Page 20 of Craving Dahlia

“You’ll be happy to come home to D.C., I’m sure,” he continues, as if he didn’t hear a word I said. “It’s got to be hard, being away from your family. Especially when your father has been so supportive of your—” He pauses, as if he’s not sure what to call mylife. “Time away,” he finishes awkwardly, and it takes everything in me not to throw the drink in my hand at him.

Time away?He makes it sound like my life, my career, everything I’ve built for myself is nothing more than a gap year or a backpacking trip through Europe. Like I’m some socialite who decided to fuck off and ignore her responsibilities for years, instead of a woman who’s worked hard for what she has.

I can’t marry this man. I know that, deep down, but I also don’t know what to do about it. The thought of losing my family for good makes my heart ache, and the thought of being so suddenly cut off, completely on my own, makes my stomach lurch up into my throat with anxiety. I know it’s partially myfault—I should have been better prepared to be independent, but I never in my wildest dreams thought that my father would force me into marrying someone like this.

“There’s some lovely estate houses just outside of D.C. that I’ve looked at,” Jude continues, seemingly oblivious to the fact that I haven’t said a single word since his opening question. “Once the proposal is official, we could tour some of them. I’d want your opinion on that, of course?—”

The way he says it seems to imply that there’s a lot of things hedoesn’twant my opinion on, outside of the house we live in. And everything he says to me seems laced with condescension, as if he’s older, wiser, instead of the same age as me, with a similar education. I’ve accomplished just as much as he has, and the way he’s talking down to me sends another lurch of nausea up into my throat?—

Shit. I press my lips together hard, realizing that the nausea might be more than just ripples of it due to anxiety. I suddenly feel like I mightactuallythrow up for the first time since this morning, and I hold up a finger, shaking my head as Jude looks at me with a mixture of confusion and annoyance.

I swallow hard, waiting for the feeling to recede, but it doesn’t. Quickly, I set my glass down on the bar, managing to say tightly: “I’ll be right back,” before pivoting and looking frantically for the ladies’ room.

I barely make it inside, past a gaggle of older women touching up their blush in the mirror, and into a stall before I start to vomit.

It’s worse than this morning. I press a hand to my stomach, tears welling in my eyes and dripping down my cheeks as I heave again and again, sweat prickling at the back of my neck. By the time I’m finished, I feel utterly exhausted, and I lean into the side of the wall next to me, reaching up weakly to flush.

As if it weren’t adding insult to injury, I’m supposed to start my period soon, too, and if I’m actually getting sick?—

I freeze as the thought goes through my head, grabbing a wad of tissues to wipe my mouth with one hand as I fumble in my clutch purse for my phone with the other. I thought I was supposed to start my period any day, but now that I think about it, last month I hadjustfinished it before I met Alek at the bar. I remember, because I joked with Genevieve about it the next morning, that I was so glad it had been a slightly short one, and my night hadn’t been ruined?—

That was six weeks ago.

A crawling dread fills me as I realize that the nausea might not just be anxiety, or food poisoning, or a stomach bug. Hoping I miscalculated, I open my phone to my period tracking app with shaky fingers. But I didn’t miscount. I finished my last period the day before I met Alek, which means I’m two weeks late.

Another surge of nausea threatens to overwhelm me, and I drop my phone, leaning over the toilet again. When I finish throwing up for a second time, I lean back fully against the wall, closing my eyes as I struggle not to cry.

I have to get out of this party.If I go back and tell my parents that I’m sick, my mother will insist on going home with me—or at least I think she will. After today, I’m no longer quite as sure that I know what she’ll do about anything as I once was. But if she does, she’ll have questions, and I won’t be able to do what I need to.

The bathroom has gone quiet, and as I stand up on shaky legs and peek out, I see that the older women who were at the counter are gone, and the room is empty now. Carefully, I slip out of the stall and rinse my mouth out at the sink, splashing some cold water on my face before I walk back out into the hall.

From the main room, I can hear the faint sounds of someone giving a speech, and then the rattle of applause. I duck arounda corner, heading for the back door of the venue, hoping I won’t run into anyone who will see me and tell my parents that I was headed this way before I have a chance to call an Uber. I already have the app open, planning to already be gone before I text my mother and tell her that I didn’t feel well and left.

Fortunately, the back of the venue seems to be empty, except for a few cleaning and catering staff that are passing through, and I make it to the back door without anyone seeing. I slip out into the early spring chill, shivering in my dress, and I bite my lip as I wrap my arms around myself and wait for the Uber to arrive. My coat is back at the check, and I don’t think I could have grabbed it and left without being noticed.

A blue sedan pulls up to the curb just as my teeth start to chatter, and I quickly slip into the warm interior. “I need to go to the closest drugstore,” I tell the driver. “Whatever is open. CVS, Walgreens, I don’t care. Just anything nearby.”

“Sure thing.” The driver pulls away as I look out the window, trying to keep my nerves from bubbling over and making my nausea even worse. I bite my lip, wondering what I’m going to say to keep my mother from digging with too many questions. And my father is going to be furious that I ditched Jude, stomach bug or not.

At least if they think I’m sick, I might be able to push off the decision.As much as I know what I’m going to say, I don’t know what I’m going to do after, yet. And especially if?—

The thought of what mightreallybe making me sick makes my stomach tighten and turn all over again, and I clap a hand over my mouth.

“There’s a fee if you puke in the car,” the driver says as he looks in the rearview mirror, in a dispassionate tone that says he gives drunken college kids rides every weekend and has had to deal with this more than once before.

“I won’t,” I manage, with a little more surety than I actually feel. The last thing I need is a cleaning fee, though, when I don’t know how much longer I’ll have my father’s help backing me up financially.

Quickly, I send my mother a text, telling her that I’ve been feeling under the weather and had to run to the bathroom to be sick, and that I left so I didn’t risk embarrassing them by being sick again in public.I’m headed home, I add, and then tuck my phone back into my purse.

The driver gets to the drugstore in a matter of minutes, undoubtedly out of worry for his upholstery, and I slide out into the chilly air, which feels even colder than before right now as the wind picks up. It cuts right through my dress, and I hurry into the store, heading straight for the aisle with the pregnancy tests.

Looking at them makes me feel faintly dizzy. The last thing I’d ever expected was to end up here—at this point in my life, anyway. Maybe not ever, if I’d had my way, instead of being forced into a marriage that would result in my being expected to have children.

There’s solutions to this problem, of course, if I want to go that route. But I can’t even begin to think that far ahead. I need to know if I’m right, first.Maybe it’s just stress making me late,I think, clutching at that last strand of hope as I look for one of the brands that gives you an actualpregnantornot pregnantin the little window, instead of lines. I’ve always been like clockwork when it comes to my cycle, but this entire situation with my father and Jude has made me more anxious and stressed than I ever have been before. It is possible that it’s just making me both late, and sick with some kind of stomach flu.

Letting out a sharp breath, I grab two of the boxes and head for the register, grabbing a twenty ounce bottle of ginger ale on my way. A bored-looking cashier rings me up, not even reallybothering to look before she tosses the tests and soda into a bag, and I look for another Uber on my phone with one hand as I slide my card with the other. This time, I wait just inside until the car pulls up, and then hurry out into the night.

I desperately want to get a hotel room for the night, just to avoid questions about what’s happened—from my mother especially. She still hasn’t texted me back, which I expected—she thinks it’s rude to look at your phone in public. She and my father both probably think I slipped out of the party and left because I didn’t want to talk to Jude, and I know there’s going to be plenty to explain when they get back to the house. All of which I’ll have to lie about, until I know for sure what’s going on, and have decided what I’m going to do about it.

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