Page 41 of Oops, I'm Having My Best Friend’s Baby!

“Yeah, I might have… not acted strictly by the book…”

He was shuffling foot to foot, looking like a kid in trouble. But he was seventeen, so he was a kid scared of being in trouble. Amy sighed gently and forced him to make eye contact with her.

“Andy, just tell it to me straight and I won’t be mad. I promise.”

He didn’t look so sure, but he nodded. “I was real hungry, you know, been up since six this morning to help set up the gala, so I maybe uh, sampled a bunch of the shrimp cocktail things before I served them. They were real good! That’s why I couldn’t stop at one, you know?”

Amy blinked and waited for her brain to catch up. “So you ate a bunch of the food that you were supposed to be serving?”

“Only the shrimp because I’m gluten-free, and I couldn’t exactly ask what was in everything else without sounding suspicious.”

“Right. Well. Thank you for telling me this Andy, and I’m not mad, but it’s been a long day and I’m still lost about why you’re telling me this?”

“You said that the shrimp is what had you throwing up. That’s why we went all ninja style, you know, and got them back to the kitchen. But I’m not feeling sick at all. Like they smelled fine, tasted great and, yeah, I’m not queasy even a little bit, so I don’t think it’s food poisoning that had you feeling so bad. I just didn’t want you to beat yourself up thinking you’d served bad shrimp, so I thought I better tell you.”

The first feeling that sprung into being was relief. If Andy was fine hours after eating the same thing as her, then the shrimp really couldn’t have been bad. No one else was at risk of getting sick; she hadn’t messed up. It was all okay. Then there was another feeling creeping up her neck, a suspicion of another reason for feeling nauseous and she clamped down on it hard.

Not right now. You can panic about that later.

“Thank you, Andy,” Amy said, still determined to sing his praises even if he did eat the food he was only supposed to be serving, but that wasn’t going to tarnish the million-star review she’d assigned him in her head. “That really does make me feel better, so thank you. And I’m not mad or anything. I promise.”

He literally sagged with relief, like a lanky cartoon. “Aw great. I am sorry. But even if, you know, you’re not sick because of food poisoning, I hope you feel better. Anyway, my mom is waiting outside, so I gotta go. Thanks, Amy!”

With a wave and a grin, he was gone, and Amy was left alone in the kitchen, partially frozen because it had been a lie that the shrimp being just fine had made her feel better. Because without the shrimp as a reason for her sudden bouts of nausea all afternoon, Amy was hit with another possibility for why she was so sick all of a sudden, unable to keep the suspicion at bay a moment longer.

The final night on the yacht, her night with Kai, it all came back to her in sparkling detail.

In a daze she finished cleaning and packing up and then drove the van to the nearest twenty-four-hour pharmacy she could find and returned home to her apartment with a pregnancy test burning a hole in her bag.

She was exhausted. She was still feeling sick, and she was hungry despite feeling sick. But she pushed it all aside to take the pregnancy test as soon as she walked through the door, and the whole process was a lot more awkward than the movies made it out to be. Amy couldn’t bear to just sit in the bathroom and wait for the minutes to tick by for the test to develop, so she kept herself busy. She hadn’t been hungry all day, not since she’d thrown up her lunch. And after that she’d been so stressed and preoccupied with trying to make sure no one else ended up with food poisoning, she’d ignored the concept of eating altogether. But now her hunger hit her like a freight train, so she set a grilled cheese sandwich in a skillet, munching on an apple until it was ready. Then she ate the sandwich. Then she drank a glass of water and did the dishes, dried them and put them away. Then she threw her work clothes into the washing machine and even contemplated vacuuming the apartment so that she didn’t have to face the pregnancy test that would definitely, definitely be ready by now. Unfortunately, the thing that Amy needed most was a shower. She was sticky and grimy from head to toe, and if she didn’t get into the shower soon, she was going to snap and start crawling out of her skin.

So she told herself to stop being ridiculous, get it together and open the bathroom door.

The pregnancy test was waiting on the sink for her and, of course, there were two pink lines, clear as day. Amy threw it in the trash can and jumped into the shower. She needed to think, and she might as well do it under steaming hot water.

So. So…

A list, that was what she needed. She needed to organize her thoughts. That was the first thing that needed to be done.

One. She was going to be a mom. Time to look that fact squarely in the face and come to terms with it. She’d always wanted kids, but she’d always wanted kids someday. Well, turns out today was that day. Apart from the terrifying aspects of, you know, bringing a whole human into the world and all of the complications that would throw into her life, there was still a kernel of excitement in her chest, small but bright. So this was a good thing. The terror would fade, and the excitement would grow. Okay, so that was thing number one sorted.

Two… two was the father, because there was only one possible option for that, and right now it was far more terrifying than the idea of growing a tiny human inside her for the next nine months.

Amy reached for her shampoo and started scrubbing at her short hair much too enthusiastically.

How was she supposed to tell Kai? She had to tell him, absolutely. But it felt like their whole relationship, whatever label that relationship did or didn’t have, had shattered into a million pieces. She wasn’t sure how to even start putting it back together, but she wanted to try. But now with a baby in the mix… was repairing things with Kai even possible?

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