Chapter 17 Lucy
Lucy
The room was so still that Lucy could hear her friends’ breath. Never had she been so silent in her life. Never had Drew been so silent in his life. And definitely never had five minutes passed by at the speed of a sloth.
A month after starting the shots, and three weeks to the day after the transfer, the three of them stood there, silently.
If someone peeked through the window, they’d probably think a group of friends had gathered for a seance, to worship the power of a digital stick.
She, Drew, and Mason were crowded into the bathroom and staring at the pregnancy test lying on the bathroom counter.
All their hopes and dreams, and serious amounts of cash, held in the balance by a plastic stick.
‘We should look away, right? Let’s look away.’ Drew chewed on his pinky nail. The last time Lucy had seen him do that was when he was waiting for Mason to call him back after their first date. ‘Let’s go into the hall.’
Mason tugged Drew’s finger from his mouth. ‘This is going to be okay. If it’s negative, we still have three other embryos we can use. After that, we try again.’
‘We should’ve implanted two.’ Drew shoved his hands in his pocket, then pulled them back out. ‘What were we thinking?’
Um, nope. She had never signed up to carry twins.
Mason stood in front of Drew and put his hands on Drew’s shoulder. ‘Babe. We didn’t want to try for twins, remember? What if both took?’ He pulled Drew in for a hug.
This moment was definitely for the dads.
Lucy wanted to give them distance, should give them some distance, but also had the deep desire to elbow both so that they’d make some room for her to join their hug circle.
When thinking of this moment, she didn’t expect to feel so empty.
But for the first time in this journey, she felt like an outsider, watching a movie on how a family prepares for life-changing news.
She could’ve stepped into the next room, and her besties wouldn’t have noticed.
It wasn’t jealousy she was feeling, per se.
Nor loneliness. No … the feeling engulfing her was something different, something relatively new, something she didn’t yet have a label for and needed to process.
A longing tugged at her, a sort of wistfulness, like an unfulfilled wish … Oh. She did know what this was.
She wanted a partner.
And she knew which partner she wanted.
But everything was so complicated.
She and Jade had grown close, and Lucy really, really liked her. And deep down? Lucy knew it was more than like. She felt it, she knew it, but she’d never whispered those words to another person besides her dad and Drew. And she certainly wasn’t in the headspace to do it now.
Lucy had signed an affidavit declaring her singlehood.
She had signed a medical document stating she’d refrain from sex before implantation – although based on Jade sleeping with fewer people than she could count with on one hand, the chances of an STI were slim.
But in any case! Here she was, hopefully, about to be confirmed pregnant.
The timing was terrible.
But … was she using timing as an excuse? And even if she was, was that a bad thing? I mean, if she could focus on the excuses, and the reasons they couldn’t be together, due to the journey she was about to take, maybe this twisty, twirling, ‘keep her up at night’ feelings would disappear.
Ugh. Too many thoughts were running through her head. She was just crouching to rub Chucky’s ears when the sound of a buzzer cut through the silence.
Oh boy, here we go.
‘Ready?’ Mason asked, waving his arm towards the bathroom.
Drew exhaled, his cheeks nearly matching his fire-red hair.
Lucy’s gut constricted and the back of her throat itched. The room looked a few shades darker than even a moment ago, as she flickered her gaze between the guys standing with straight lips and twisted eyebrows.
Even Mason looked nervous. Stiff, normally calm and ‘cool as a Sunday morning breeze’ Mason had a flushed face.
All year, she had thought about this moment.
Drew would sprint across the room, nudging her out of the way in his excitement to see the results, prompting a fatherly scolding from Mason.
Instead, they all stood there, frozen and unbreathing.
Finally, Lucy broke and shuffled down the hall.
The pregnancy stick held years’ worth of dreams and work. If it showed positive, their lives changed immediately, forever. If negative, they’d be crushed. No one reached for the bathroom door handle.
‘We got this, right? Come on, guys. Let’s do this.’ She tried to be chipper. She really did. But her voice fell flat, and she gulped. She opened the door and squeezed her eyes shut.
The men stood behind her, silent. The only sounds were the ticking analogue clock in the living room, Chucky snoring, and Lucy’s own heartbeat, thudding in her ears.
