Page 86 of Mr. Not Quite Perfect

“Oh!” She looked shocked. “But how does that work?”

“What do you mean, how does that work?”

“He’s impotent or something?”

“No, he’s not impotent. Why would you think he’s impotent?”

“Because you just said you let him come inside you.”

“We’re clean. We both recently had physicals and checkups. And I trust him, and he trusts me, and it just kind of happened that way.”

“Girl, what about pregnancy?” She looked at me as if I was a stupid idiot.

“I’m on the pill, duh. Obviously, I would not be having unprotected sex and letting him come inside me if I wasn’t on the pill.”

“Okay,” she said. “You never told me you went on the pill.”

“Because it only happened recently.”

“Oh?” she said. “When? When you were in New York?”

“No, in San Francisco, right here.”

“But you haven’t been in San Francisco very long.” She looked confused.

“I know. I just went on it the other day.”

“But Molly?” Poppy licked her lips nervously.

“Yeah?”

“You do know that birth control, i.e. the pill, isn’t fully effective for a week, right? And I don’t mean five business days. I mean seven days, a full week.”

“Wait. What?” I said, my jaw dropping.

“Yeah, Molly. You get on the pill, and you have to wait a week before you can take off the rubber. You’re supposed to useother contraception during that time to ensure you don’t get pregnant.”

“Oh fuck,” I said, biting down on my lower lip. “How did I not know this?”

“Maybe because you’ve never been on the pill before.”

I sighed. “Shit! What am I going to do?”

“I’m just surprised the clinic didn’t tell you that.”

“Maybe they did, but I was just so self-conscious because I was there with Travis, and he was making eyes at me. I kind of spaced out and just got the prescription and was like, ‘Thanks,’ and picked it up at Walgreens and… Fuck.” I stared at her. “I mean, it’s not likely that I’ll get pregnant, right?”

She looked at me and wrinkled her nose. “Plenty of people have one and done and gotten knocked up.”

“Thanks, Poppy.”

“What?” she said. “It’s true.”

“You had to say ‘knocked up’?”

“I mean, it is knocked up, right?”

“I’m sure it’s fine. It was just a quickie this morning in the shower, and it just kind of happened. Maybe most of it fell into the drain?”

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