Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 109843 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 549(@200wpm)___ 439(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109843 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 549(@200wpm)___ 439(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
Sure, the missed period, the positive tests, and the raging hormones were all tangible signs that I was, in fact, knocked up. But it was something else entirely having the conversation with my best friend.
It made it really real.
I had to stop myself from vomiting again.
This time it wasn’t from morning sickness.
It was from bone-deep fear.
“Does Kip know?” Nora asked.
“Fuck no,” I replied, paling at the mere thought of having this conversation with him.
Her face turned pensive. “This wasn’t planned?”
“No,” I scoffed, pacing the kitchen. “This was not planned.”
“You didn’t talk about children?” Nora asked gently.
“No,” I half laughed, thinking about the horror on his face the first time we had sex and he thought he had a chance of impregnating me.
“We did not talk about children. But we both agreed we weren’t having them. It was an unsaid kind of thing,” I said lamely. I couldn’t exactly tell her this entire marriage was a sham and we were only having sex because it was… convenient.
Nora nodded with understanding. “Of course.”
I frowned at that. There was knowledge there. Sure, I’d mentioned to her that I never planned on having children. I hadn’t shared that I was physically unable to do so. No need to open that can of worms.
But how could she know that Kip wouldn’t want them? Maybe because he’d been a perpetual playboy. I mean, that made sense. But Nora’s expression was almost… somber?
Did she know more about Kip than me?
Of course, she knew more about Kip than me. She was married to his best friend.
I was nothing but his fake wife.
My knowledge of the man consisted of whether his dick curved to the right—it didn’t—and if he cared about the female orgasm—he did.
Though I didn’t have the bandwidth to feel weird about her knowledge, I did feel weird. And jealous.
But there was the case of the human growing inside me. That took precedent.
“Th-This doesn’t happen,” I stuttered. “Accidental pregnancies don’t happen.”
Nora looked at me with a disbelieving gaze. “Um, have you seen any rom-com?” she asked. “They totally happen.”
I scowled at her. “Outside of Hollywood,” I snapped. “A woman in her thirties has a twenty percent chance of getting pregnant every month. And that percentage only declines the older she gets. And that’s a healthy woman, not one who’s previously been declared barren by doctors.”
Nora gaped at me. “Wait, what?” she half shrieked.
I winced at her tone, realizing I’d let slip one of the—many—things I’d kept from my bestie.
Shit.
“Doctors declared you barren?” she repeated, shocked.
There was no getting out of this one.
Man, I would kill for a glass of wine right now.
“Well, I’m sure they didn’t say the word barren,” I hedged. “I mean, there was some medical mumbo jumbo spoken in soft but detached tones that was, yes, pretty much delivering the news that she”—I pointed to my vagina—“would not have the privilege of a baby hurtling out of her.”
Nora blinked rapidly, digesting this information.
It was a lot.
First, I was telling her I was unexpectedly pregnant, and then I was adding on that I was previously medically barren.
Girlfriend needed a second.
She wasn’t the only one.
I took a deep breath.
“I didn’t think I was ever going to have to tell you this. Any of this,” I said, snatching a cupcake that was ready to go out to the bakery. Suddenly, I wasn’t violently ill, and I needed copious amounts of sugar—stat.
I split the cupcake in half, inverting the frosting side to make a sort of cupcake sandwich.
“I was married,” I told her, focusing on my cupcake and not the best friend I’d been lying to for years. Technically I was omitting, but who was I kidding? Omission was one hundred percent a form of lying.
“Before I left Australia,” I explained. “I was young. Really fucking young. And really fucking stupid.” I took a bite out of the cupcake. “I thought I loved him. He made me feel special or whatever the fuck.”
I chewed, doing it slowly as if I could prolong the process.
Unfortunately, the cupcake was fudgy and smooth and went down just fine.
“You see, I did not come from a wealthy family,” I continued, taking a breath and not looking Nora in the face. “Like, at all. My mum liked the ponies and wine, and my dad liked anything that wasn’t working or spending time with his family. Suffice it to say, we barely scraped by on benefits from the government, income from whenever my father deigned to work, and whatever my mother didn’t gamble away.”
I winced at the pain of saying the words out loud, going back to that dingy flat we’d lived in my entire life. The damp crept into my bones again, the feeling of never being warm in the winter and the heat of the summer oppressive and thick.
“I met Emmet Landon at some house party,” I said, abandoning the cupcake as I once again felt sick to my stomach. This time it had nothing to do with pregnancy hormones but the rancid memories, soaked in Smirnoff Ices and cheap perfume that I thought made me smell older and more experienced.