Page 12 of The Best Worst Thing

You’d Better Hope

The next morning, Nicole woke up to a missed call from Mari, eleven more from Gabe, and a trio of rambling text messages from Logan.

Remember that fire drill gone wrong where I watched the entirety of The Matrix on my phone and you made fun of me the whole time?

I was wondering, had you even seen it?

Or did you just assume it was bad because of all the robots?

She’d just sent her ridiculously semicolon-rich reply—I remember; I had not seen it; and yes, the robots—when her stomach twisted into knots.

Six whole days had passed since Valerie’s transfer.

If she peed on a good enough pregnancy test, it’d almost certainly be accurate.

And while it was going to be negative, Nicole needed to know that for sure.

Even if it meant slamming the door on her only shot at motherhood, she needed closure.

And so, she sat herself up in her messy bed, took a deep breath, and FaceTimed Valerie Lowell.

“Really? You made me promise I wouldn’t!”

Valerie was pacing back and forth in her kitchen—all shaker cabinets and dinosaur lunchboxes and corkboard calendars—while her toddler and five-year-old screeched along to some deranged version of “Wheels on the Bus.”

“I know,” Nicole said. “But I can’t wait any longer.”

“You mean it? You’re serious?”

“Yes.” Nicole didn’t even blink. “Please.”

“Well, it’s up to you,” Valerie said, wandering down the hall and into her bathroom, then disappearing off-screen. Already, sounds of rummaging. “I’m sure I have a test around here somewhere.”

Nicole had always asked Valerie to hold out for the official blood test. That was how Nicole liked to handle her two-week waits. She appreciated the certainty.

But that had been before. Back when she had known how to ride the wave: the glowing optimism that warmed her body from the inside out on day one, day two, day three; the sudden, scraping shift that seized her head and her heart on day five, when her body—or later, Valerie’s body—knew the truth but she did not; and then, the sleepless crawl through days six, seven, and eight until finally, it was day nine. Test day.

“Found one!” Valerie came back into focus holding up a small foil pouch. She narrowed her eyes, her face twisting slightly as she looked at Nicole, who’d forgotten to respond. “You sure about this?”

“I need to know. Please?”

Valerie nodded, unwrapping the test. “Okay. Just let me pee, and I guess we’ll see.”

The screen was Valerie’s ceiling, smooth and blank. Nicole clutched her phone, pacing around her bedroom as Valerie’s toilet flushed, her faucet ran, the water stopped.

“All right,” Valerie said, the camera back on her soft blue eyes, her thick-rimmed glasses, her blond, hurried mom bun. “Now we wait. Three minutes.”

“Three minutes,” Nicole said as she bit back tears.

She hadn’t thought about this, about saying goodbye to Valerie.

Over the past hell of a year, they’d become unlikely friends, sending each other dinner ideas and holiday gifts and long-winded, late-night texts about the aches and pains of motherhood—the pursuit of it, the pressure of it.

The first time Nicole had met Valerie, it had been over video, just like this.

Their agency matched them, and Nicole was so anxious she could barely speak.

What could she do or say or show to prove to a stranger she deserved this?

That she was worthy of being made a mother?

But then she met Valerie, and all that fear melted away.

She was an angel, she just glowed. Nicole had never met a person quite like that.

So kind, so good. The second Valerie smiled, the second she said, “Nicole, I’ve been so nervous to meet you,” Nicole just waved and said, “Hi, I’m …

I’m shaking,” and they both laughed and this strange, warm easiness stretched across Nicole’s chest and she thought, This woman is going to change my entire life.

It wouldn’t be the first time she’d gotten something like that wrong.

“The control line’s starting to show up,” Valerie said. “Just waiting on the other one, okay?”

“Okay,” Nicole said, heart racing.

Not like it did before, of course.

Not like it did in the beginning, when she’d first gotten off the pill.

When she and Gabe would screw dutifully on all the right days, at all the right times.

When it was still perfectly fun and safe and reasonable to test out the syllables of every possible baby name.

To imagine falling in love with some chubby-thighed, milk-drunk blob in a dinosaur onesie or a floppy pink bow.

To fantasize about watching said blob transform your work-obsessed, never-not-golfing-or-drinking-or-out-with-the-boys husband into the kind of man who came home from the office early, grilled on Sundays, and adored the woman who’d turned him into the father he’d never had.

And not like it did the past couple of years either.

Once she already knew grief and panic and terror.

Once she already knew hopelessness. When the only thing she could do, as her mind screamed and her body quaked, was wait for that late-afternoon call from the clinic.

Beg Gabe to come home and hold her and wait for that call.

But all that—every chapter of that story—was over now. This, here, was it: the cruel, bitter end of a long and foolish war Nicole had waged against herself. She’d gone to battle against her own body and lost every last fight.

“You sure you don’t want to patch in Gabe?” Valerie said.

“No, that’s okay. He’s in … Oregon.”

“Oh.” Valerie’s lips curved into a smile. Nicole’s throat went dry. “That’s too bad.”

Valerie held up the test.

Two little blue lines.

Dark, clear, unmistakable.

She was pregnant.

Pregnant.

This was all Nicole had ever wanted—all she’d chased for three years. And now, here it was. The best shot at a baby she’d ever had, and she couldn’t blink. She couldn’t breathe.

“It worked, Nicole! It worked! You guys are going to be parents! You’re going to be a mama! You have to call Gabe right now! I’m just so excited for you guys! Tell me what’s going through your mind! Tell me what you’re feeling!”

“I can’t believe it,” Nicole said. “I don’t even know what to say.”

The next few minutes were a blur.

She must’ve ended the conversation. She must’ve lugged her body across her bedroom. She must’ve unlocked her phone, traced his name, and pressed her shaking fingers to the screen. Because the next thing she knew, this:

“Colie? I’ve been—”

“Valerie’s pregnant.”

Silence.

She could hear him breathe.

“Nicole, I—”

“You’d better hope it’s just one.”

And then she hurled her phone against the wall, let out the loudest, loneliest cry of her life, and cleared her husband’s nightstand in one irreversible strike, watching in silence as his books, his headphones, his lamp took flight.

She just stood there and watched the porcelain shatter, the shade spin, the light go out.