31. Unexpected #2
Lettie ignores my pleas and makes her way to the register.
The teenage girl working there is ennui made flesh and bone.
The speed at which she scans each box is maddening and so I run up the total in my head based on the number of tests and take out a wad of euros from my wallet. Anything to make this go faster.
“Is there a bathroom here?” Lettie asks.
“No.” the girl answers without looking up.
“She’s going to vomit and it’s either going to be here in your aisle or in the bathroom.” Lettie counters. “So let me ask again. Where—”
“In the back, far left side, behind aisle twenty.” She answers in a monotone voice. “Do you want a bag or—”
Lettie grabs however many boxes she can carry and deposits the rest in my arms before pushing me in the direction of aisle twenty.
“Lettie, your brother and I haven’t talked about this yet.” Dread settles like a pit in my stomach. “What if…what if he doesn’t want—”
Her eyes widen. “Are you crazy? My brother is going to be thrilled.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. He’ll be doing cartwheels and jumping jacks and—hey!” She snaps at a worker about to enter the bathroom. “Excuse us, we were here first! Can’t you see she’s potentially pregnant?”
I press a hand against my forehead. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Be sick later.” She tosses the bathroom door open and throws me inside. “Now start peeing!”
* * *
“Maybe we should’ve waited and done this at home.” I say.
Lettie glances up at me from where she’s perched on the edge of the sink, legs crossed, and dragging a file across a chipped nail. “And risk being seen with contraband? Absolutely not! For all we know the tests could come out negative and then we will have caused a fuss for no reason.”
She has a point there, although, I’m not sure how likely a negative test is at this point.
Then again, wouldn’t I have been experiencing symptoms already if I was pregnant?
What was it like the first time around? I can hardly remember.
I was freshly seventeen and it was the summer before senior year of high school.
The whole interlude lasted less than a month: Lyss made me pee on a bunch of tests, we freaked out, I told my father, he freaked out, took me to a doctor, and then a few weeks later I terminated the pregnancy.
I don’t even think I completed a full trimester.
Right now my stomach is in knots and my chest is so tight it’s becoming difficult to breathe. Alejandro and I only ever talked about this in passing, the way anyone does about the future.
I want kids. Do you want kids? Great, we both want kids. Next topic!
We’re newlyweds. Our lives are so full right now.
How would a child fit into the equation?
Do we even have the bandwidth right now?
Do we want it? I haven’t decided. I keep telling myself the numbness will wear off but as of now I can’t feel my fingertips or toes.
More than anything I keep racking my brain for the moment it all went wrong.
Based on my calculations, it must’ve happened while we were in the Philippines.
I’m almost confident I took the pill every day.
Well…mostly every day. There was that one time…
Oh fuck.
“I am freaking out.” Lyss says.
Lettie’s head swings around. “You think you’re freaking out? I’m the one with all the pee sticks on my lap. This is very gross but the last one almost fell down the drain and there’s no table here.”
I pace the length of the small bathroom, unable to remain still. There are only two stalls and two sinks and nowhere else to go.
“I want to see!” Lyss nags from where the phone is perched on a small ledge under the bathroom mirror. “I need to feel like I’m really in the moment.”
The sun hasn’t fully risen yet in New York so she sits snuggled up in a love seat near a small lamp for light. Moments like this make me regret agreeing to move back to Barcelona. I’d give anything for her to be here with me in person, holding my hand, and promising everything will be all right.
“You okay over there?” she asks.
I nod and continue my pacing as I chew on my painted nails.
Lettie whispers, “She’s been acting a little weird.”
“Have not!” I snap.
“Have too,” she sing-songs.
“She’ll be fine,” Lyss placates. “She just doesn’t know how she feels yet.”
Jesus Christ how long does an at-home pregnancy test take? I swear the wait wasn’t this bad when I was seventeen.
“I don’t know if I even want to be pregnant.” I say.
Lyss merely smiles. “You’ll know the second you see the results.”
“I doubt it.” I continue my pacing. “This was unexpected. Completely unplanned.”
“Very unplanned,” Lettie echoes.
“I mean, I just got married.”
She pushes back her cuticles. “She just got married.”
