“Would you like me to text you a picture of the test I just took?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Well, I’m sitting right here, looking at it, and there are definitely two pink lines. And my period’s late. And you shouldn’t act so surprised. How many of those times did you wear a condom?”
My hand tightened around the phone, my shoulders rising up toward my ears. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I said. “I wore a condom once or twice. I stopped wearing a condom because you told me you were on the fucking pill!” (Also because I hated wearing condoms to begin with, but she didn’t need to know that).
“I am on the pill. But it’s not one hundred percent.”
I closed my eyes and rubbed my free hand across them. What a load of shit. “So what are you going to do?” I said. “What are you thinking?”
There was a pause. I knew Annie had already decided what she was going to do, but she wanted to make me wait for it. Wanted to give me the glimmer of hope that I might not be genetically connected to her for the next eighteen years.
“I’m keeping it,” she said. “Are you suggesting that I should get an abortion?”
“I might be.”
“No fucking way.”
“How are you going to have a baby, Annie? You’re like the least maternal person I know.” That was true, but she probably didn’t care about that. I was going to have to appeal to her superficial side. “Do you know what pregnancy is going to do to your body? It’s going to destroy your body. Trust me. I’ve slept with some women who have had kids, and their bodies are wrecked. Stretch marks, cellulite, pancake tits, huge areolas. You push a baby out and your pussy will be so loose the next guy’s dick will be bouncing off the walls in there.”
“That’s nice, Ian,
” she said. “I’m glad to see you have such respect for the miracle of birth.”
“You really think you’re in the position to have a baby right now? You’re twenty-six. That’s pretty young.”
“It’s not that young. There are teenagers who have babies.”
“Yeah, sure, and they live at home with their parents, or they’re on welfare and live in subsidized housing. Is that what you’re telling me? You’re going to move back in with your parents? You’re going to go sign up for food stamps?”
“Of course not,” she said. “I was hoping that this news might make you a little more willing to explore the possibility of the two of us getting back together—”
“Hold the fuck up,” I interrupted. “We were never together. We hooked up and had a physical relationship. That was it. And when it became clear to me that you were after something more than that, I broke it off. I didn’t string you along like I could have. And now you want to call up and tell me this shit.”
She started to laugh. “Wait—are you saying that you deserve some sort of medal or something? Some man of the year award, because you ended things with me when they started to get real? Holy shit, Ian, you’re stupid.”
“Watch yourself,” I said.
“Well, you are if that’s what you think. Listen, Ian. I wasn’t planning to get pregnant. I’m pretty good about taking my pills every morning. I may have missed a day or two here and there, but this is the first time this has ever happened to me.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“I don’t know. I’m just telling you because I want you to know this wasn’t something I planned. But it’s happening, and I’m not going to get an abortion. I’m actually very pro-choice, but I just can’t do it.”
“You can, though. That’s what the service is there for. For unplanned pregnancies, especially when the mother is nowhere near ready to actually become a mother.”
“I am, though. And I was hoping you’d say that you wanted to step up and be a father, too. That we could do this together.”
I swear my blood pressure just shot up fifty points. “Listen, Annie,” I said. “This isn’t some fucking Lifetime movie where everything ends happily ever after. You don’t get to call up and announce this pregnancy and have me suddenly realize that I’ve been in love with you all along and that we should really be together. That’s not how it works. Or at least not in this case.”
“I wasn’t expecting that. It’d be nice, of course, but I wasn’t expecting it. No, what I was hoping, Ian, was that you would realize you were at least willing to give it a shot. I don’t think that’s asking too much, considering there’s going to be a whole new life entering the equation in nine months.” I cringed. “I was hoping that you’d realize that you could actually settle down and just be with one person, and that maybe you and I—and our child—could have a really nice life together. We already know we’re sexually compatible, and that’s a big part.”
Why had I answered the fucking phone? I stood up, so quickly that my chair almost toppled over.
“That is not going to happen,” I said. “And honestly, Annie, from the sounds of it, I’m starting to suspect that you got pregnant on purpose. That you conveniently forgot to take your pills, not just for a day or two, but probably more like a week or two. Or maybe a whole month.”
“That’s not true,” she said stiffly.