Page 180 of Happy Hour

What?

I just had my...okay well when was shark week?

The real revelation came to me a good two minutes later. I hadn’t had my period since before I left for Charlotte.

Oh my god! I haven’t had a period in seven fucking weeks!

I jumped out of bed with alarm. “Emma!” I yelled. “What the fuck am I going to do?”

She began jumping up and down on my bed reaching for my stomach. “Is there a little Jameson in there?” She cooed pressing her head against stomach. “Hello little fella,”

I pushed her backwards. “Stop that!”

“Sorry,” she apologized undeterred by my harshness. “I’m so excited. Let’s go get a test. I want to be there when you find out.”

“Emma, Ican’tbe pregnant right now.” My mind was going through all the reasons why this wasn’t a good thing and filing them all away in the you’re-fucked-file. “With Jameson gone all the time, Charlie, the track...This is thelastthing Jameson needs right now.”

“If it was the last thing he needs,” Emma scooted towards the edge of the bed. “why was he so careless?”

“I um...shit...I don’t know.” I threw my hands up. “What am I going to do now?”

“Jameson hasalwaysbeen like a walking billboard for a condom ad.” She placed her hand on my shoulder. “He knew damn well, what he was doing. Did he ever use a condom?”

“I think...well, the first time but after that he didn’t.”

“Did you tell him you were on birth control pills? Did you guys have that discussion?”

Now that I think about it, we never did. How could we be so stupid? He never asked if I was on the pill, why would he not?

Oh god, what have we done?

Moments later, I was puking with Emma holding my hair.

Another forty-five minutes later, we were in the aisle of the OlympiaTop Foodsgrocery store looking over pregnancy tests. We drove to Olympia because I didn’t want any one in town to find out. With Elma being a small town, people talked.

Looking over the tests, I couldn’t believe the selection they had. It was overwhelming.

“Which one do I get?” I asked Emma who was currently slurping down her second mocha. “Stop drinking those. That’s why you’re so short.” I ripped her drink out of her hand and began drinking it.

“Hey,” she reached for it. “You can’t drink caffeine anymore and I can’t get these on the east coast. No one make coffee like the Northwest.”

“I can’t have caffeine?” I asked incredulously. “Why the hell not?”

“Nope, or sushi or chocolate...there’s a whole list of things Alley couldn’t eat when she was pregnant with Lane. It’s not good for the baby.”

“Well fuck, it’s like you have to stop living.”

“Pretty much,” she agreed and threw all the pregnancy tests in the cart. “Let’s go.”

Emma went on to explain the details of Alley’s pregnancy since I wasn’t around for much of it. She made it out to sound like some sort of parasite feeding from your body until it took everything you had.

An entire carton of orange juice, nine pregnancy tests, two boxes of tissues, and a half pint of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey ice cream later...I was most certainly pregnant.

All the tests were positive.

Every. Single. One. Of. The. Motherfuckers.

Some had smiley faces and some had positive signs, where others just simply spelled the word out in big fat pregnant letters.

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