Page 67 of Stone Rules

It takes me a minute. After all, there is immense pressure to pee on demand. Especially when you don’t want to comply with the order. There is no way in hell I could be pregnant. Skylar is delusional.

I finish my task and hand her the stick, not even the least bit embarrassed that I shoved something with my pee all over it into her hands. “Here, take it. See for yourself.”

I wash up and watch her in the mirror as she studies the stick. A minute later, her eyes meet mine and if sympathy were a living, breathing being, Skylar just gave birth to it.

“Shut the fuck up,” I say, reaching out to grab the stick from her. I read the word on the tiny screen.Pregnant.

“Oh my God,” I say, looking at the stick. “Oh my God.” I look up at Skylar. I sink to the floor, dropping the stick that just ruined my life onto the cold hard tile.

In an instant, Skylar is on the floor with me. “Charlie, it’ll be okay. It could be wrong, you know. Hormones can get out of whack. Let’s not jump to conclusions quite yet.”

She pulls out her phone and taps the screen a few times. “Hey, Joanie, this is Skylar Pearce. Can you please tell Dr. Chavis I’m calling in that favor she owes me? I need an appointment right away. I’ll be there in thirty minutes.” She shoves the phone back in her pocket. “Dr. Chavis is my OB/GYN. I saved her ass last month when her caterer cancelled at the last minute. She owes me big time. She’s also the best OB in New York. You’ll be in good hands with her. No matter what happens.”

~ ~ ~

“Relax, Charlie,” Dr. Chavis tells me as she shoves a wand up my vagina.

I don’t even remember getting here. I have no recollection of how we came. Did we take the subway? A cab? The entire time, all I could think of was what my life was like as a child. All I could think of is how people say we become like our parents. I can’t have a kid. I could never be a mother. I wouldn’t even know where to start. What if the kid made me mad one day, would I get so angry I would hurt it?

I feel sick again and want to jump off the table when Skylar squeals in delight. “Oh, Charlie. Look!”

I turn my head to the computer screen and the doctor points to something in the middle of it. It’s a dark bubble with a blob in it. “There’s your baby,” the doctor says.

My entire body freezes. I stop breathing. The world stops spinning.

Some lines go across the screen and her machine beeps. She tells me she’s taking measurements. “See this right here?” she asks.

I don’t see it.

“That’s the heartbeat.” She hits a button on her machine and all of a sudden I hear “Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.”

It sounds really fast. But probably not any faster than my own heart is beating right now.

She presses another button. “One hundred and seventy-five beats per minute,” she says. “That’s perfect.” She takes a few more measurements and then presses her finger into my lower tummy a few times. “Let’s see if we can wake him up a bit, shall we?”

The blob on the screen wiggles around. “Oh, well hello, little one,” she says.

I stare at the monitor, seeing little arm and leg nubs jerk around. I think I can make out its head, but it looks as big as the rest of his body and the picture is too grainy to see anything clearly. It’s then I realize what she said. “You said him,” I say. “Is it a boy?”

“It’s too soon to tell. I tend to use ‘he’ when I refer to the little ones. Don’t read anything into it.” She pulls out the wand and wipes up the gel down there.

I feel a hand on my shoulder. I almost forgot Skylar was in the room. I look up at her and she’s crying. “Welcome to the club, Mommy,” she says.

“Skylar.” I look at the ceiling, biting back my tears. “What if I can’t?”

“You can,” she says. “There are so many people who will help you. Me, Baylor, Piper, my mom, the girls. I promise, we will all help you. You will not go through this alone.”

The doctor prints out a picture and hands it to me. “As best as I can tell you are nine weeks and two days along. That would put your due date on December 5th and your estimated date of conception on March 13th.”

I ask Dr. Chavis for a calendar. She hands me a small one from the desk. I flip it back to the second week in March. For the hundredth time today, my heart stops beating. March 13th was a Wednesday.

Smack dab in between the dates I had sex with Ethan and Zach.

~ ~ ~

I sit on my couch, exhausted from crying. Exhausted from talking about this with Skylar and then Piper.

Ethan is going to be here in five minutes. I look at myself on my phone and laugh. I look horrible. This is going to be the worst first date in the history of first dates.

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