Chapter Eighteen
Laurie
Fuck.
It wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be. I was in a dream, and at any moment, I would wake up to reality, where I didn’t have to face it. Right?
I pinched my arm, but nothing happened.
“Crap.” It was such a minor curse, but I felt so defeated that I didn’t have any energy to muster up some true swears.
Maybe I read it wrong.
I snorted and looked at the stick again, picking it up off the bathroom counter. It was awfully hard to make a mistake when the little screen on it actually used words.
2-3 Weeks
Although the little plastic test might not be able to narrow it down any more than that, I certainly could. Unless it was an immaculate conception, there was only one occurrence in nearly a month and a half that could have caused my situation.
Situation. What a cold word.
“You’re pregnant,” I said, pulling up my pants and standing. I eyed myself in the mirror. “Say it. You’re pregnant. That’s what it is.”
I was pregnant.
My knees suddenly wobbled, and I slid to the floor. Tears sprang from my eyes, and I began to cry. So many emotions filled me at that moment.
Fear. Regret. Confusion. Anger. Sadness.
Hope. Joy.
None of them could beat out the others, and the storm of hormones that came with it ensured I spent a good long time crying my eyes out.
At some point, the tears dried up, and I was left sitting on the cool tile of my condo’s primary bathroom.
“There’s nothing you can do about it down here,” I told myself, taking a deep breath in, then letting it out. My hands were still shaking.
That time I got up and stayed up. I could cry. Sob. Scream. Break things. I would let myself do all that. But not alone.
A quick call and a rideshare later, I was outside Melanie’s cute little three-story walk-up townhouse.
She lived on the city’s edge, not quite the burbs, but not downtown.
It was a lovely neighborhood, with trees that, while not old and stately, were mature.
The sidewalks and driveways were plowed and clean.
Everything kept in good shape. I liked where she’d chosen to live.
“Hi,” I said as my sister opened the door, still in her pajamas. “Sorry to ruin your lazy Saturday.”
“It’s eight-thirty in the morning. I don’t work. I don’t have a boyfriend or a dog. I’m just taking my time getting ready, not living in them all day,” she said. “Tomorrow, though …”
I smiled as I took off my coat and boots and made myself at home. I almost went to the pot of coffee, but then I declined.
“No coffee?” Mel asked suspiciously, noting my behavior. “Who are you, and what have you done with my sister?”
“I’m a little green man from Mars now,” I said. “Ak-ak, yak, ak-ak-kak.”
She stared at me. “Huh?”
“Never mind, you wouldn’t get the reference,” I said. “No coffee for me.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not good.”
“You fucking love coffee,” Mel said, following me as I went and sat on her couch.
“I know. I do. Which is why giving it up is going to be damn hard.”
“Giving it up?” Mel narrowed her eyes, searching my face. “What’s going on?”
I sighed. “Don’t … don’t freak out, okay? You’re going to want to, but that is not what I need right now.”
“Are you okay? Are you sick?”
“Only in the mornings,” I muttered.
It took Mel about three seconds for her eyes to go wide. “Are you serious?”
I nodded. “Took the test this morning. Two to three weeks.”
Mel started to go bug-eyed. Then she stopped. “Wait. Did you and Eric … that night at Mom and Dad’s … before it all went down?”
I shook my head.
Mel expected me to say yes, and she was in the middle of an “Oh, shit” when the truth filtered in. After all, I’d told her we were going to start trying. We didn’t want to wait until after the wedding. Or, at least, that was what my douchebag of an ex had told me. Regardless, Mel had known.
“Oh, shit,” she said a second time with even more emphasis.
“Yeah.”
“Who? I didn’t realize you’d hooked up with anyone. Or even gone on any dates. Please tell me you aren’t back together with Eric. He called me to try and get you back together, but he was super creepy about it.”
“Absolutely not!” I looked away. “Definitely not him. No need to worry there. What was he doing?”
Melanie looked away.
“What?”
“He suggested that … maybe he and I would be a better fit.”
I gaped at her. “That fucking creep. Are you serious? He actually tried to get with you? What a fucking asshole. Ew.”
