Julia #2
I almost laugh again, but it becomes a sob.
“We?”
“Yes,” she says. “We.”
Tears fill my eyes.
“I haven’t told Ricardo.”
“Because you don’t know anything yet.”
“But if I am—”
“Then you are.”
“He has enough.”
Victoria’s face changes.
“Julia.”
“Dante is in the hospital. Harrison is—” I cannot finish. “Everything is already on fire.”
“And if this is true, hiding it from yourself will not put out the fire.”
I close my eyes.
The tears slip free anyway.
“I’m scared.”
“I know.”
“I’m so scared I can’t even tell which fear belongs to what anymore.”
Victoria stands slowly and comes around the table. She lowers herself into the chair beside me, close enough that her shoulder touches mine.
“That’s all right,” she says.
I look at her.
“It doesn’t feel all right.”
“No,” she says. “I imagine it doesn’t.”
For some reason, that helps more than comfort.
I wipe at my face.
“I don’t have a test.”
“I can get you one.”
My stomach flips.
“Now?”
“If you want.”
I stare at the breakfast tray, at the toast with two bites missing, at the tea going lukewarm in the cup, at the folded clothes on the chair, at Ricardo’s bed where he slept beside me and left before I woke.
“I don’t know if I want to know,” I whisper.
Victoria’s hand settles over mine again.
“You don’t have to decide this second.”
I nod.
But I can feel the decision already being made inside me.
Unavoidable.
Just like everything else.
Victoria somehow manages to get me a test.
I do not know how, as we’re both on lockdown right now. I sit at the small table by the window while she steps out, and for the first few minutes, I only stare at the place where she was.
The room is too quiet without her.
Ricardo’s room is not cold, but I feel cold anyway. His shirt is still on me, soft against my skin, too large, sleeves pushed up because they keep swallowing my hands. The borrowed clothes Victoria brought sit folded on the chair near the bed, but I have not put them on yet.
My hand moves to my stomach.
I pull it away immediately.
Then I put it back.
There is nothing there to feel. Nothing different. Nothing certain. My body is my body. Tired, frightened, emptied out by shock and sickness and grief.
But once the thought is there, it will not leave.
I start counting days.
Everything blurs. The gala. The office. The storm. The first time Ricardo touched me like he had been holding himself back for weeks. The nights after. The mornings.
Then the calendar shifts into sudden clarity.
My breath catches.
I am late.
I press my fingers to my mouth and close my eyes.
Stress can do that. Stress can delay things. So can lack of sleep. So can fear. So can nearly being shot in your own apartment while your best friend bleeds onto your dress.
Surely that can disrupt a body.
Surely.
A knock comes at the door, so soft I almost miss it.
I stand too quickly, and the room sways again.
“Julia?” Victoria calls through the door.
“Yes.”
The door opens.
She steps inside with a small paper pharmacy bag in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. Her face tells me nothing. I appreciate that. If she looked too sympathetic, I might break.
“We have three kinds,” she says.
“Three?”
She shrugs. “Seemed like a safe bet.”
A laugh slips out of me.
She sets the bag on the table.
I stare at it as if it might move on its own.
“I don’t know if I can do this.”
“You can.”
“What if I can’t?”
“Then we sit here until you can.”
That makes my throat tighten.
I pick up the bag. It crinkles too loudly in the quiet room. Inside are three boxes, a brand I recognize, one I do not, and another that says digital across the front in cheerful letters that feel ridiculous under the circumstances.
Pregnancy tests should not look cheerful.
Nothing about this feels cheerful.
“I haven’t even told Ricardo I think it’s possible,” I say.
“You don’t know yet.”
“I know, but I asked you. That makes it real enough.”
Victoria sits at the table again, carefully, one hand briefly at her back. “Take the test first. Then decide what happens next.”
I look at her.
“Do you think it is wrong that I’m scared?”
“No.”
“I should be thinking about Dante.”
“You are.”
“I am thinking about Dante. I can’t stop thinking about Dante. But now this is in my head too, and it feels…” I stop because I do not know how to explain it without sounding awful.
Victoria waits.
“It feels selfish,” I whisper.
Her expression changes. “No.”
“I’m sitting here wondering if I’m pregnant while Dante is in a hospital bed.”
“You are sitting here because your body is trying to tell you something after weeks of signs you ignored. That does not make you selfish.”
I look down at the bag.
“Ricardo has enough to carry.”
“Yes,” she says. “He does.”
That is not the answer I expected.
My eyes lift to hers.
Victoria leans forward. “And if this is true, it is important information. He needs to know before he potentially goes to war with Harrison.”
The words make my stomach drop.
War with Harrison.
A child in the middle.
“You don’t think it’s too much right now?” I ask.
Victoria’s face softens.
“Of course it’s too much. For you too.”
“He’ll lose his mind.”
“Probably,” she says.
I almost laugh again, but this time there is no humor in it.
Victoria reaches across the table and takes my hand. “But not at you.”
My fingers tremble in hers.
I want to believe that.
I think I do believe it.
That may be what scares me most.
Ricardo will not be angry at me. He will not look at me like I have trapped him or ruined something or become one more crisis dropped at his feet. He will look at me the way he looked at Dante in that hospital bed. Like love and fear have both put knives in his hands.
And then he will turn those knives onto Harrison.
I do not know what survives that.
“Take the test,” Victoria says gently. “You do not have to solve the rest right now.”
I nod.
It takes me another minute to stand.
Victoria stays at the table. She does not follow me into the bathroom, and I am grateful for that too. Some humiliations need privacy, even when the person on the other side of the door already knows exactly what is happening and has been through it herself.
I open the first box with clumsy fingers.
The instructions are simple.