Page 26 of Sexting the Coach (Pucking Daddies #6)

Elsie

“Elsie!”

Mabel and Hattie are outside the bathroom, knocking gently, their voices carrying through the door. I can hardly hear them through the ringing in my ears.

In my hand I hold a little white stick. Something I’ve only ever seen on movies and television. Drew’s my older sibling, and my mom wasn’t pregnant after me. I had no sisters or friends who managed to get themselves into this situation.

Hand shaking, I set the thing down on the sink. It’s probably gross, considering the fact that I peed on it, but I can’t think about germs right now. I can’t think, full stop.

With Jonathan, we were so careful. I was on birth control, and near the end, we were together so infrequently that I hardly thought about it anymore.

“Elsie!” It’s Mabel’s voice, firm but concerned. The knob twists under her hand. “Are you alive? Do I need to pick this lock? You need to say something, or—”

I only realize I’ve leaned forward and flipped the latch on the door when Hattie and Mabel come stumbling through, nearly plowing face-first into the vanity.

On top of which rests the pregnancy test with the two little pink lines.

Hattie and Mabel fall silent. Hattie raises her hand, covers her mouth with it.

For a second, we’re all frozen together, and I can’t help but think that this scene might make a good painting. A little snapshot into the sudden calamity that is my life.

“Okay.” Mabel is the first to speak, because of course she is. She puts her hands on her hips and turns to me. “You got more than one, right?”

I nod numbly. I hadn’t told them about this, about my sneaking suspicion that I did not, in fact, have food poisoning. It hit me last night, and the thought wouldn’t go away until I got up this morning, walked to the drug store, and bought one of each test.

Thank God for self-checkout.

“First things first, we’re going to make sure this isn’t a false positive,” Mabel says, her voice only a little strained, to her credit. “That way—”

I nudge the wastebasket out of its little nook between the toilet and the vanity, watching their heads tip at the same time, their gazes landing together on the tests in the trash.

All of which have their own little version of yes, you are very much pregnant. Some of them have an X, some a plus sign. Some of them literally just say pregnant, which is just cruel. Those felt like a sucker punch.

“…alright,” Mabel says, shaking her head and reaching out for me. “Okay. Now more than ever, we need the council.”

Five minutes later, we’re sitting in the living room. Hattie has fetched one of her plushies from her room and nestled it into my lap. At first, it made me feel silly, but now I have my arms wrapped around it and I’ve realized it’s oddly comforting.

“Let’s start from the top.” Hattie takes a seat on the ottoman, crossing her legs under herself and sinking down.

When I realize that’s all the more prompting I’m going to get from her, I clear my throat and shift, hugging the plushie tighter to my body. Since the paparazzi showed up at our apartment a few nights ago, we haven’t been as caught up.

So, I clear my throat and start to tell them. The last time we talked, it was a three-way voice call about “sleeping” with Weston—or the night that he went down on me and I did nothing to reciprocate. The girls had advised me just like he did, that it wasn’t something I should worry about.

But they haven’t heard the recent advancements.

The week I spent with him, doing nothing but touching each other, spending time together.

This week was relatively quiet, with only a single away game in San Jose—during which Jonathan said nothing to me—and the other days filled with practice and training.

And each night, Weston and I would come home to his place. He’d make me dinner. Then we’d watch a movie and eventually end up tangled in one another. Each time felt like a new adventure, my breath catching in my throat, my heart unable to keep up.

Falling in love.

“I bet he knows what he’s doing,” Mabel says, her low voice tinged with approval.

“Mabel,” Hattie hisses, swatting her on the thigh. “Do you really think that matters right now?”

Mabel smirks, shrugs, and Hattie turns back to me, pushing a few errant black curls away from her face. “Elsie, is Weston the only guy?”

“It’s definitely his,” I confirm, stomach flipping again. I lift my fist up to my lips for a moment, forcing myself to breathe through it, and my roommates are quiet until it passes, and I lower my hand back down to the stuffed penguin in my lap.

