by Aurora, Lexi
"Jesus, it's about time!" Melony bellowed. She gave Liza a disapproving look and bustled through the door, not bothering to shut it behind her. Liza stood in the frame, shoulders slumped, and peered out into the hallway. She looked surreptitiously up and down both ends for any curious neighbors. She had no desire to make conversation and if she made eye contact with anyone she would pretend to be busy and shut the door. The fact that she was looking at all was mostly due to her own morbid curiosity and foul mood. Also, and probably this most of all, she was stalling. The longer she spent in the hall, the longer she could avoid direct eye contact with Melony. It seemed like this was of paramount importance. Melony knew her too well. It would take almost no time at all for her to figure out something was the matter.
“Hey!” Melony called from the couch, again doing that annoying mind-reading thing, “I’m waiting over here! Just like I was waiting at the door. Seriously, what’s going on with you today?”
"Nothing, I'm fine. I'm just tired, okay?" Liza answered, shuffling over to the couch to sit beside her friend. She heaved herself onto one of the overstuffed pillows and let her head fall onto the sloped back. Her eyes slipped shut, and for one blissful moment, she thought she might fall asleep. When Melony's fingers flicked her on the forehead, she understood she would not be so lucky. Her eyes opened again, and she found Melony's face hovering only inches above her own.
“I hate to say it, lady, but you look more than tired. You look like shit,” Melony said sympathetically.
“Gee, thanks. Remind me why I invited you over again?” Liza asked dryly. Melony certainly had a way with words and her bluntness sometimes rubbed people the wrong way. For Liza, though, it was total reassurance. It was enough to get her sitting up straight and even smiling a little. Melony grinned back at her and reached for something by the side of her couch.
“If you honestly can’t smell it, things are more dire for you than I thought,” she said with a mockingly forlorn tone of voice.
“Smell what?” Liza pressed, honestly curious now.
"The pizza, darling! Triple cheese, just the way you like it!" Melony produced the pizza with a flourish, holding it out on the palm of one hand like a waitress. Now Liza really could smell it, and her stomach growled uncomfortably. For a split second, everything felt normal, just the way it had been since the two of them were in middle school. Then the reason for her unhappiness and her subsequent avoidance of her best friend in the world came crashing back down on her head. She was careful to keep her face impassive, but her heart started jackhammering in her chest, and she felt vaguely like she needed to be sick. If her suspicions were correct, it was a feeling she would need to get used to for the foreseeable future. Say, give or take three months.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she said as chipper as she was able. She shifted uncomfortably and waited for her stomach to settle. It didn’t, not completely, but enough so that she was reasonably sure she didn’t need to make a run for the bathroom. Steady breaths and her new mantra: get through this moment and maybe everything will be okay. Its success was marginal at best, but Liza wasn’t giving up.
“Sure I did,” Melony answered, busying herself with paper plates and the unwieldy pizza box, “it’s part of the plan to help you get your groove back. I brought a massive bottle of wine, too, so you should be feeling good before we know it.”
"No! No, sorry, I don't want any wine. I'm...I'm just not feeling much like drinking today," Liza responded hurriedly. By the time the sentence was finished she sounded practically normal, but it was too late. Melony was sharp and did not miss the shrillness of that first ‘no.’ She looked at Liza closely, and the set the pizza plates down with careful deliberation. The thudding of Liza's heart grew more pronounced, and she had to fight the urge just to hop up and run. Never in her life had she been tempted to run from her best friend, but she was seriously considering it now. It wouldn't fix everything, but it would delay her stay of execution some. It wasn't much, but it was something.
“Okay, enough,” Melony said quietly, all of her usual bluster momentarily gone.
"I don't know what you mean," Liza answered feebly. She wasn't a habitual liar, and she wasn't any good at it when she did it either. The pitiful attempt at dissuading Melony from her prying didn't even make a dent. When Melony looked at her again, Liza understood. She would spill it all, every single sordid detail of the things she'd been up to as of late.
