Page 23 of The Best Bad Decision

She took a flannel from the stack on the shelf and soaked it in cold water, before wringing out the excess and draping it over my head.

“Thanks, K,” I whispered. “Get that out of here.” I waved a hand in her direction. She had set her travel mug on the edge of the sink, but the smell of whatever was inside it was turning my stomach again.

I didn’t need to look at her to know how her eyes widened. One SOS text and a few hours later, all three of my best friends were crowded into my tiny bathroom. Paloma sat in the tub with her knees tucked up toher chest whilst Ruth and Katy took up the floor space. I perched on the edge of the closed toilet seat, elbows on my knees with my head in my hands.

“I can’t look,” I said. My throat felt thick, my head woolly, and my stomach was churning. That wasn’t new. It had felt like a washing machine for days.

After a moment where my friends all looked at one another in a stalemate, Ruth rolled her eyes with a dramatic sigh and reached up to snatch the plastic stick from the edge of the sink.

“Two lines,” she announced. “It’s positive. You’re preggo, A.”

“God… I had no idea how to be a mum. Still don’t, honestly. Just making it all up as I go and hoping I don’t completely fuck her up,” I say. I’m rambling. Cam is looking at me so intently with his moss eyes and I feel this inexplicable need to fill the silence with something—anything.

“You’re an amazing mom,” he says quietly. “Look at her. Look how beautiful she is, how smart, how kind. That’s on you, Amie. It’s all on you.”

I press my lips together and blink back the sheen of tears coating my eyes.

“Oh my god,” Katy breathed. “Is that—”

“That’s your baby, Amie,” the ultrasound technician confirmed. Katy held my hand tightly and we both stared at the fuzzy image on the screen. The technicianindicated with the end of a pen as she pointed out the tiny sprouting limbs, and the gentle flicker of a heartbeat. Then she pushed a couple of buttons and a rhythmic whooshing sound filled the room.

“And that’s the heartbeat.”

I swear my heart stopped in that moment. My entire being was suddenly consumed with this new life, this tiny jellybean on the screen—a baby. My baby. It suddenly felt very real, and my mouth felt dry. Katy squeezed my hand.

“You okay, love?”

I nodded, tears falling unbidden.

“That’s my baby,” I said. “I’m having a baby, K.”

The technician left the room for a moment, leaving me and Katy alone. Katy looked from the screen to me and back again, taking in the tiny, barely-there swell of my still-flat belly.

“Holy fuck, Amie, you’re really having a baby.”

“I really am,” I laughed through tears. “Will you be there?”

“Every step, A.” Katy hugged my head and shoulders as I lay supine on the table, looking at the frozen image of my baby on the screen.

“I mean—I mean when I give birth. I don’t think I can do it without you, K. Will you be there?”

Katy hesitated. “Of course. Never thought this is how you’d invite me to see your foof, but if you want me there, I’ll be there.”

“I remember the first time I felt her move,” I say to Cam. I’m not even looking at him anymore. I can’t stand the intensity of his stare,so I’ve rolled onto my back and I fix my gaze on the ceiling instead as I regale him with stories from memory lane.

“Ruth and I were having lunch, we were gonna meet Katy after her shift to go shopping. I had just taken a bite—” I stop to laugh at the memory. “I had just taken a bite of pizza and she just… hit me. Right in the ribs. Guess she was a little pizza fiend even then.”

“What did it feel like?” he asks. God, I wish he could’ve felt it. I imagine what it might have been like to press his hand against my swollen belly, to hear him talk to our daughter inside. I imagine what it would’ve been like to have him with me on those days when she sapped all my energy, when carrying the weight of a growing baby felt like too much. What it would’ve been like to have him by my side when I went into labour, holding my hand as we welcomed her to the world together.

I wish, I wish, I wish.

“It kinda felt… it kinda felt like a tickle at first. The first one was gentle. And then she went all out. She was relentless. Once she started, she never stopped moving.”

As if to prove a point, Maisy shifts in her sleep, rolling closer to Cam and tightening her hold on his arm.

“Still hasn’t stopped,” he says with a chuckle.

I rocked my hips as I stood under the spray. My back ached. I had been having contractions for two weeks: always irregular, but insistent enough to make me take notice. I moaned as the hot water hit my body, rolling my neck and shoulders and sighing into the steam. Showers had becomethe best part of my day and lately, with my whole body aching, overworked and exhausted from sustaining an extra life, I’d been taking two or even three a day.

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