She looked up. “Actually, this isn’t the first time Kenny and I did it.”
“When?”
“Uhm…” She buried her face in her hands again, hiding from me.
“Sylvie?”
“I’m sorry, Brooke. It was the day when you went on a date with Jett.”
Was that the time he showed me his boat? “The day you said you went to Bellagio instead of Milan?”
She nodded.
“You didn’t.” I gasped. “You lied to me!”
“So did you!”
I couldn’t deny that.
“Geez, Sylvie. You could have been abducted.” My head was spinning from all the horrendous things that could’ve happened to her.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to tell you because I thought you were hurting and I wanted the focus to be on you. It just didn’t seem fair that I had found someone I liked while your heart was broken.”
“It’s okay.” I squeezed her hand reassuringly. “You said you were sick several times in the last three days. Technically, Kenny couldn’t be the father.”
“Who then?” She peered at me, confused—and then realization dawned on her. “Shit. I hope I’m not knocked up by that asshole.”
With asshole, she was referring to her ex, a married man, who first tricked her into believing he was single and then that he wanted a relationship with her. Just like Jett, Ryan happened to be her boss, with the only difference that he fired Sylvie when his wife found out about the affair.
“Let’s just hope it’s food poisoning,” I whispered.
Chapter 23
Traveling to Bellagio to get a home pregnancy test was a bad idea. Not only did Sylvie end up buying three, she also managed to convince me she needed a whole lot of other stuff. As soon as we reached the main street, she dragged me from shop to shop and she ended up with a new pair of shoes, a light summer dress, and a bottle of après sun lotion for me, which I’m pretty sure I didn’t really need…that much. On the bright side, she didn’t dawdle trying on clothes because she looked amazing in anything she wore. Miraculously, the whole shopping spree took her only around half an hour.
It was shortly after noon when the taxi driver stopped in front of the house. I was about to unlock the front door when my cellphone rang again. I fished it out of my handbag and checked the caller ID. It was Jett.
“Where are you?” he barked down the line. My heart skipped a beat.
“Stop worrying. I’m fine,” I said. It was the truth. We were still living and breathing. Basically, nobody got hurt so he didn’t need to know my little secret.
He let out a long breath. “Good. We’re on our way back and should be there in twenty minutes.”
He hung up and I relayed the message to Sylvie.
“We need to hurry,” she said.
I followed her to the bathroom and sat down on the floor, realizing she was going to use the pregnancy test.
“I can’t read the instructions. They’re in Italian. But we should be fine anyway. You see this stuff on TV all the time.” She tore one of the foils to remove the test stick and held it up to me. “What do I do now? Stick it into a glass of urine or what?”
How would I know?
It wasn’t like I had ever needed one of those.
“I think you need to turn the test stick so that the purple side of the handle is facing you. And then you hold the other side into your stream of urine.”
“Okay. Turn around.”
I focused hard not to listen to the gushing sound. Barely a minute later, she tapped my shoulder. “You can turn around now.”
“Finished already?” I sat up and regarded the stick in her hand.
“Yeah. What’s next?”
“I don’t know. I’d say put the cap back on and then put it on the table.”
“For how long?”
“A few minutes, I guess.” I thought back to all the TV advertisements I had ever seen and not paid attention to when I should have. The knowledge would have come in handy.
Sylvie turned on the water faucet and washed her hands. I stroked her back. “You’ll be okay. Even if you’re pregnant, it’s not the end of the world.”
“I know,” she whispered, staring at herself in the mirror. “But I’m not ready to be a mom. I don’t want to be a single mother raising a kid.”
We stood in silence as the seconds ticked by.
“I can’t look. Can you look for me?” Sylvie said eventually.
“Sure.” I lifted the pregnancy test and held it up to examine the pink colored band in the small window.
Sylvie peered over my shoulders. “Am I pregnant?”
“I don’t know. I think two bands stand for a positive result, so I’d say no.”
She let out a whoop of joy, her smile dying on her lips almost instantly. “What do you mean ‘I think?’”
I shrugged. “It’s not like I’m an expert or anything.”
“Why can’t they just mark it P for positive and a smiley for not pregnant?”
I laughed at her attempt at infusing humor. “You should give it another go in case you didn’t hold it under the stream long enough.”
“Oh right. I thought dipping it in there was enough.” She smirked and grabbed another test. I turned away to give her privacy.
“Hey, Brooke. On the off chance I’m not reading this right, can you try the third one? Comparing my result with yours would make me feel better. I don’t want to think I’m not pregnant and then find out I am when it’s too late.”
“Sure. Just give me a minute.” I took the stick from Sylvie’s outstretched hand and waited until she walked out of the bathroom leaving the door ajar. Using a pregnancy test when I wasn’t pregnant was definitely strange but I had done stranger things to help Sylvie out.
