Twelve
Bri
Keisha and Junie run to me, pulling me into a heart-healing three-way hug. Trapped in an embrace I don’t want to leave, I realize how much I’ve missed them. Tears of relief sting at my eyes. “What are you doing here?”
“We wanted to see you,” Junie says into my shoulder.
“And to show that man we can find him if he tries anything,” Keisha adds. I can’t see, but she’s giving him dagger eyes for sure.
“Stop. Everything’s going great. Liem’s the third-best roomie ever.” Each will assume they take first place, and I will never tell either they’re wrong. Finally, I let them go. “Say hi to him, please.”
“Hi,” they say at the same time.
“Hi,” he says with a small wave. Liem deflates into the shape he was when we first met, slouching with shyness, his energy muted by discomfort. It triggers my instinct to protect him.
My friends are big and brash in the best ways, but they might be too much for Liem.
“Come inside, we’ll show you the apartment.
” I let them through the door and direct them to our floor, then block Liem before he can step in.
“If you need to check out, say you have work you need to do and I’ll back you up, okay? ”
The corner of his mouth curves up. “Thank you.”
I press a kiss to his cheek to say I got you.
Once we’re in the apartment, they don’t even ask for a tour before poking their heads through doors, arms linked, acting like a nosy monster with two heads. Liem stands beside me, absentmindedly pulling on the strings of his hood.
“This is cute,” Junie says.
“Isn’t it?” I say. “How long are you here? Where are you staying?”
“Only one night,” Keisha answers. “I have to get back before work on Monday.”
“Tickets were so cheap, I convinced her to take a last-minute trip. We have a hotel room in SoHo,” Junie says. I don’t know where that is, so it must not be close.
“We should go out! Show us the city,” Keisha suggests.
“I’ve been here three weeks,” I remind her. “I still use GPS when I’m going up the street.”
“I know some places,” Junie says. She comes to New York at least twice every year.
She loves it here, claiming it’s the density, pace, and lack of required driving.
Keisha is a California girl down to her bones.
More than a month of sub-40s temperatures and she would think she’s dying.
“We should go to dinner.” She poses her suggestion in Liem’s direction.
“Are you free?” I ask Liem, presenting him with the easiest way to escape.
He tucks his hands into his hoodie’s pocket. “Actually, I have some work I need to catch up on.”
“No,” Keisha complains. “You can’t even come out for an hour?”
“He has deadlines, and he’s on West Coast time,” I say. “He probably won’t be free until late tonight.” They seem to believe me. Still, they pout.
“You three have fun,” he tells us.
Keisha shakes her head as he walks away. When his door closes, she says exactly what I thought she would. “Lord, he is scrumptious.”
“A delicacy,” Junie adds in. “I need to tinkle, then we’re getting sushi so I can drink sake while you tell me how he is in bed.”
I point her toward the powder room with a chuckle. It’s going to be like this all day, and I’m honestly thrilled.
“You’re stressing me out, but I’m glad you’re here,” I tell Keisha. “I miss you.”
“That’s a purely optional feeling, my babe,” she says. “When are you coming home?”
“Soon.”
“How soon?”
She stands differently than usual. Maybe that’s odd to notice, but I have always admired her posture.
It is confidence and good spinal alignment, like a powerful attorney with good health insurance should have.
She usually crosses her arms right under her breasts as if she needs another reason for anyone to notice their voluminous perfection.
Now, she leans on one hip, her arms crossed at the wrist over her stomach.
“Are you pregnant?” I blurt.
Her eyes widen, hands flexing on her stomach before she drops them. Then the smile pulls at her cheeks. “How did you know?”
“Because I know you.” I pull her into a hug. Against me, I can feel the tiny bump that hides well under her curves. “And I’m so fucking happy for you.”
She lets out a relieved sigh into my shoulder, hugging me back with the intensity of one hundred unspoken words.
Keisha never said much about her IVF rounds, likely trying to spare my feelings as if I would somehow loathe her for wanting something different than I do.
One night, when her moods were swinging like a pendulum, I went to her bathroom to escape her wrath and saw one of the vials in the trash.
She admitted they’d started trying almost a year ago.
I don’t know how long it takes or the timeline of the treatments, but she doesn’t have to talk about it for me to know how much she has wanted to have a baby.
“When did you find out?” I ask, my voice tight. The news has made me more emotional than expected.
“Months ago. We were waiting to get through the first trimester to tell anyone, which was, like, three seconds before you left.”
She’s more than three months in already. I can’t believe my best friend is going to be a mommy so soon.