“And Alex and I haven’t even talked about children yet.”
“They haven’t talked about children!” She says.
“I expected this to come up in maybe another five years. But not now.”
“Five years,” Lettie reaffirms. “Not now.”
“Leticia!” I stop in my tracks. “Are you going to keep repeating everything I say?”
“She wants to know if I—ahh!” Lettie screams abruptly.
“What is it!” I demand, my voice overlapping with Lyss’s panicked, “What happened?”
Lettie extends a pregnancy test to me with the results facing the floor. “I just checked the time. It’s been three minutes.”
“Fuck.” Lyss and I both say.
“I think I’m going to cry,” Lyss presses a hand against her cheek. “I wish I was there with you. Remember when I accidentally knocked the first test into the toilet and you had to drink a bunch of water from the faucet so you could take another?”
“How could I forget?” I take the test from Lettie but keep it facing down. “We almost clogged your toilet from the amount of flushing we did.”
“I can’t take the anticipation. It’s making me sick.” Lettie covers her face. “Tell me when it’s over!”
“Come closer to the camera, I can’t see!” Lyss pleads.
I pause to steady my breathing. There’s no use putting this off for any longer. One way or another, I’m going to know the results whether it’s nine seconds or nine months from now. I inhale and turn the test over to read the little screen.
Pregnant
My breath catches.
Lettie squeezes her eyes shut tight. “I can’t look.”
“What does it say?” Lyss asks.
“It’s positive.”
Lyss gasps and Lettie’s eyes widen. She turns over the other three tests on her lap.
“No fucking way,” she says.
“Dahlia?” Lyss tilts her head. “Are you okay?”
Warmth washes over me in colors. It’s the only way I can think to describe it.
Bright yellow and soothing green, mixed with hints of sunset red and explosions of joyful violet.
Each color fills me with a new emotion with no name as my chest expands.
The results blur as the ends of my lashes grow wet and heavy with the weight of unshed tears.
Whatever numbness once stole sensation from my outer extremities has dissolved and been replaced by a twinkling.
Like dipping my hands and feet into starlight. And in that moment, I know.
I just know.
“It’s positive,” I repeat. “It’s positive.”
I’m pregnant. I’m pregnant.
Lyss and Lettie both break out into howls and hollers, the sound of their joy echoing across the empty room. The celebration is short-lived when a cry leaves my lips. It’s no more than a soft whimper and sniffle but soon, the tears overwhelm me until I can’t see anything anymore.
“Dee?” Lettie hops down from the sink and gently touches my shoulder.
The test slips from my grasp and lands in the sink with all the others as I bury my face in my hands. I cry and I cry and I cry until the well inside me nearly dries up. I cry through the fit of giggles and shortness of breath.
“Were you hoping for something else?” Lyss asks over the phone.
All I can manage is a curt shake of the head.
Emotion tightens around my throat and a tremor rocks through me.
It’s the strangest feeling—one I have never experienced in my entire life.
No matter how hard I try, I can find neither my voice nor the strength to respond.
Tears bleed into giggles into laughter before dissolving into strangled sobs.
I’m so overwhelmed. I can’t speak. How do I articulate this to them? Everything in me expands, ribs cracking, muscles stretching, to accommodate the enormous love that blooms inside me. Love for someone who doesn’t even exist yet.
“I…” I struggle to catch my breath. “I’m…I’m so happy. I’m so, so happy.”
Another sob breaks free.
“I wasn’t sure before…I was afraid…b-but then…I turned it over a-and…and it…it just…” I choke on my own words. “I’m so happy. So, so, so…”
Lettie wraps her arms around me and holds me close, whispering in my ear. “I love you, Dahlia.”
I hug her back and when she pulls away I reach for my phone. Lyss is crying too but her red face and teary eyes aren’t as well-lit as ours.
“I wish I was there with you,” she sniffles quietly.
“You are,” I tell her. “You are always with me.”
Not even Lettie is immune to the emotion of the moment. She smiles and presses her hands against her wet cheeks, discreetly hiding her tears.
“I’ve never been so excited in my entire life,” she says.
I turn the test over in my hands a few times just to feel how real it is.
I can’t wait to tell Alejandro.