I trailed off as I remembered that I my period had come just after the last night I had spent with Brandon—and hadn’t had it since. I looked up at Jane, who turned from where she was looking through her bedside table and froze at my expression.
“It’s been six weeks,” I croaked, suddenly unable to speak coherently. “I’m late, Jane. It’s been six weeks.”
Jane flipped around on the bed so she was facing me with crossed legs, and reached out to take my hands and force me to face her as well.
“Okay,” she said. “It’s probably not that. I mean, you haven’t slept with anyone since your period, right?”
“The day before,” I said. “The day before I did, that last night with Brandon. And I…shit…we didn’t use protection, Jane.” I looked up, panicked and wide-eyed. “Jane, I forgot to get my prescription refilled, and we didn’t use protection!”
“Calm down.” Jane’s voice was eerily calm herself as she took my hand. Briefly, I wondered if she’d ever found herself in a similar situation. “My cousin is an OBGYN, Skylar. She assured me that it’s nearly impossible to get pregnant the day before your period, since no one actually ovulates on that day. Unless you’re irregular or the bleeding was unusually light, there’s no way you’re pregnant.”
The look on my face must have told her that both of those conditions were true. My heart felt like it stopped. Jane took a deep breath in, as if breathing in for us both.
“Shh,” she soothed, albeit ineffectually as she rubbed my hand with hers. “It’s going to be all right, Sky. It’s probably stress. I’ve seen you the last few months—you’ve been miserable and freaked out about graduation and jobs and that shit with your dad. We’re all stressed out, starting new jobs and studying for the bar. Plus, you’ve been swimming like crazy too. You probably just skipped one, you know?”
I leaned down and pressed my face into her comforter. “Oh, God,” I mumbled into the cotton fabric. “Fuck! How could I have been so stupid! This could not happen at a worse fucking time!”
“Skylar, stop!” Jane twisted around and tugged open her bedside table. She pulled out a package and threw it into my lap as I sat up.
I picked up the box and read the label. “Why do you have a pregnancy test, Janey?”
“Hey, we’ve all had false alarms,” she said with a shrug. “I’m sure that’s what this is, so go take it to be sure and save yourself from getting an ulcer. Go!”
She shooed me out of the room. I shut the door to the bathroom while I read the instructions at least three times before actually sitting on the toilet and peeing on the stick. I slipped the plastic cap over the sturdy paper strip and laid it carefully on the edge of the sink while I washed my hands.
I splashed my face with the cold water and let it drizzle down my cheeks in thin rivulets without stopping them before reaching for the stack of paper napkins we were using after packing away our things. I couldn’t be pregnant. I just couldn’t.
Without looking at the stick, which wouldn’t be ready for another two minutes anyway, I walked back into Jane’s room and laid down on my back to stare at the ceiling.
“It’s like a bad sitcom,” I said dryly. “I’m going to be somebody’s baby mama.”
“Well, you’ll probably be able to get a hell of a deal on child support,” Jane joked, cutting off her chuckle when I sent her a sharp glance.
“Gross,” I said staunchly. I sat up on my elbow and looked down my torso. “Do I look pregnant? My boobs aren’t sore or anything. Some women start to show early.”
“Yeah, and others don’t show until they’re practically in their third trimester,” Jane said as she swiped at me with her pillow. “But it doesn’t matter, because you’re not pregnant, right?”
“Right.” I said, ignoring the sinking feeling in my stomach that told me otherwise. The timer on my cell phone went off, signifying that the test was ready. I pulled Jane’s pillow over my eyes.
“You go look,” I grumbled from under the pillow. “I can’t. Please, Jane?”
She didn’t say anything, but I heard her shuffle off the bed and across the hall to the bathroom. The door opened, and I listened while she paused for a moment, then trudged back. When her footsteps stopped, I pulled the pillow off my eyes, and looked up to where she stood in the doorway, holding the pregnancy test gingerly between her index finger and thumb.
“Well?” I propped myself back up on my elbows, trying desperately to read her face.
She took a deep breath and tapped the test with her fingernail. “I think…I think you need to make a doctor’s appointment, Mama,” she said sadly as she held out the test for me to see.
“Oh,” I said weakly. I took the test from her fingers. There they were, two incriminating pink lines indicating the tiny cells now multiplying in my body.
“Oh,” I said again as I leaned back on the mattress. Thank God I’m on a bed, I thought vacantly before the world lost all its color and I blacked out.
~
To Be Continued...
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I'd like to thank my mom for giving me her sense of romance and whimsy. If it hadn't been for the years and years of watching chick flicks and reading romance novels together, I probably wouldn't have the sense of optimism needed to write romance in a world like today's.
Secondly, I'd like to thank my husband and my family for giving me the support I need to write, even if it's just for twenty minutes a day while the kid is taking a bath. Writing kept me sane in those first crazy years of our life together, and it keeps me present moving forward too. I love you, always.
There are a lot of people who also took the time to help with the production of my first novel. Sarah, for her lovely advice on plot development and Yiddish. Don, for his exclamations when I told him I was attempting my first novel, and that it was actually genre fiction to boot. And more than anyone else, Burton, who was my final editor and legalese extraordinaire. Couldn't have written half the book without you. Thank you, friend!
