Page 64 of Fighting Fate

“When was your last period?” she asks after a beat.

“Jesus, you’re being wildly ridiculous about this. We get the jab together…” My growl morphs into a groan while I go through my apps to my calendar. Once I’ve pulled it up, I hand her the phone.

“You didn’t show up for the last one, remember? You were too heartbroken, and you’d sworn off men for the rest of your days to get your arse out of bed and to the clinic.”

“Shut up! That’s not—” Fuck. That is exactly what happened.

Oh my God. Oh my fucking God.

No. Nope.

I’m good. Rory and I have been careful. Aside from condom gate, the two of us have been proactive and smart about this. Haven’t we?

“Fucking hell,” she grits out, putting my phone back down in front of me. “End of March.”

“End of March?” I’m staring down at my phone, but I can’t see shit with the way my vision has blurred with my sudden anxiety.

“Your last period,” Beth whispers back when I look up at her. “We’re almost in July, Willow.”

“That’s not right.” Picking up my phone, I flick through the last three months, looking for the red marker I use to track my periods.

April.

May.

June.

Fuck.

“It’s not possible.”

It doesn’t make sense. The first time Rory and I had sex was in… I flick back through—June. May. April. March.

I pause and stare down at the red highlight while I go back through my memory to try to rubbish this entire conversation. I can’t.

“You two hooked up in April.” Beth shows me the screenshot of the stupid article with the photo of me and Rory leaving the bar the night of the fight.

“I must have forgotten to update my calendar. There’s been so much going on…”

“Maybe, but it’s been almost…” Beth counts back on her fingers. “It’s been almost eight weeks since I saw you at the hospital.”

The floor feels as though it’s being ripped from under me while I go back to staring between my calendar and the photo on her phone. I’m remembering what I can from that night, but I was tipsy, and everything happened so fast…

Rory took me back to his place. I blew him. He ate me out, and…and we had that whole thing of whether he’d fit or not and then…then…I don’t know. I was too busy pushing his buttons to pay attention to anything else. But…

“Rory has been religious about contraception. It doesn’t make sense, Beth.”

“You’d both been drinking,” she coos at the same time as she signals the waiter to bring us the bill. “One thing leads to another, and these things are easily overlooked. Fuck, you don’t even need to be drunk to get carried away. It happens so easily.” She goes back to working dates out on her fingers before she states, “The most pregnant you can be right now is ten weeks give or take a day or two.”

Silence reigns as we pay, and I continue sitting there, completely baffled and shocked. “Ten weeks…what does that mean?”

“It means we need to get out of here.” Beth hands me my handbag. “There’s only one way to figure this out.”

Nodding, I follow her out of the restaurant and allow her to guide us down the street to a small pharmacy. Everything goes by in a blur as I try to process and make sense of it. Although I’m desperately attempting to calm myself and not think about what it all possibly means, I can’t.

When we reach my place, I lock myself in my bathroom with the handful of tests we bought. It takes me a while to drum up the courage to pee in a cup and dip them all, lining them up on the vanity as I pace the small space.

Two pink lines stare up at me when I finally glance down at the counter. It takes a moment for it to register before a cocktail of feelings overwhelms me. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry as hysteria wracks through me in sputters of laughter and strings of tears. In a domino effect, the other tests confirm the result of the first.

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