“Cut the bullshit, girlie, got it? I’ve known you for way too long for you to be able to pull the wool over my eyes,” Melony said matter-of-factly.
"Yeah, I guess you have. I should have known better," Liza sighed bitterly. Part of her was practically bowled over with relief, but another part of her was annoyed. It felt like an intrusion, not even being able to hold onto her secrets. It felt like she was losing hold of everything that was supposed to belong to her.
"Tell me what it is. Just tell me what’s wrong, and things will start to feel better," Melony prodded gently.
“You’re a smart girl, want to venture a guess?” Liza asked, unable to make herself say the words now that they had arrived at the heart of the thing.
"Are you pregnant, lady? Just tell me quick, like pulling off a band-aid," she said softly and in a decidedly un-Melony-like voice. Liza looked down at her twisting hands and started to cry silently. Even as she had watched the days tick by without her period arriving, Liza had not spoken that word out loud: pregnant. What a funny word it was, a funny concept. For some people, it was the only thing a person wanted to hear and the greatest news in the world when it finally came. On the flip side, thinking you were pregnant when you didn't want to be was its own brand of terror that simply could not be reproduced. It stayed with you, a gnawing suspicion in the back of your mind. It had been Liza's own personal Eeyore cloud for the last interminable days, and part of her was glad to have the word said out loud now. A more superstitious part of her was utterly convinced that now that it had been said aloud, it would simply become truth.
“Liza-?” Melony prompted, still in her rare gentle voice.
“I don’t know,” Liza answered hesitantly, then squared her shoulders when Melony’s expression turned to disbelief, “honestly, I don’t.”
"But you think you are?" Mel pressed, relentless as ever. Sometimes it drove Liza bonkers, but at the moment she sort of loved her for it.
"I don't know. I think I might be. I've been wondering for the last week or so. I thought I was just being stupid, but the feeling isn't going away. It's getting stronger," she said miserably. She waited for the questions to come, just as she knew they would. It was only natural. She would have had plenty of questions herself had their current positions been reversed. The idea of answering anything, however, felt impossible. Someone might as well ask her to climb Mount Everest without any training. Every one of her nerve endings was on edge, waiting to fight or flee.
"And you couldn't just be stressed or something?" Melony asked hopefully. It wasn't the question Liza expected, and she could have cried for how grateful she was.
“Of course it could be. It’s just that I’m not usually late.”
“What do you mean by usually?” Melony asked, her face darkening.
“I mean never. The only time I was ever late was when I had mono our senior year of high school.”
“I remember that. You were sick as a dog,” Mel responded, her voice almost wistful. Liza thought she could understand why. It hadn’t been a good time by any means but sick as a dog was a whole lot less complicated than maybe, probably pregnant.
“I don’t know what to do, Mel. I don’t have the first clue how I’m supposed to handle this. It wasn’t supposed to happen, you know?” Liza said weakly. She felt pathetic even thinking that way, let alone saying any of it out loud, but it was all she had to contribute. It was also what was at the heart of what she was feeling: complete befuddlement. Pregnancy just wasn’t part of her plan.
"I'll tell you what you do," Me
lony said. She stood, hands on hips, and didn't even bat an eyelash when a wayward piece of pizza fell onto Liza's carpet. She looked like a woman who had just reached an unshakable conclusion. Liza peered into her friend's face and shuddered. She knew the expression well. She also knew that deterring Melony from a plan once she had her mind set was a nearly impossible feat.
“Look, I don’t know what you’re thinking-” Liza started, attempting to backpedal although she knew full well that it was too late.
"That's fine because I'm going to tell you. We're going to the drugstore, and we're going to get a pregnancy test. We're going to get a lot of them, actually."
“But those things aren’t one-hundred percent, you know?” Liza protested half-heartedly.
“Sure, that’s true,” Melonly smirked, “but I bet it’s a hell of a lot more reliable than your intuition.”
“Okay, but what if it’s too early? I think you have to wait for a certain amount of time so there might be no point anyway.”
