One More Time

“Use the other bathroom,” I said.

“Nick is in there,” she said.

I groaned, not even close to finished reading everything. I put everything back inside the back, and then realized, I had nowhere to hide it.

Sierra knocked again. “Please, hurry.”

I threw the bag under the sink, hiding it there for the moment. But, I knew I'd have to find somewhere better than that. The trouble was, there was no place in the house for me to hide anything. We were all crowded in there, no personal space whatsoever.

She was about to knock again when I threw open the door.

“Thank you!”

She rushed inside and locked the door behind her. All I could do was wait.

My family wasn't going to make this easy to hide, that much was certain.

~ooo000ooo~

First thing, after everyone left for school and work, I hurried over to Raya's place. She lived in a trendy studio apartment in West Hollywood – paid for by her parents, of course. I knocked on her door, and half expected her not to answer since it was before ten in the morning and she was likely still asleep. She surprised me, though, and answered the door with a smile on her face. The strong smell of marijuana wafted into the hallway from inside.

“Whoa, someone's getting an early start,” I said.

“More like I haven't gone to bed yet,” she laughed. “What's up?”

She opened the door, and I stepped inside. The place was small – like the size of most people's closets. But, I would have killed to even have an apartment like that all to myself.

Raya looked at the bag in my hand and grinned, “Please tell me you brought something to eat, I'm starving,” she said. “Donuts, right? Or cupcakes? Please tell me you brought cupcakes.”

“Sorry, no food in here, just boring pregnancy shit,” I said, holding the bag open to show her.

Raya pouted and flopped on her lime green couch. I sat down on the floor across from her, crossing my legs, since there were no other seats in the place. The couch doubled as her bed, since it folded out like a futon. For now, though, it was just a regular old couch and there was only enough room for one.

“So, you're really going through with it, huh?” she said.

“Yeah, looks like it. I signed a contract and everything,” I said. “I just need a place to stash this stuff so my parents can't find it.”

“So you want to leave it over here?” she asked. “But don't you need it?”

I shrugged. “I guess I can come over every day to get what I need,” I said. “But, I hadn't really thought that far ahead about it to be honest.”

“Give me the bag of goodies,” Raya said.

I handed it over and she dug through it, pulling out the ovulation kit and examining everything else with it.

“Man, I can't imagine having sex and not trying to avoid pregnancy,” she laughed, tossing everything onto the table. Next, she pulled out the pills and read the label out loud.

“Clomid,” she said. “Huh.”

“Do you know what that is?”

“Yeah, it’s a fertility drug. My mom has taken these when she was a surrogate.”

She tossed them over to me and I read the label myself. The prescription was written out to a Cynthia Crane.

“Malcolm said he was giving me fertility drugs, just to increase our odds of conceiving.”

“It’s pretty common practice for surrogacy,” Raya said.