The instructions seemed simple enough—pee on the stick and wait. She did exactly that, studying the clock on her phone until the five minutes were up. Time to check.
Two blue lines.
She scrambled for the instructions, taking several moments before it sank in that she was reading the Spanish directions. She ruffled the paper to the other side. “Two blue lines, two blue lines,” she mumbled, scanning the page. Two blue lines. Pregnant.
Oh, no no no.
The room felt like it was spinning, while her head traveled in the opposite direction and twice as fast. Pregnant? I can’t be. She stared at the lines, but they only darkened the longer she looked at them, as if they were defying her to question the results. She consulted the directions again. A false negative is far more likely than a false positive.
What do I do? Who do I tell? Definitely not her mother. Her mother would freak out, and Anna was ready to freak out enough for a dozen people. She couldn’t call Melanie. She loved Melanie, but she would blab to Adam and that would be bad. Very, very bad. The only answer was Holly. Holly was her biggest ally at LangTel, and if she were being honest, the only female she ever did anything fun with, like going out for drinks.
Holly’s phone seemed to ring for an eternity. “Anna? You’re calling me from your cell? Why didn’t you just walk down to my office?”
“I’m at home. Can you talk without anyone hearing?”
“Two secs. Let me close my office door.” There was a rustle on the other end of the line. “Okay, talk. Wait. Did you hear from you-know-who?”
“No.” Anna rubbed her head. Good thing she’d bought that pain reliever. “I’m pregnant.” No reply came from the other end of the line. “Holly? Are you there?”
“I just saw you two hours ago. What in the heck happened after I threw away the blueberry muffin?”
“It wasn’t until you said that thing about PMS that I realized I’d completely skipped my period. So I came home and took a pregnancy test.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? I could’ve come with you.”
“Because I was sure it was a stupid idea, that’s why.” It was worse than stupid. If she hadn’t done it, she could’ve been going about her normal miserable day. Now she had to go about her pregnant miserable day.
“Do you know who the father is?”
“You can’t be serious.”
“You weren’t together for much more than six weeks. How many times could you possibly have had sex?”
Anna nearly snorted at the question. You have no idea. She and Jacob had been like rabbits. There was no escaping their physical attraction. It had a life force all its own. It had been made even more carefree by the knowledge that she couldn’t get pregnant. Or so she thought. “Let’s just say that he has a very short recovery time.”
“No wonder you were so bummed out to break up with him.”
Anna sighed. She had indeed been sad to break up with him, although sex wasn’t the reason. She’d fallen in love with the big jerk. “He’s probably going to be the reason LangTel will go down the tubes. I couldn’t exactly look beyond that.” She could never forgive him for that. He not only knew exactly what her family meant to her, he’d known it all along.
“No, I suppose not.”
“So what do I do?” Anna hadn’t even thought beyond this phone call. Making plans was not in her skill set at the moment.
“You have to tell Jacob.”
“What am I supposed to do? Just waltz into his office and announce that I’m sorry that the last time I was there I had to tell him what a bastard he is, and by the way, I’m pregnant with your baby?”
“Think of it this way. It’ll be ten times more awkward when you run into him on the street a year from now and have to explain where you got your little Asian baby.”
A year from now. She might as well have been talking about the abominable snowman. Nothing seemed real anymore, especially not the future. Perhaps that was because she’d grown immune to all of it. Holly had a point, too. There would eventually be a baby to explain, to everyone. There’d be a baby bump before that. “I have to tell my family, too, don’t I?”
“At some point, yes. Nothing makes Christmas morning more uncomfortable than a baby nobody knew about.”
Anna laughed quietly. At last she had Holly around to lighten the mood. “You know what’s ridiculous about this situation? I should be happy right now. I should be jumping up and down in the streets. I really want to have a baby. You know, I went to a fertility doctor about it after my dad passed away.”