"Uh huh. You really aren't up on the newest technology for this shit, are you?" Melony laughed. All of her unnatural gentleness was long gone. It had left with her feelings of uncertainty and helplessness and been replaced with grim determination.
"Why would I be?" Liza asked defensively. It wasn't typical for Melony to let that kind of sass slide but this time she hardly batted an eyelash. Her little way of showing that she was still sympathetic to the nature of the predicament, maybe.
“Okay, good point. All I’m saying is that there are tests specifically designed to tell you these things early and those are the tests we’re going to get.”
"I can't," Liza whispered, "I know it's stupid but I just can't. The second I buy one of those tests it'll be real, and I won't be able to take it back."
Liza fully expected to catch an earful for this pathetic gem. Melony didn't take well to weakness, especially not in the people she loved. Liza had wondered many times before if this was born out of fear that weakness made them vulnerable but had never quite dared to ask. This time, it wasn't relevant. Melony declared that she would go and get the tests, and turned a deaf ear to all of Liza's small protests. She marched out the door and left Liza sitting on the couch, wondering when everything had gotten so completely out of control. It felt like her friend had been gone for at least an hour, during which Liza managed to think up every worst-case scenario in this universe or in the next. In reality, Mel came back in twenty minutes tops with enough pregnancy tests to take care of an entire college cheerleading team. After much water and an upswing in nausea, Liza wasn't sure she would be able to ignore, she had her answer. Not just one, not just some, but all of the pregnancy tests gave the same answer; every single one of them telling her to expect a baby.
Chapter Nine
Wesley Baker
“If you don’t mind my saying, Mr. Baker-”
“Nope, none of that, if you please. Just call me Wesley. Or governor. I like it better that way,” Wesley said with a tired smile.
“Alright, sure, but wait and see if you still feel that way when I’m done with my thought,” Milton answered right away. The guy was rapid fire with his responses and quick as a whip, just like always. Wesley was grateful for it; it was good to know that some things never changed.
“I’ll take the chance,” he said in lieu of expressing this particular thought. It wouldn’t do to get overly sentimental in a bar, especially not one he wanted to continue to frequent.
“Well, if you don’t mind my saying so, you look like you’ve aged about ten years in the last month. Is something ailing you?” Milton asked, his brow wrinkled with concern while he poured Wesley’s drink. Wesley’s warm feelings towards the guy only grew seeing the genuine concern.
"What is this, my neighborhood Cheers?" He smiled, accepting his drink gratefully and taking a long, burning sip. Milton laughed heartily and pulled up a stool behind the long, high bar. Wesley hardly ever saw the guy sit down and he felt an absurd kind of special to warrant that kind of attention.
"Sure, governor, where everyone knows your name. Except that, for you, I guess it's always like that. Or most of the time, I expect. Is that about right?"
“Yes and no,” Wesley said vaguely. He was embarrassed by the nod to his standing as sort of, kind of famous. He wasn’t usually, or at least he hadn’t been up until recently. There was a time when he had enjoyed throwing it in his mother’s face just to piss her off. Something felt off about hearing it from Milton, though. It was the same way he imagined it would feel if Liza ever talked about his celebrity outright, which she had mostly avoided the handful of times they had spent together.
"I have a feeling it tends more towards the yes if you don't mind my saying so," Milton said quietly. Ridiculously, the empathy in the bartender's voice made Wesley want to cry. Milton might have sensed some of that feeling, too, because he pulled Wesley's drink closer, topped it off, and slid it back without a word.
“What about your friend?” he asked, changing the subject abruptly, “He going to be joining you today?”
“Right. Adam. Yeah, he’ll be here. He should be here already, actually,” Wesley answered, his tone darker than he meant it to be. Milton, who was back to the task of polishing stemware, raised an eyebrow.
"He got something to do with the gloom you're wearing today?" he asked casually. And dammit, if he wasn't the easiest man to talk to. Wesley thought he would tell the guy just about anything he wanted to know, and that included private information about the show's stocks and standings. He had heard unburdening yourself was good for the soul. He wasn't Catholic, not even a lapsed one, so spilling his guts to the bartender was as close to a confessional as he was apt to get.