She blinked at the test. She should breathe now, right? Oxygen was necessary for survival. Finally, a sharp breath pinched her chest, and she stumbled a few inches to the side.
‘Pregnant!’ Drew screamed, throwing himself into Mason’s arms before pulling Lucy in. Everything blurred as they stumbled back into the hall, as sighs of relief and squeals filled the air. ‘Oh my God, we did it! Do you feel different?’
‘From thirty seconds ago?’ Lucy hugged them, expensive cologne, mint, and sweat mixing in her nose.
‘Nope. Still feeling like the same sexy beast as always.’ She was pretty sure that she’d kept her tone jovial, but she sure wasn’t feeling jovial underneath the facade.
Thankfully, the men didn’t seem to notice.
For the past two years, she’d thought about this moment so many times.
What she’d feel like, if her heart would explode.
If her ears would ring. If she’d scream and jump on the counter, or lie down immediately, put her feet up, and swear off anything non-organic.
She’d thought her mind would swirl like a burst of confetti in the wind, or that she’d cry from happiness as the joy poured from her.
But never once had she predicted the emotional state she now found herself in.
She wanted to cry. And not the good kind of cry either. Not the ‘we’ve worked so hard and finally made our dream come true’ cry. Nope, this one was the straight-up ‘sad for myself, want to wallow in a bathtub’ cry.
She should be feeling happy, right? Elated, excited, or any other possible positive emotion.
Or heck – she’d even take nerves, terror, something.
She watched the men hug. Drew wiped tears, Mason whispered in his ear, and they kissed.
They didn’t mean to make her feel isolated, of course.
But watching them be so adorable and snuggly together, her stomach sank.
Drew reached out an arm for Lucy, once again gathering her in, and squeezed. ‘I can’t believe this is real. It’s real, Luce! Everything. We did it.’ He pulled back and clapped his hands together. He looked so happy. So earnest. ‘I love you. You know that?’
Lucy smiled. She wanted to wrap herself back in his embrace, have him tell her everything was okay, they got this, and what she was experiencing was totally normal. ‘I love you, too.’
Mason rubbed his palms together, his throat bobbing.
He was always the pragmatic one in the relationship.
The man had Hilary Clinton-like nerves of steel, never showing real ups or downs.
But the light reflected a mist in his dark eyes Lucy had never seen before.
Uh-oh. Lucy wasn’t sure if she could handle Mason’s emotions when she could barely handle her own.
‘Lucy,’ he said, his voice cracking, ‘I … there’s so much … I, we, can never repay—’
‘Oof. I have to use the bathroom. Sorry. You think ’cause I just peed on a stick I’d be fresh out, but here it is, gurgling around the ’ole belly.’ She shooed them away before they could question what in the hell she was even saying.
The bathroom door clicked shut. She rested back against the wall and blew upwards as she fanned her face.
What if they had misread the stick? Were they absolutely sure a ‘not’ wasn’t floating above the word ‘pregnant’?
The men would be devastated. They had read it correctly, right?
She quickly unwrapped another stick to test again, just to make sure.
While waiting for the secondary test, she squinted at the word, focusing on the plus sign with ‘pregnant’ right underneath.
Three solid moments passed. Dizziness kicked in, a fog in her vision out of nowhere. She planted her palms on the counter to catch herself.
Holy shit. I’m pregnant.
She flumped on the toilet seat and dropped her head into her hand. I’m pregnant. Deep breath in and out. In and out. Every potential missing emotion from the last ten minutes slammed into her at once, like a boxing speed bag. Happy, scared, sad, elated, terrified.
Terrified rose to the surface.
Had her mom ever felt this way? She bit back tears and tried to picture her mother’s reaction when she found out she was pregnant.
She hadn’t had this many questions about her mom in forever and was hungry for intel.
Was she scared? Happy? Sad? Was her dad in the room with her?
Did her parents try for her or was she a surprise?
Heat filled her face and chest. She splashed cool water on her cheeks and breathed through her nose.
Tugging up her shirt, she ran a palm down her stomach.
She angled to the side, then the other side, then back again, inspecting for any sign of pregnancy.
She poked her index finger into her fleshy belly, but nothing.
A touch on the curvy side – it would probably take a while before she saw anything.