Page 21 of Seven of Hearts

I waited in her matchbox kitchen, close to the front door. It had been a while since I had a fight or flight moment, and my body didn’t remember what to do. I was suspended in decision paralysis. Fear of the unknown made me want to bolt.

Every carefully made plan I had used to measure whether I was good enough had gone out the window.

I had made a mistake. And I didn’t just mess up my life. Regardless of whether Leah intended to keep the pregnancy, I had permanently altered her life as well.

Now I wanted to throw up too.

I had been to Leah’s apartment, but I had never been inside. I looked around at the rather eclectic studio. I didn’t live in Beaufort, and she couldn’t raise a baby here. There was hardly enough space for her to begin with.

A thick three-ring binder was open on the two-seater kitchen table. It was bursting at the seams with plastic page protectors. Each plastic sleeve had eight sections that held vintage stamps.

Thick textbooks were stacked up beside it. One was open and had folded tissue paper on top where she had been pressing flowers. There was a big basket of yarn with knitting needles stabbed in the top beside a couch sporting a floral slipcover. From the looks of it, most of her furniture had been customized, whether it was new paint in an array of colors, patterned contact paper, or cloth covers.

Everything was a different color. Everything had a different pattern. Nothing matched. There was no cohesive theme or style. Just whatever she liked at the time. There was barely space to walk from one side to the other; just little trails carved out in the chaos.

The bathroom door creaked open, and Leah stepped out. She barely made eye contact with me as she wrung her hands together and tiptoed through the apartment.

My phone buzzed again, catching her attention. Her eyes widened. “Today’s your birthday.” She said it as if it was a wild revelation that changed everything.

I nodded.

Leah dropped her head into her hands and whispered, “I’m such a terrible person.”

I didn’t have the faintest clue why she thought such an absurd thing. "What? Why?”

Her eyes welled up with tears. I wanted to hold her, but I needed the distance to be able to think straight. Still, it took everything in me to keep from pulling her into my arms.

Leah’s lip quivered. “I didn’t want to ruin everything for you.” She sniffed. “Kylie?—”

“I don’t care about what Kylie thinks right now.”

“Kylie doesn’t know that we...that the baby’s yours.” She lost a little bit of her nervousness and got defensive. “And if you need a test to prove it, that’s fine. But I’m telling you, I haven’t been with anyone since we hooked up, and I wasn’t pregnant before we hooked up.”

I glanced over at the retro-looking refrigerator, painted light pink, and saw a strip of black-and-white pictures pinned to the door.

My chest seized. “Is that...” I didn’t remember intentionally lifting my hand as I pulled the sonograms out from under the magnet.

There were a few different sets pinned together, starting with a little white peanut shape to one of the most recent ones listing fourteen gestational weeks at the top. There was a little head that was way too big for the small body. I could even see two little arms and two little legs.

“Those are from my appointment last week," Leah said, appearing beside me. She rested her hands on her belly, though she wasn’t showing yet. “I’m sorry."

I swallowed the lump in my throat as I stared at the sonogram of the baby.Mybaby.

“It’s not your fault,” I rasped. “If anything, it’s mine. It was my condom.”

“I should’ve told you I wasn’t on the pill. I didn’t exactly need it in my last relationship, and I hated the side effects, so I went off it a long time ago,” she said, starting to ramble as she dabbed her eyes. “I just figured the condom would be enough.”

I thought back to how long it had been in my wallet. I guess there was a chance it was expired, and I had been too sex-crazed to check. Maybe it had been exposed to the heat or cold too much and broken. My memory of the moments after we’d finished, when I disposed of it in the hotel bathroom, was fuzzy at best. I had been tired and horny; a bad combination.

I hadn’t been my normally hyper-vigilant self, which made thisallmy fault.

“I’m sorry I ruined your goal.”

I peeled my eyes away from the strip of images and looked at her. “What are you talking about?”

“Kylie told me...about you always needing—wanting—to be perfect.” Tears streamed down her cheeks. “About making it to thirty without messing up.”

My fucking sister. . .

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