53. Renee

“Maybe you should see a doctor.” Sutton’s face moves closer to the screen as she squints at me like she can diagnose me from the wrong side of the Atlantic.

I appreciate the care, the concern, but my illness—nausea, headache, aches and pains—is probably fatigue. I’ve been working hard at work and playing harder with Weston. I guess it’s finally catching up to me.

We’ve been friends with benefits for more than a month now, but this is the first time I’ve ever called off of work despite the many, many late nights I’ve been busy with Weston.

“I don’t need to see a doctor.” Although keeping my sip of water down is becoming more and more challenging by the minute.

“You look straight-up green, Nay. You need an intervention. I’m going to get you some antacids, some Pepto, some VapoRub.” She purses her lips. “A pregnancy test, too.”

“A what?” As adamant as I am, I’m also calculating the last period I recall having. I’ve never been really calendar-conscious, so I have an app. But I’m on my phone and too nervous to check.

“Is it possible?”

“I mean…” I shrug. “There was one time, maybe twice, that he didn’t use a condom.”

“I should’ve known he wouldn’t be careful with you.” She shakes her head. “I am going to shove my foot so far up his ass he can taste the Italian leather.”

“Don’t ruin the Ferragamos. You—ope, hold on.” My throat is suddenly thick with bile. I drop the phone and make like Usain Bolt for the closest toilet.

Sutton calls out. I can hear her, but I’m powerless to answer.

When I finally get back to the phone, she’s hung up and sent a text. Sending you some TLC ASAP. LU, xoxo.

I collapse on the sofa in full swoon position, sweaty and cold, positively clammy. “I’m disgusting,” I mumble under my breath.

I drift in and out of sleep for an hour or so. At one point, I make myself stand up, with every intention of taking a shower to regulate my temperature, but the world spins out of control like a Final Destination Ferris wheel and I fall back to the sofa, wondering why I ever even dragged myself out of bed in the first place.

Back to sleep. Awake, asleep, asleep, awake—it all blends together into one nauseous blur. It’s twenty minutes or maybe four hours later when the doorman buzzes up and says that he has a delivery for me. I tell him to bring it up when he can and he says he’ll be right there.

Before I can drag myself to the door to answer his knock, someone punches the code into the lock and enters.

“Renee?” Michelle calls out.

“In here. I’m dying.” And being very dramatic about it.

“She’s in here, Danni.” They come in, joined at the hip like always.

I’m still stuck replaying the conversation about pregnancy tests that I had with Sutton like someone hit the repeat switch in my mind.

Pregnancy. Is it possible?

I don’t know. I don’t know.

God, I hope not.

“Sutton texted us.” Michelle offers me the white pharmacy bag in her hand, but I don’t have the strength to hold out my arm to reach for it.

“What’s in there?” I croak.

“Let’s find out.” She opens it and pulls out a bottle of orange juice, some antacids, the promised Pepto, and not one, not two, not three, but four separate pregnancy tests on the table.

Danni picks up one and looks from it to me and back again. “Something you want to talk about, Renee?”

God, no. I don’t want to talk about anything at all. Talking requires thinking and the only thing I want to do less than have a conversation about the box she’s holding or the three others waiting on the table is to think about what happens if that plus sign materializes.

I’ve thought of nothing else for at least the last few hours. I apparently didn’t input my past period into the app because it says I haven’t had one in more than a month.

A month.

Fuck.

“Oh, honey.” Michelle looks at me. “Does he know?”

“Of course he doesn’t know. I don’t even know. There’s probably nothing to know.”

Please, please, please, please. Don’t let there be anything to know.

Danni nods. “Right. We’re thinking positive. Er, negative, I mean. Nothing to know. Nothing to see here.” She holds out the first test. “Just in case, why don’t you go pee on this thing and we can make sure?”

As I take the box and stare at it, there’s a knock at the door. Michelle cocks an eyebrow. “Oh, Lord. Did you invite him over to watch you pee on a stick?”

“No! Anyway, Weston should be on a plane for Colorado right now.”

Michelle glances dubiously at her watch. “The team plane doesn’t leave for another three hours, babe.”

I frown and squint at the clock on the microwave until the numbers resolve themselves. “Shit. You’re right.”

We all glance in unison at the door. I gulp. “Shit,” I say again.