And most importantly, I want to thank you, the reader. Skylar and Brandon's journey can't continue without your support and investment. If you enjoyed their story, I would so, so, so appreciate your review on any of the online retailers through which you purchased this book. I can't do this without you, lovely readers, who are the real muse of these stories.
About the Author
Nicole French is a lifelong dreamer, hopeless romantic, and complete and total bookworm. When not writing fiction or teaching composition classes, she is hanging out with her family, playing soccer with the rest of the thirty-plus crowd in Seattle, or going on dates with her husband. In her spare time, she likes to go running with her dog, Greta, or practicing the piano, but never seems to do either one of these things happen as much as she should.
Connect with Nicole French
For more information about Nicole French and to keep informed about upcoming releases, please visit her website at www.nicolefrenchromance.com/.
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Coming Soon from Nicole French
Downtown Baby (Book 1 in the Empire Heart Trilogy)
As a young college student living it up in gritty heart of New York City, nineteen-year-old Layla Barros doesn't believe in love at first sight. Who needs love when you're living with your three best friends in the greatest city in the world? But all it takes is one look from local boy and all around good guy Nico Sanchez to stop her heart in its tracks. So what if he's a decade older, from a rough part of town, and delivers packages for a living? The heart wants what it wants.
Consummate New Yorker Nico Sanchez has been taking care of everyone else but himself for most of his life. After growing up in the hardscrabble part of Hell's Kitchen, he's worked job after job for the last ten yea
rs and has giving up his dream of being an FDNY firefighter in order to take care of his sisters, his brother, and his parents when no one else can. Now that he finally has his shot to leave the Big Apple to find his own success, he meets the girl of his dreams in half-Brazilian student Layla Barros. How is he supposed to choose between the escape he's dreamed of for years and the girl he never knew he always wanted?
As Layla and Nico both come face to face with the challenges of navigating love while trying to make it in a cutthroat city like Manhattan, they must navigate their own personal challenges, families, and backgrounds to figure out whether or not they can really make it work. In a town where it's as easy to be conned as it is to fly high, can they take a change on what they feel in their hearts? Or is the cost of being together too great if it forces them to sacrifice their dreams?
Check out the first chapter from Downtown Baby below!
Chapter 1
I step out of the subway stop on Park Avenue and Twenty-Third Street, my cell phone in hand. Looking straight up Park, I can see the elegant architecture of Grand Central Station; down the other direction, I can see the looming buildings of the Flatiron District. It’s one-thirty on a Monday, which means that people bluster around me, hurrying off their lunch breaks to their desks in the tall office buildings that line the massive thoroughfare. Around me I hear Spanish, some kind of Creole, English speakers with multiple accents, all jumbled together with the horns and throttles of cars making their way slowly through the impermeable Manhattan traffic. A few of the nearby corners boast coffee carts and nut venders, the smells from which gust through the frigid January air. This is New York, chaotic and colorful, a city I have come to adore in the past year and a half I’ve lived here.
I step out of the line of pedestrians entering and exiting the subway tunnel and check the map on my phone. It’s my first day at a new job, which, according to my phone, is about two blocks south of where I stand. Plenty of time to get there. I glance around for a Starbucks or something similar; I’d like to have a coffee, but the cheap drudge from the carts makes my stomach hurt if I have too much. I already had two cups before my eight o’clock classes this morning, so I’m at my limit for what my roommate Quinn dubs “Borough Battery Acid.”
“Pardon, miss.”
A deep baritone voice behind me interrupts my thoughts, and I instinctively twist around, eager to get out of its owner’s way. The stereotype about people from New York is that they’re mean, but that’s wrong. It’s just that there are certain social codes everyone from here knows—codes like “Don’t stand like an idiot in the middle of a busy sidewalk”, “Don’t stand in front of the subway car doors during rush hour if you’re not getting off at the next stop”, and “Never, ever drive your car through a crosswalk when pedestrians are walking there.” “I’m walking here!” is a real phrase; I’ve used it myself. In a city of eight million people all stuffed into a few square miles, no one has the patience for the ones who don’t know the rules.
Apparently right now that's me.
“Sorry,” I say quickly, but the speaker, a FedEx courier, is obscured by a tall tower of boxes stacked on a dolly, which he is trying to maneuver through the crowded subway.
“No problem,” he booms, and pushes past me, giving me an excellent view of a set of large shoulders and a prize-worthy backside. I swear, the way some men’s asses look in a uniform should seriously be illegal. Sometimes I wish that catcalling were normal for women to do, not just men. It would level the playing field a bit, plus it would be really satisfying to whistle after an ass like that.
Curious to see if his face is as good looking as the rest of him, I watch to see if he’ll turn around, but he just continues moving through the crowd, going doggedly about his business like everyone else. I shrug and check my phone again. Time for my business too. When I glance back up, a small café on the corner catches my eye, and I smile. Just enough time for a coffee to start my first day of work off right.
~
“Fox, Lager, and Associates, how may I help you?”