A minute later I was done and called Sylvie back in. She held out her hand. I handed the pregnancy test to her and she placed it on the marble counter.
“With your result we can’t be wrong,” she said.
“Yeah.” I sat down on the edge of the bathtub and tapped my fingers against my thigh, waiting.
“Brooke,” Sylvie whispered. Sensing the sudden tension in her voice, I turned and followed her line of vision, my heart slumping in my chest. “Didn’t you say two bands means pregnant? Yours is showing two.”
I snatched the test from her hand and stared at it, my mind unable to comprehend the meaning of it all. There were two lines, which had to be a mistake.
“Oh shit.” Sylvie laughed. “You are pregnant.”
“I can’t be.” My voice failed me as I tried to make sense of the situation. “Did you switch the sticks? If you did, it’s not funny.”
“It’s not a prank. I’d never do that.” Which was true. She didn’t like jokes, or playing games.
I frowned. “Honestly, it must be a mistake. I’m on the pill. My period is due any minute. Maybe I got it all wrong and one band means pregnancy and two means nothing. It could be an Italian thing or the brand differs from those advertised back home.”
I felt myself panicking but couldn’t stop it.
Take a deep breath, Stewart.
“You’re kidding, right?” Sylvie said. “The instructions are in Italian, but in the end all pregnancy tests are the same and they work the same way.”
Denial is bliss.
I shook my head. “No, you’re the one feeling sick and I’m okay. Besides, my period—” I broke off, unable to process the shock. My period was never really on time. It changed like the weather. So that argument wasn’t valid.
“It can’t be, Sylvie,” I murmured. “I never forget to take the pill. Every single day, at the same time. It must be false positive.”
“Nothing’s a hundred percent safe, and particularly not if you’re sick or there’s something wrong with your hormones.” She squeezed my arm gently. “Like you said, it’s not the end of the world.”
“I only tried to be supportive when I said that.” I thought back to my first trip to Bellagio. Jett and I were staying at his house. During one dinner, I got intoxicated and sick. It wasn’t my proudest moment, which is why I must have repressed it and never told Sylvie about it. Maybe the few glasses of wine messed with my hormones.
“It’s a false positive,” I whispered. “It has to be because we’re only dating for a few weeks and it doesn’t happen that fast.”
Sylvie threw the pregnancy tests in the garbage bin and grabbed my arm, forcing me to follow her to the library.
“What are you doing?” I asked as she sat down in front of the computer.
“Googling pregnancy tests.”
“The guys will be back any minute.”
“Let’s hope this old thing’s fast.” She heaved a long sigh as we waited for the computer to boot. It whirred idly, like it had all the time in the world. Waiting wasn’t good. It made me anxious. I could feel dark clouds descending upon my head.
“That’s it,” Sylvie said, turning on the browser and navigating to a search engine. Her longer fingers moved over the keyboard effortlessly and then, with one click, I had my answer.
Two bands…positive.
“You’re pregnant. Congratulations!” Sylvie said, grinning. “It’s not me; it’s you.”
I glared at her, ignoring the sudden urge to pour a glass of water over her head. I felt so faint my legs threatened to buckle beneath me.
“Brooke? Oh, shit,” Sylvie said. “Come on. Sit down. Don’t be upset. You know I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Impossible. The test— ” Sitting in her chair, I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “—is wrong. I don’t feel pregnant.” Lying to myself gave me a false sense of relief so I kept going because it was easier than facing the truth.
“We’ll repeat the test, maybe even go to the doctor’s to check your blood results.”
Which meant waiting at least a day or as long as it’d take to get an appointment. I couldn’t wait. Sylvie grabbed me in a tight hug and I rested my head against her chest, letting her stroke my hair, her soothing voice barely reaching me. “Don’t worry, Brooke, it’ll be okay.” She kept repeating those stupid words I said. “It’s not the end of the world.”
It is the end of the world. Definitely.
“No.” I shook my head. “I’m doomed.”
I wanted to be a mom one day; just not at this point. The thought of telling Jett filled me with dread. A pregnancy so early, when we barely knew each other, could ruin my relationship. He’d run, like most men do. He’d run as fast as he could, and that would hurt me more than anything in the world. I didn’t want to lose him because of a mistake. A stupid mistake occurring under the influence of alcohol.
“You’ll have to tell him,” Sylvie said, deleting the browser history and switching off the computer. “It might seem scary now. But once you do, you’ll find out whether it was just a fling or more. And if he breaks up, which I hope he won’t, then you can either let it define you or strengthen you. And there is always that option,” she whispered. “You can get rid of it and he’ll never know.”