"Sort of. It's a lot to get into but let's just say he made an ass out of himself in front of somebody he should have been more polite to," Wesley answered. It was cryptic, but it was the best he could do. Adam was supposed to be there already, and Wesley hoped to avoid decking him in the face when he arrived. When he finally got there, which should have been twenty minutes ago but wasn't, because Adam was just Adam, it was clear that he had already been drinking. He did what he wanted to do just like he always had – just like Wesley had done back when everything had felt easy. It was hard to even be mad at him, once Wesley really thought about it. Adam was who he was, and in a way, Wesley envied him; it was a hell of a lot easier when he had been the same. When things had started changing was anyone's guess. It hadn't been part of the plan. What he did know was that the memory of Adam leering at Liza in the throes of a conversation only he wanted to have made him see red. Adam, who was his friend, looking at Liza like she was a juicy cut of steak. Wesley should have taken his side, probably. Bros before hoes and all that bullshit. Instead, the idea of Liza looking so stricken made him want to punch someone in the face. Adam would have done just fine. It would have felt good, and his fingers twitched with anticipation. Actually, socking someone sounded like an excellent plan. Maybe the thing he was missing, not that he was much of a fighter. He'd always been too busy drinking, doing the show, and engaging in all around fuckery.
“Boss! What the fuck, man? I’ve been looking for you!” Adam’s voice rang out over the rapidly filling bar. It was a funny choice of greeting – like Wesley was the one who’d shown up late and Adam was the one who had been patiently waiting.
"Speak of the devil," Wesley muttered under his breath. Milton shot him a look that told him the two of them were in cahoots. It was a small thing, but one Wesley was grateful for. He thought it would do a lot to keep him from losing his shit dealing with his producer. Wesley turned a little on his barstool, just in time to get a good look at Adam. And had the two of them been friends? Really, truly been friends for the last couple of years in which Wesley's show had served as the bread and butter for the both of them? He knew it was true, but it was hard to feel the truth of it; currently, the best thing he could dredge up for Adam was distaste.
“Bro, you’ve turned into a ghost, you kno
w it? And I’m not the only one who says it either.”
Adam's words slurred. He didn't sound exactly drunk, but it was noticeable enough that Wesley knew he'd already been hitting the bottle. He did sound like a jackass, though, and like he had something going on behind the scenes, too. That was the part Wesley really didn't like: the part where Adam looked like he was up to some kind of shit. It didn't take a genius to understand that whatever it was, it wasn't going to be good for anyone involved. Wesley took another long sip of his drink and told himself to hold his fucking horses. He wasn't himself lately. If he verbalized the thoughts playing out in his head, things were apt to end badly.
"Adam? I say this with all the love in the world-" Wesley started, trying to make himself mean it. Adam's dumbed down eyes lit on him immediately. Definitely drunk. No doubt about it now. It was Friday, after all, and that was when the party started. Wesley had joined Adam on one of his weekend-long benders more than a handful of times. They had called it research and laughed. Now Wesley only found it distasteful. It made Adam look weak, needing to party the way he did. Was that the way he had looked? Was that how he looked to women like, say, Liza Morris?
“Sure, all the love. And all of that bullshit, right? That’s not what we’re talking about, is it?” Adam pushed. Adam was in the mood for pushing. He was going to do it no matter what or who got in his way. Wesley had seen that, too. He’d laughed at the poor schmucks on the other end of Adam’s bullshit. Maybe it was karma, being on the receiving end of it now.
“No, I guess it’s not. Want to tell me what we are talking about?”
"Would do, but there's someone here who wants to talk to you. She seems really fucking eager, if you know what I mean," Adam said serenely. The look made Wesley want to take a shot at him all over again and knew that the two of them would never be friends again. Assuming that they had really been friends to begin with. He looked at Adam levelly, then turned to see what was coming next. He already knew, or at least he thought he did. Still, looking for confirmation was a necessary evil. For Wesley, it brought no surprises.
