doesn’t work. Nothing is going to work except seeing one line on that pregnancy test.
It’s ironic that I want to do nothing more than look at the test for the full three minutes, but the second my cell phone alarm starts to beep telling me the time is up, I’m suddenly too afraid to look at the test stick.
I know I have to though – I have to know.
I reach out and pick it up and my world crumbles apart.
I stare at the test stick in my hand, willing it to change, willing it to be wrong. But the second line is there, as clear as day. It’s so clear it feels almost like it’s mocking me. My heart pounds so loudly I swear I can hear it echoing off the bathroom walls.
I’m pregnant. Fuck.
I release a breath I’ve been holding, reminding myself that I need to breathe, and I stand up and grip the edge of the sink to steady myself.
My knees feel weak, and my mind is racing so fast that I can’t hold onto a single thought before another one crashes in.
This can’t be happening. Not to me. I’m the sensible one, the one that doesn’t do anything rash.
That one night with Joshua was supposed to be a crazy, one night thing.
A story to reminisce about someday, a reminder that I was once reckless and free.
It wasn’t meant to be a lifetime commitment and not even a lifetime commitment to him, because I have no idea how to reach him.
This is a lifetime commitment that I never wanted and never asked for.
Not this. Not forever.
I press my fingertips to my temples, squeezing my eyes shut.
I should have known. The nausea, the exhaustion, the way my body has felt different in some unexplainable way these past few weeks.
I blamed it on stress, on long shifts and too much coffee.
But deep down, a part of me must have known.
I mean I must have had a suspicion to even bother doing the test.
I force my eyes open, and I stare at my reflection in the mirror. My face is pale, my lips pressed together in a thin line. I look the same, but I don’t feel like me anymore. I feel like someone else entirely. Someone about to make a choice that will change everything.
I have options. That’s what I tell myself as I sink to the floor, my knees pulled up to my chest. I don’t have to do this.
No one would judge me if I didn’t. This wasn’t planned, and my life isn’t set up for it.
I work at a resort in Vegas, for God’s sake.
I don’t have stability, a partner, a support system.
It’s not like anyone would even have to know.
It’s not like I can tell the baby’s father.
Literally all I know about him is his first name - Joshua.
His name still lingers in the back of my mind, whispering through the memories I’ve tried not to think about.
I squeeze my eyes shut again, but I can still see him; his smouldering smile, the way he looked at me like I was the only thing that mattered in the world.
The way his fingers laced with mine as we stumbled into the tattoo shop, drunk and reckless and stupidly happy.
I absently reach around and run my fingers over the tiny, inked symbol above my left hip that once felt like a reminder of a reckless night. I guess I have more than one reminder now. Assuming I choose to keep the baby obviously.
I exhale, long and slow, and press my palm over my stomach. There’s something inside me, something real. Something that isn’t just a memory or a wild story from a night that wasn’t supposed to mean anything. This means something.
I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to be a mother.
But I know one thing with certainty; I can’t get rid of the one part of Joshua I get to keep.
Even as I was telling myself I had options, I knew I was keeping the baby.
I knew it the moment I first thought of it as a baby.
Hell, I knew it the moment I saw two lines on the pregnancy test stick.
I’m going to be a mom.
The realization of this settles over me like a quiet storm.
This changes everything. My job, my life, my future.
I can’t work at the resort for much longer.
I can’t keep up with the long nights and the endless shift rotations, not with a baby.
That means leaving. That means going back home to Boston, to the life I thought I’d outgrown.
And I know I will have to make the move sooner rather than later, because I will need to get a place and get it all sorted before the baby arrives.
There’s so much to do, so much to organize, so much to think about. But not in this moment. In this moment, I just want to sit here and absorb the fact that I’m going to have a baby.
Tears sting my eyes, but I don’t let them fall.
I’ll miss this life I had built for myself; of that I have no doubt.
But this isn’t just an ending. It’s a beginning, too.
It’s scary and it’s uncertain and for sure nothing like what I had planned.
But it’s real and it’s happening. And maybe, just maybe, that’s enough. Maybe this was my destiny all along.