“I know,” Mel said, shaking her head. “I didn’t want to tell you ‘cause, well, I would never touch that, but also, you were having a hard time with it all.”
“It’s fine,” I said, waving it off. “I don’t care. Now that I’ve seen the real him, I’m not surprised.”
My sister leaned back against the edge of the couch. “So … whose is it, then?”
I sighed, burying my face in my hands.
“Is it that embarrassing? Did you go out and get drunk one night?”
“Not … quite,” I half-moaned. “Um. Do you remember I told you about that guy at dad’s, the groundskeeper guy who intervened with Eric? The really fucking hot one?”
“Yes …”
“Yeah. Um. I drove him home that night ‘cause he said he didn’t have a ride back to the city. And, uh, he invited me up, and then—”
“You slept with one of Dad’s house staff?” Mel asked bluntly.
“He’s not actually on staff,” I said, my anger at being duped returning. “He’s a freaking prince of somewhere, though he wouldn’t tell me where or why he was at Dad’s house. Maybe they were meeting to talk about something. I don’t know. But, yeah.”
“A prince?” Mel yelped. “You’re having a royal baby?”
I gasped. My brain hadn’t made that connection yet. My child was, in all possibility, the heir to a throne somewhere.
“Oh my god,” I whispered. “Oh my god. What the fuck? What the actual fuck? That changes everything.”
“A little bit,” Mel said. “I can’t believe my sister is going to be a queen-mother one day.”
“A … oh, dear,” I said. “I don’t know. That changes things.”
“Why?” Mel asked, face tightening. “Are you going to get rid of it?”
I hesitated, then told her the truth. “I definitely had that thought. I’m not going to lie, but even as I did have it, I just sort of knew I couldn’t do that. No, I’m keeping it. I think I’ve accepted this is the way my life is going to go now.”
“So, what does it change, then?” Mel asked, coming in close to hug me, sensing I needed it.
She was right.
“Well, I hadn’t planned on telling him about it,” I said. “But now … if it’s going to be of royal blood, well, I kind of have to, don’t I?”
“Probably,” Mel agreed.
“But what if he’s upset about it? Or angry? I mean, what if he tries to have me killed because royal babies out of wedlock are bad?”
“So tell him in a public place. If he threatens you …” Mel’s face grew grim. “Father has resources.”
I grimaced, looking away. We didn’t like to talk about all aspects of our dad’s business. But he worked on technologies related to war. That was his business. And that meant the people who liked war courted him.
“It won’t come to that,” I said, thinking of Rip. “He’s … he might be angry, but I don’t think it’ll actually come to violence.”
“And you can’t control how he feels about being a father,” Mel said. “As long as he doesn’t threaten you. After all, if he didn’t want to be one, then he should have, you know, used a condom or whatever.”
“Yeah.” I shook my head. “I can’t believe I was that dumb.”
“It was pretty stupid,” Mel agreed. “You knew you weren’t on any birth control anymore.”
“I know. I just … he touched me, and …” I looked up at her. “He was good. Like, the kind you dream about that makes your mind melt, and all you can do is go with it, sort of good.”
“That good?”
“Literally never had any better,” I admitted. “And there’s no even close second place.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. I didn’t think because I couldn’t think the instant he touched me. It was like my brain shut off. Only when it was over did I realize.”
“Didn’t you … you know, take a morning-after pill?”
“Yup,” I said. “Clearly didn’t do its job properly. Idiot.”
“It feels nice to have you be the idiot for once,” Mel admitted with a reassuring smile. “Usually, it’s me.”
We shared a laugh, and then I cried. Mel held me the entire time.
“So, now, what?” I eventually asked.
“Now, I’m going to drink all that coffee, and you’re going to get up the courage to go find your baby-daddy and tell him you’re carrying his child,” Mel said, getting up.
“Please do not call him that.”
“Your Sugar-Prince?”
“Mel …”
“Sweet-King?”
“Mel.”
“Aspartame-Emperor?”
I made angry noises.
“Sucralose-Succubus?”
“Argh!” I shouted and flung a pillow at her.