The receptionist’s voice rings out loud and clear while I wait in the small conference room behind the donut-shaped desk facing the elevator door entrance in the lobby. The office is cool and modern, with blonde wood floors and sleek furnishings throughout, accented by brushed metal fixtures. The two name partners, Steven Fox and Gerald Lager, pose with boy bands and pop singers in the dozens of photos that line the walls, interspersed with multiple gold and platinum records from said artists.
I sit alone at the long, oval table in the conference room, peering at each of the pictures and trying to distract myself from the nerves on the first day of my new part-time job. Unfortunately, the perfect, white-toothed celebrity faces only make me feel that much more self-conscious. This is an entertainment law firm, where everyone here works for perfect-looking people and look like that could be one of them. The current receptionist who greeted me looks like she could be doing spreads at Vogue. Even the photos of the partners, who are both easily over fifty, strongly resemble GQ ads. I, on the other hand, with my short, curvy stature and thick, curls that defy control most of the time, don’t look anything close to a fashion model. I'm cute, sure. Striking on a good day, when I get my makeup right and my blue eyes pop against my black hair and tan skin. But I'm no beauty queen and don't pretend to be.
I was hired as a new receptionist/intern at Fox and Lager last week. It’s my first job in a law firm, the kind of job I hope will look good on law school applications in a few more years. I’m the perfect candidate for a low-level internship: nineteen, in my second year at NYU, pursuing a double major in English and Journalism. I want to be an attorney, preferably working with creative types like some of the clients whose faces double as room decorations for Fox and Lager. I know I’m not expected to have any real legal experience before attending law school, but it wouldn’t hurt to get a feel for the business. Working at an entertainment management firm seems like a good place to start.
“Layla?”
I look up from my chair in the waiting area to where Karen, the office manager, stands in the doorway between the receptionist desk and the conference room. Even at first glance, you know Karen is the kind of woman you don’t want to fuck with. A thirty-something woman with a business degree and a penchant for very high-heeled boots, Karen was born and raised in the Boogie-Down—the Bronx. She's the third child out of five in a very tight family of Puerto Ricans who operated a lot of the hot dog carts in Central Park, or so the other receptionist informed me in hushed tones after my interview the week before. She's also the first of her family to go to college, and she didn’t mess around, graduating summa cum laude from NYU’s school of business before starting her job here. These are all such critical elements of her personality that she divulged them to me during my interview the week before. It was a scare tactic, I think—she thinks I’m just a rich kid from the suburbs like so many of my classmates, and she wants me to be afraid of my boss.
But we’re more alike than she realizes. Like my dad, a native from Brazil, Karen takes major pains to erase any residue of her less than affluent upbringing, mostly through appearance. She wears shoes that no office manager in Manhattan has any business buying, and the waterfall of straight, caramel-colored satin that falls from her head is most likely a very sleek and expensive way of taming hair that probably looks a lot like mine naturally. Her sleek, designer outfit makes my H&M pencil skirt and polka-dotted blouse seem outright dowdy in comparison. I pull at the hem of my skirt as I stand up, suddenly conscious of my less-than immaculate appearance.
“Are you ready for your training?” Karen asks.
I nod, holding up my pad of paper and pen I’ve brought to take notes. “Absolutely.”
The only thing Karen can’t mask is her speech. A thick Bronx accent curves over every word. I wonder if she doesn’t secretly like it, since she doesn't work to erase it like my dad does. It probably only adds to the overall intimidation factor to subu
rban kids like me.
Mostly people in Washington, where I grew up, only know New York from the movies. They think everyone here talks like Robert De Niro or Jay-Z, and are as tough as any character in a Scorsese film. I thought that too, but Karen doesn’t know where else I grew up. She only knows what’s on my resume, the address of a cookie cutter house outside of Seattle. She doesn’t realize that the suburbs aren’t the only place I think of as home, that I've spent most of my summers in Brazil, helping my dad volunteer medical aid in the favelas when I wasn't at the beach with my cousins. The Bronx doesn't scare me at all.
As she leads me through the halls of the small office—the rest of the floor behind the conference area contains only ten proper offices and a small pod of desks for the assistants, paralegals, and clerks—Karen lectures me on my duties as an intern. I listen and take notes on the legal pad. In my experience, new employers love it when their employees take notes. Meanwhile, I can still look curiously at my surroundings and notice the two handsome young attorneys working at small desks just around the corner from the receptionist’s desk. Hmm. Eye candy.
The job is cake. I’m to manage the coffee maker, of course, but I’ll also be in charge of sending and receiving mail, stocking office supplies, sending and receiving faxes and, of course, answering the phones. Invigorating stuff, I know. My shift will be from two o’clock until seven o’clock every day, and because I’ll be the last one to leave the office, so I'll need to lock up the elevator with building security after leaving through the emergency stairwell. I’ll clock in and out through the computer’s timecard system, and if I need to go to the bathroom, I should message Karen’s assistant, Clarice.
Every so often on our tour, Karen stops and looks at me sharply, squinting her eyeliner-laden lids as if examining me for character defects or inability to understand these basic tasks. I just nod, jot a few more details, and we continue with the training.
Legally Yours (Spitfire Book 1) Page 50
