Epilogue
The sound of the laughter outside the closed door was almost unbearable. Loud and jarring despite how joyous it sounded. I didn’t want to hear laughter. I knew that we were celebrating. I knew that Shura had spent countless hours getting things ready for our return back to America from Russia, that he and his new girlfriend had arranged every painstaking detail to ensure that it would be a celebration to remember.
But my stomach still churned from what I hadn’t puked up since running in here.
The candle I was burning to cover the smell was doing nothing but causing me to be more nauseous, as was the smell of the food wafting in and the heavy bass reverberating through the walls. Dmitry had commented how nicely the speakers had been fit into the walls without looking gaudy, and I couldn’t disagree.
It was just the nausea.
Well . . . notjust. There was also the tiredness, the cramping, and the nipple soreness.
It was waking up at four in the morning to sneak out of bed to go and puke so that I didn’t wake Dmitry. I spent weeks thinking that I had the flu or that it was food poisoning. Admittedly, I had felt better this week, but today I’d ran to the bathroom the minute I’d caught the stench of sautéed onion.
I had purchased a test at the airport while Dmitry had been going through customs, weighing heavily in my purse the whole way here, and now sitting opened and used on the counter.
I had refused to look to see what those little pink lines were going to read. Not because I didn’t want to have Dmitry’s children. Not even because I feared his reaction—I knew well enough that he would be overjoyed.
But because when we had discussed babies, it had been a ‘three or four years in the future’ kind of discussion. We had talked in eventualities; we hadn’t planned for it to be any time soon, and no matter how much I knew that I loved him and that he loved me, the thought of bringing a tiny combination of us into this world was so fucking terrifying that I could barely breathe.
It was the knock on the door that did it.
The sounds of forced me to finally look down to the results window, its findings clear to see.
Two pink lines.
Oh, fuck.