5 Bikers for Valentines

My phone rang just as I was pulling up outside her house.

“What's wrong, Josie?” Lila asked, her tone genuinely concerned.

“I can't talk about it over the phone,” I said, my voice shaking. “Please, I just need you.”

“Come on over, sweetie,” she said.

I heard her talking to someone in the background as she muffled the phone.

“I'm, uh—I'm already outside your place,” I said.

“Wow. That was fast,” she said. “Alright, come on in.”

I felt tears well up in my eyes and my heart racing. Adrenaline flowed through my body and I was trembling. This couldn't be happening. Not to me. It just couldn't. I'd always been so good, never sleeping around. Hell, I'd had sex once. Once! Sure, it was unprotected, but what were the odds that the one time I have sex, I get knocked up?

Call me naive, but I assumed I'd be safe. I'd looked at ovulation cycles afterward and things looked fine. I wasn't worried about it. Not at first. But, as the days went by and I still hadn't gotten my period, I grew more and more concerned. I knew I should have gone in for the morning after pill once we got back from the cruise, just to be 100 percent sure, but life got in the way as it always seemed to do. And now, because of life getting in the way, I had to deal with—this.

I climbed out of the car and walked up to her front door just as Lila’s boyfriend walked out. I waved, he waved back, but I still couldn’t look him in the eye after seeing his bare ass on the cruise. I’d thought it was a one-time performance and that Lila wasn’t going to see him again. Obviously, I’d been wrong. I’d apparently been wrong about a lot of things regarding that damn cruise.

“Hey, Josie,” he said.

“Hey, Jason,” I muttered back.

We passed each other by, and Lila greeted me at the door, her face a mask of worry.

“Come in,” she said.

Her hair was ruffled, and her clothes were ragged, which meant that she and Jason were probably in the middle of having sex. And I’d interrupted. Again. Go figure. Back on the ship, she’d sworn the two of them wouldn’t see each other again, but apparently, he’d found her on Facebook and the rest was, as they say, history.

Me, I hadn’t heard a peep from Gavin. Not that I had ever really expected to. He didn’t seem like the type who’d search me out on Facebook. I reminded myself for the millionth time that it had just been a fling. A one-night thing. A one time, never to be repeated performance. I went into it knowing that. I couldn’t blame him for it, because he’d never pretended to be anything but a one-nighter for me.

I tried to move on. Tried to date other guys without the whole virgin stigma hanging over me anymore. But I inevitably wound up disappointed. None of the guy

s I went out with got me the way Gavin had. And none of them turned me on like he had. I still kept running away every time things got intimate and wound up pleasuring myself to memories of that one, hot night on the cruise ship.

And like the men I dated, I wound up disappointed every time I had to get myself off. Yeah, I orgasmed, but it was nowhere near as good or intense as it had been with Gavin. I felt like I was trying to grab puffs of smoke, chasing something I'd never catch.

But that was neither here nor there at the moment. There were a hell of a lot bigger things on my plate to worry about in that moment than my return to having absolutely no sex life. Lila and I sat down on her sofa, and instantly, the tears started to fall.

“Still haven't got your period, huh?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I just knew it would come once the surgery was over and thing calmed down with my mom,” I said, sniffing loudly. “I honestly figured it was just stress, but—”

“You have tests,” she asked, motioning toward my Rite-Aid bag. “It very well could be the stress, hon.”

I nodded and held up the bag. “In here.” I say.

“Good,” she sighed. “Let's get you some answers. No use freaking out if you're not actually pregnant.”

“What else could it be?” I asked. “I'm a month late, Lila.”

She shrugged. “Female problems? I hear of weird shit all the time, but I'm no gyno, so…”

She reached for the bag and opened it, grabbing one of the boxes inside and tearing it open. She pulled out the instructions and then read over them as I stared down at my hands, which were clasped in my lap, in silence. She handed me the stick and gave me a small smile.

“Go pee on this,” she said. “Then we wait.”

I took the test in hands that were trembling and walked into her hall bathroom. I took the test and placed it on a piece of toilet paper and then sat down on the lid of the toilet seat, calling Lila in to wait with me. She gave my shoulder a reassuring squeeze and leaned against the bathroom door as I sat there on the toilet, my head in my hands.