Page 82 of Healing Hearts
Lila swallows and then takes a sip of her drink. She and Mia are the only two drinking. I’m still picking at my food, barely eating, feeling shitty and run down. I must be getting sick, or the stress is knocking me down more pegs than normal.
“He’d want to talk to me?” she asks.
“If you’re not going to call him an asshole, I think he’d probably love to talk to you.”
Lila gives a light laugh and shakes her head. “Turns out, I was the asshole.”
“Sometimes that happens.”
A comfortable silence sits between us for a beat while I cut a tiny piece of meat off my chicken and then don’t eat it, letting it sit on my fork.
“Are you doing okay?” Lila nods at my plate. “Yesterday, you basically ripped apart the one piece of pizza you took without eating it. Today, you’re eating like a bird. This isnotthe Emily I know.”
“I’m wondering if I’m coming down with something,” I say to cover the fact that this might just be heartbreak showing up in my stomach.
“Oh,” Lila says, seeming surprised. “I wondered if there was going to be a double announcement. You were doing those fertility treatments weren’t you?”
I can actually feel the color drain from my face as realization sets in.Oh, shit. From my purse, I dig out my phone, and I frantically check dates.
I can’t be. I can’t be. I can’t be.
Except if my calculations on my phone are correct, Icouldbe.
I sit back in my chair and stare at the wall, trying to decide the best course of action. Logically, I need to take a pregnancy test. But the idea of seeing two lines makes the queasiness in my stomach go into overdrive. The timing couldnotbe worse.
At Trent’s house, he basically told me he was glad I hadn’t gotten pregnant. I’d ignored his comment because it had felt like a moot point. I wasn’t pregnant, so there was no need to get offended that he was glad it hadn’t happened. He was right that it would have made everything happening a thousand times more complicated.
But fuck me. Of course it had to happen now.
Maybe I’m not, though. Maybe it’s just stress. It could just be stress. And heartbreak. When Omar died, I had trouble eating for weeks, and when Dad died, I went through the same thing. While Trent hasn’t died, something between us feels like it’s withered.
“Earth to Em,” Maggie says. “You okay over there?”
“On the way back to Lila’s, I need to make a stop,” I say.
Lila squeezes my leg under the table, and when she looks at me, there’s excitement in her gaze. But I can’t match it, and I really wish I could.
At the pharmacy, Maggie helps me pick the best test to buy, and when we’re in the aisle alone, she hugs me tight.
“No matter what happens,” she says into my ear, “I love you, and I’m here for you.”
When we get back to the apartment, the only one who seems excited is Lila, and she keeps looking around at the rest of us like we’re silly for not being hopeful.
After I pee on the stick and we’re waiting for the results to show—I refuse to look before the timer goes off—Lila lets out a huff.
“What is going on? Why is everyone acting like this result is a death sentence instead of exactly what Emily wants?” She stares at each one of us, bewildered.
Mia shifts uncomfortably, and Maggie rubs her temples with her index fingers.
“If I’m pregnant,” I say, feeling the full weight of reality settle over me, “the baby is Trent’s.”
Lila’s eyes go very wide, and she stares at me for a beat before she says, “Oh my god, I knew it. He’s always looked at you like you were this precious, adorable gift. It used to make me so mad. This makes perfect fucking sense. Did he finally tell you?”
“Things are really complicated between us right now,” I say. “I just…” Can’t find the words to say any more than that.
The timer goes off, and I go into the bathroom. There, two pink lines are on the viewer of the pregnancy test, and I burst into tears.
Maggie, Mia, and Lila pile into the bathroom behind me, and they envelope me into a group hug.