“Okay.” Mabel leans forward, takes my hand in an uncommon show of physical touch. “So, what are you going to do? My whole day is clear tomorrow, if you want to make an appointment—”

“No.” I blink, surprised at how quickly the word flew from my lips.

My mom never liked to talk about stuff like this, but she always made it clear that if I found myself pregnant before getting on with my career, we would find a way around it.

In a way, sometimes it felt like she regretted having Drew when she did.

But right now, I know with a certainty that this is what I want. Maybe I knew it from the moment I first thought this might be possible.

“Maybe we should take you into the doctor, at least,” Hattie says, gently, “I don’t know, doesn’t it just…feel kind of early? To really know?”

“The internet says you can start having symptoms as soon as a week or two after conception,” I say, almost robotically. I’d know—I spent all of last night curled on my side, Googling question after question about pregnancy. “But Weston doesn’t want kids.”

Hattie and Mabel blink at me. Slowly, Mabel says, “…and that’s the biggest issue here? I thought—well, I thought this whole thing was fake, Els?”

A sob sneaks up my throat and I bury my face in the penguin. It smells like Hattie—like rose water and eucalyptus—and it actually calms me down pretty quick.

I take another deep breath. “It was supposed to be. But over the week, at his place, I don’t know. Things have been shifting between us. And when he and I were stuck in the arena…he said something.”

Mabel raises an eyebrow. Hattie leans forward, waiting.

“…basically, he said that, if things were different, he could see us being together.”

“Oh, my God, he’s in love with you,” Hattie says, her cheeks flushing. “And that’s not me saying I’m happy with this—I still think he’s too old for you—but I have to admit I could tell how much he liked you that day he came here. After the paparazzi thing.”

“Duh,” Mabel says, tilting her head at me. “He looked at you like he wanted to eat you from the first day we started working there.”

It should make me feel better, to hear all this. But it just makes everything feel stickier. After a second of silence, Mabel clears her throat.

When I look up again, Hattie is smiling at me softly, “Oh, that makes sense.”

“What does?”

“You’re in love with him.”

Now it’s Mabel’s turn to nudge Hattie, and my turn to melt into the back of the couch. I’ve suspected it for a long time, but now that the words exist in the universe, I can’t deny that they’re true.

I’m in love with him.

My face falls into my palms. I’m in love with him.

I want to have his babies and move in together and sit at the kitchen island every night while he cooks me dinner.

I want to cheer him on in his coaching career and treat his hip, force him to go to appointments and crawl into bed next to him every night.

I want him.

“So, I guess you need to talk to him, then,” Mabel says, “if you’re—if you’re thinking about keeping it, and he doesn’t want kids…”

“No.” Once again, I surprise myself with the force that the word comes out of my mouth. “If I talk to him, he’ll do the noble thing. He’ll have the baby with me and take care of it, even though that’s not what he wants.”

Hattie and Mabel sit perfectly still for a second. Then Mabel runs a hand through her long, straight hair, and Hattie pets at the arm of the couch nervously.

“What are you saying, Elsie?” Mabel finally asks, her voice quiet. “Are you saying you, like, want to be a single mom?”

I bite my tongue, thoughts racing through my head faster than I can control them. There’s no way I’m going to Weston with this information. I know what he’s going to do.

Even though he already told me he doesn’t want kids, he would go through with it, if he knew I was keeping it. There’s no way he would step out and make me care for the baby on my own.

Or, even worse, he might send me money. The thought makes me feel sick all over again. The idea of collecting a check from him without actually getting him.

“This is such a mess,” I mutter, dropping my head into my hands.

“Yeah,” Mabel whispers, then I feel her shifting, moving to the other side of the couch, the cushions dipping when she sits next to me. “But you’re not alone.”

“Like it or not,” Hattie says, enclosing me on the other side.

With my best friends on either side of me, I sit on the couch, hug the stuffed penguin, and cry.