I force myself upright on wobbly legs. Trailing the blanket behind me like Linus from the Peanuts comics, I stumble my way to the entrance.

“Who is it?” I call out blearily.

“It’s me. Open up.”

Shit. Of course it’s him. I’m cursed. It couldn’t be anyone else.

I pull the door halfway open. “I’m sick.”

Weston leans against the doorframe. Every other smell makes me want to vom, but even now, his cologne makes me shiver with glee.

“Wow,” he remarks. “No kidding. You look like hell.”

Just the thing every girl wants to hear from the guy she’s sleeping with.It doesn’t help that he looks as gorgeous as ever.

“Gee, thanks.”

“Don’t sweat it, P. You’re still beautiful.”

I roll my eyes, which only hurts my headache. “What do you want, Weston?”

“I came to say bye, since you aren’t traveling with the team this time.” He tries to lean into the tiny amount of space I’ve opened the door, but I close it until it’s nothing more than a slit. The last thing I need is for him to look around me and see the test kit in my hand or one of the other three on the table, or to ask what Michelle and Danni are doing here in the middle of a workday.

“Okay. You’ve said it.” I try to push the door shut and he grabs it. “Bye now.”

His brow furrows. “What the fuck?”

“I’m sick, Weston.” I fake a cough. “I don’t want you to get it.”

“Ah. Got it.” He backs off half of a step reluctantly. “Well, I hope you feel better. I’ve got hours of phone sex planned for me and you and your vibrator.”

His voice isn’t nearly as quiet as I would hope. My skin heats from more than whatever illness has afflicted me.

“Oh. Yeah. Right.”

“You don’t want to?” It’s either hurt or surprise turning his smile to a frown.

“No, I mean, yeah, I do. I just…”

He grins. Even sick, I can admit that it really is an adorable grin. So adorable I’ve fallen for it a thousand times. So adorable that I need not one, not two, not three, but four pregnancy tests to find out just how bad this situation is.

He leans in again like he wants to kiss me. I back off and cover my mouth. “I could be contagious.”

I’m not; I’m just dumb as a brick, and last I checked, that isn’t something that can be passed onto another person.

Pregnant. Fuck me. If I’m pregnant, he’s going to think I baby-trapped him.

“I have to go.” I shut the door and stand against it breathing hard until I hear the ding of the elevator. When I walk back toward the sofa, Danni and Michell are both staring at me.

It isn’t like I don’t know that they heard it all. But I choose to ignore it in favor of running to the bathroom to take the test I’m still holding.

I pee on the stick, then set it down and close my eyes until Danni calls out, “Time!”

With trembling fingers, I grab the stick. I pause before I flip it. This is like that moment where the quarter is turning over and over in the air. Heads means my life is over. Tails means…

Well, I don’t actually know what it means.

What if, in some bizarre alternate universe, this is a good thing? What if there’s a world where this baby brings Weston and me together, and the future I only allow myself to dream of in those last few seconds before I drift off to sleep comes to be?

I close my eyes and rotate the test.

“Well?” Michelle says. Her voice comes from close.

I look up to see her and Danni crowding the door, eyes wide, clutching each other for dear life.

“What does it say?”

A single tear brims up before I blink it away. I clear my throat and answer, “Not pregnant.”

We all whoosh out a huge sigh of relief. This is a good thing, a very good thing. Weston won’t think I’m manipulating him. I won’t have a baby I’m not prepared to raise.

But deep in the recesses of my heart, part of me wants to cry.

“Did you miss a period, Renee?” Danni asks. “It could be your birth control making things weird.”

“Or the fact you’re burning the candle at both ends. Working ninety hours a week on the auction and sleeping with the puckhead in whatever free time you have. It doesn’t leave much time for sleep.” Michelle crosses her arms like the mama bear she is.

“My money’s on the birth control pills you’ve been taking. You should make an appointment with your gyno and get a different prescription.” Danni nods like she has firsthand experience with this kind of thing. It’s not a bad thought. The list of side-effects on those things is as long as my arm.

I nod. “You’re probably right. I’m gonna call right now.”

I pick up my phone and dial. The nearest appointment is two weeks away. So it looks like I’m locking myself down until I see the doctor.

There’s too much at stake to do it any other way.