“Our last round of IVF was over six months ago. We weren’t planning to do another until next year, and I didn’t think to test until I was sitting in the kitchen at two a.m. eating Takis with boysenberry jam.”
“That’s revolting.” I laugh tears away.
“It is, but it’s also so good.” I will not put that to the test. “We were going to wait a few more weeks so you’d have time to bask in the joy of your engagement, since no one thought you’d get completely fucked over by—let me stop. Rage is not a healthy emotion to share with baby.”
“That’s your opinion.”
She hugs me again. “Junie doesn’t know yet. We wanted to make a big announcement after you come home.”
So, about that . . .
Junie comes back, grinning at me like I’m not hiding two secrets from her. Keisha is having a baby and I don’t want to go home yet. “Ready?” she asks.
~
How am I the first to notice Keisha is pregnant? Sushi is one of her favorite foods, second only to her mother’s egusi—though she may only claim that as her favorite out of fear of retribution—but she has ramen instead of her usual chirashi bowl, and water instead of sake.
There was a time when anything baby-related would make me sad. I had never pictured myself having kids before I got my diagnosis, but hearing that I couldn’t felt like the choice was stolen away. After treatment, getting my body back, I found my new life was a gift rather than a loss.
It’s interesting the way our brains make us forget about pain.
I’ve almost forgotten the times I spent on the floor of my dorm, the pain so bad I would pass out with my head on the toilet seat, Keisha waking me up after I had missed a whole day of classes.
That time I took an exam, trying not to groan in pain while sitting in that silent room, my vision going in and out, yet still ending up with a B.
Every once in a while, I remember the heating pad I kept at my desk during my last office job, my coworker saying, “Wow, the heating pad is out already today?” before I recognized my “bad days” were becoming most of my days.
Now, I can live my life, I can be physically active, I can enjoy my body. Surgery and a piece of plastic in my uterus gave me my life back. While I will always have this disease, I will never regret my choice to do whatever it takes to avoid those memories becoming my reality again.
“When are you coming back?” Keisha asks.
My original assumption was they were here to bring me back with them. “Soon,” I say.
“How soon? You said you’d be here two weeks, and it’s been almost a month.”
“Leave her alone,” Junie says. “Let her have her rebound moment with her live-in snack. She’ll come back when she’s had her fill.”
Would it be easier to tell them the truth or let them make assumptions? “That’s not—”
“Is he good?” Junie asks. “To be perfectly honest, he looks like he’d be a pillow princess. Prince? Looking pretty while he lies there.”
That’s mean, though the image doesn’t upset me. “I wouldn’t know.”
“You and Liem aren’t sleeping together?” Keisha asks, her jaw dropping as if this headline is more shocking than the baby developing inside her.
“How and why?” Junie asks, sounding borderline offended.
“I’m so glad you’re here to ask how the man I live with is in bed rather than how I am outside of it. Missed you too.” They both shoot me looks. “I’m safe, I’m comfortable, and I will be home soon. That’s all. Thank you.”
“I need to pee,” Keisha announces as she stands from the table. Why are we like this?
She leaves, and Junie homes in on me like a hawk diving toward a fish. “I know you’re keeping a secret from me,” she says. “And I know what it is.”
“I am?”
She scoffs. “Please. It’s obvious you’re going to stay here for longer. I want to make sure you’re staying for you, not for that man.”
I could have walked right into that. “I am. I love you both, but I don’t want to have to couch surf into my thirties.”
“It’s a number, baby. You won’t be worth less because you turned thirty. Don’t let the patriarchy lie to you.”
“It’s a little more than that.”
“You have plenty of time to get where you want to be. It takes some of us longer than others.”
You say when you’re one step from the top of the ladder. How small I must look from her lofty view.
“And I know Keisha’s pregnant,” she adds.
Fuck. Of course she knows. I don’t like the idea of secrets between the three of us.
“If she’s not going to tell me, I’m not going to tell her I’m up for the promotion at work.”
“What? Since when?”
“Last week. A coworker saw an email he wasn’t supposed to, and apparently, they’re meeting about me and one other colleague.” Not sure why she emphasized coworker like that, but the news remains the same.
“I’m so proud of you. Both of you,” I say. I wish I had something good to share with them. I believe I will, and soon.
“What did I miss?” Keisha makes both of us jump.
“We’re discussing Bri’s thirtieth,” Junie covers a bit too smoothly. “We should do it up big for her birthday.”
“We should!”
The two go back and forth, debating the best places in LA, acting as if I’m not here.
They’ve given me a lot to think about. And they’ve given me a lot of reasons to want to stay with Liem.