9. Freya
— ? —
Freya
Three minutes had never felt so long.
Clara’s bathroom was tiny, barely big enough for the toilet and a pedestal sink and the two of us crammed in together. I sat on the closed toilet lid with the pregnancy test face-down on my knee, watching the seconds tick by on my phone.
“You could look at it now,” Clara said. She was perched on the edge of the tub, her knees almost touching mine in the cramped space. “The instructions said three minutes, and it’s been like two and a half.”
“They said three minutes for a reason.”
“The reason is probably lawsuit prevention. I’m sure it works faster than that.”
“I’m not looking until three minutes.”
Clara held up her hands in surrender. “Fine. Three minutes. But you’re killing me here.”
I appreciated that she was trying to keep things light.
Clara had been my best friend since freshman year of college, when we’d been randomly assigned as roommates and discovered a shared love of terrible horror movies and good wine.
She’d been there when my mom got sick, when my dad spiraled, when I’d called her the night before my wedding in a complete panic about marrying a stranger.
She’d also been the one to tell me, very firmly, that I didn’t have to go through with it. That there were other options. That she’d help me find a job, a place to live, a way out.
I hadn’t listened. I’d married Rex anyway, convinced it was the only way to save what was left of my family.
Now here I was, hiding in her bathroom, waiting to find out if I was carrying his baby.
My phone hit three minutes. I took a deep breath.
“Okay,” Clara said. “Moment of truth. You want me to look?”
“No. I’ve got it.”
I turned the test over.
Two pink lines.
The room tilted. Clara grabbed my arm, probably afraid I was going to pass out.
“What does it say? Freya, talk to me. What does it say?”
“Pregnant.” The word came out flat and strange. “I’m pregnant.”
“Oh shit.”
“Yeah.”
Clara was quiet for a moment, processing. “What do you want to do?”
I looked down at the test in my hand. Two pink lines. A whole future contained in a plastic stick. Rex’s baby. Growing inside me right now, while I sat in my best friend’s bathroom trying to figure out how to put my life back together.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I don’t know anything right now.”
“That’s okay. You don’t have to decide anything today.” Clara squeezed my arm. “But Freya… are you going to tell him?”
“No,” I heard myself say. “Rex is never going to know about this.”
Clara’s eyebrows shot up. “Never? Freya, that’s… that’s a big decision.”
“He doesn’t deserve to know.” The words came out harder than I intended.
“Rex stood by while his mother tried to buy me off. He let his whole family humiliate me at dinner. When I tried to tell him something was wrong, he called me silly. And he told his uncle he regrets marrying me. I heard him, Clara.” My voice cracked.
“He never once told me he loved me. Not in a whole year. How am I supposed to tell him about this when he doesn’t even want me? ”
Clara didn’t argue. She just nodded slowly, her expression complicated. “Okay. That’s your decision to make. But can I say something? As your friend?”
“Can I stop you?”
“No.” A small smile. “I think you’re allowed to decide this for now.
Right now, today, you get to say Rex doesn’t know.
But pregnancy is long, and babies are forever, and this might not be a decision that sticks.
” She held up a hand before I could protest. “I’m not saying you’re wrong.
I’m just saying… give yourself permission to change your mind if you need to. ”
I wanted to argue. Wanted to insist that my mind was made up, that Rex would never be part of this child’s life, that I could do this on my own without him.
But Clara was right, and I knew it. I just confirmed that I was pregnant. I wasn’t in any state to be making permanent decisions.
“Fine,” I said. “For now. That’s my answer for now.”
“That’s all I’m asking.” Clara stood up and offered me her hand. “Now come on. Let’s get you out of this bathroom and onto my couch with some terrible TV. You’ve had enough crisis for one day.”
I let her pull me up. Let her guide me out of the bathroom and onto her overstuffed sofa, where she wrapped me in a blanket and handed me the remote and pretended not to notice when I started crying somewhere around the third episode of whatever cooking competition we’d landed on.
Tomorrow I’d have to figure out my life. Find a job, find a place to live, figure out what kind of future I could build for myself and the tiny cluster of cells currently setting up shop in my uterus.
But tonight, I just needed to fall apart.
Clara’s phone buzzed around midnight. She glanced at it, then at me.
“Job posting,” she said. “Ridgecrest Equestrian School. They’re looking for a riding instructor for their kids’ program.”
I sat up, the blanket falling away. “What?”
“It just came across my feed. I follow a bunch of horse stuff because of you.” She handed me her phone. “Look. Part-time position, teaching kids ages six to twelve basic riding skills. It’s like… exactly what you always wanted to do. I stand corrected, maybe you’re meant to leave him after all.”
I stared at the listing. Ridgecrest Equestrian was about forty minutes outside the city, a well-respected program that had been training young riders for decades. I’d heard of it, vaguely, back when I’d still had dreams of teaching before my father had crushed them.
It doesn’t bring dignity to our family name, he’d said. You’re an Evans. You don’t work for other people.
But I wasn’t an Evans anymore. I wasn’t even sure I was still a Waller. Right now, I was just Freya, sitting on my best friend’s couch, pregnant and jobless and completely untethered from the life I’d thought I was living.
Maybe that was exactly the right time to finally do the thing I’d always wanted to do.
“I’m going to apply,” I said.
Clara grinned. “Right now? It’s midnight.”
“Right now.” I was already pulling up the application on her phone. “If I wait until morning I might talk myself out of it.”
I filled out the form sitting cross-legged on Clara’s couch, wrapped in a blanket that smelled like her fabric softener, with the pregnancy test still sitting on the bathroom counter and my whole life in pieces around me.
By the time I hit submit, it was almost one in the morning. I didn’t expect to hear anything for days, maybe weeks. I fell asleep on the couch before I could worry about it.
My phone woke me at eight.
I almost didn’t answer. Unknown number, probably spam. But something made me pick up anyway.
“Hello?”
“Ms. Evans?” A woman’s voice, warm and professional. “This is Margot Hayes, director of Ridgecrest Equestrian. I hope I’m not calling too early.”
“No, it’s fine. I’m up.”
“Wonderful. I saw your application come through and I have to say, your background is exactly what we’re looking for. Your family’s ranch, your experience with horses, your education degree…” She paused. “You did start an education degree, correct? Before you got married?”
“I did. I was two semesters from finishing when…” When my mother got sick. When my father gambled away our futures. Then I married a stranger to save what was left. “When life got complicated.”
“Life has a way of doing that.” Margot’s voice was kind. “Listen, I know this is unusual, but we’ve had an instructor leave unexpectedly and we’re a bit desperate. Any chance you could come in today for an interview? Say, around two? We’ll talk about the details then.”
Today. I had no appropriate clothes, since everything professional I owned was hanging in Rex’s closet, and no idea if I could even hold myself together long enough to form coherent sentences.
But I had a dream I’d been sitting on for years, and for the first time in my life, no one was standing in my way.
“I’ll be there,” I said. “Two o’clock.”