“Figure what out?” I spit, then wipe my mouth with toilet paper. “I’m eighteen, living in a trailer, working at a taqueria, and I’m—” I can’t even say it. “This isn’t real. This can’t be real.”
A sharp knock on the door makes us both jump.
“Harp?” Z’s voice is muffled but clear. “You okay in there?”
Ximena and I exchange looks. Her eyes ask:Do you want me to tell him?
I shake my head frantically. Not yet. Not until I?—
But Z knows me too well and for too long.
“Harper, open the Goddamn door or I’m kicking it in.”
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter, but I unlock it.
He barges in like he owns the place, and it’s suddenly very fucking cramped with three people in this tiny bathroom. His eyes scan me—taking in my pale face, my shaking hands—and then land on the pregnancy test I’m still clutching like it might bite me.
“What’s that?”
“Z—”
But he’s already grabbing it from my hand, and I watch his face as he reads it. Watch the confusion shift to shock, then him just totally blanking out while his eyes dart around the bricks on the far wall like they do when he’s trying to figure out how to fight a final boss on a video game, then to something that looks almost like?—
Satisfaction?
“Holy shit.” His voice cracks. “Holy shit, Harp, we made a baby!”
And just like that, my worst nightmare gets even worse.
Because Z’s smiling.Smiling. Like this is good news.
Like we’re some normal couple who planned this. Like we’re not two broke kids barely surviving in a city that doesn’t give a fuck about us.
Not to mention the elephant in the room,the very giant elephantin the very miniature room.
Two months.
I don’t know that much about pregnancy math, but if I try to think about the last time I had a period, it might’ve been a little longer than two months…
Caleb’s face flashes through my mind.
And the ghostly feel of his arms wrapped around me that haunts my dreams. The way he’d hold me so tight, refusing to let me go even after we finished, stroking my hair while I closed my eyes and both of us justbreathed, and I listened to the strong beat of his heartbeat through his broad chest and felt so Goddamn safe and?—
I pull away from Z with a sharp exhale, heart feeling like it’s cracking in two. “We don’t know who?—”
My eyes search back and forth between his, and I see the moment I see the moment it lands, because he swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.
“—who the father is,” he finishes for me. His eyes go a little dark as he says it.
“Ay cabrón…” Ximena whispers. “Maybe I’ll leave the two of you alone for a minute. I’m just gonna—” She gestures vaguely toward the door. “I’ll tell Dani you need to go home early. Take the rest of the day.”
She squeezes my shoulder once before slipping out, leaving me alone with Z in a bathroom the size of a shoebox, holding a positive pregnancy test and trying not to hyperventilate.
“Say something,” I whisper.
Z’s staring at the test in his hand like it holds the answers to the universe. When he finally looks up at me, his eyes are wet.
“I want it to be ours,” he says quietly. “I want—” His voice breaks. “Fuck, Harp. I want this to beours.”