His Second Chance (Love Comes To Town)

The frizzy woman’s sneer doesn’t change at the sight of my purchase, which makes me think that maybe that’s just her face.

I stash the thing in my purse and hurry back to my room furtively, like it’s eight grams of cocaine instead of a simple pregnancy test.

Inside my room, I look my door. I check my phone. I peer through the balcony’s sliding glass door at the impartial night outside.

But finally, I can’t avoid it any longer. I take out the tester with shaking hands.

Please, God, or Jesus or Buddha, or whoever the hell, please.

I swallow and stride to the bathroom.

Inside, I sit on the cool toilet seat and force myself to exhale. And then I pee and stick the test in.

Afterward, I put it in the sink and wait.

Way more than a minute passes. I try to come up with something—anything—to avoid looking at it. But I need to know.

I grab it, look at it, and let it drop to the floor.

No.

Oh, hell no.

Wobbly legs take me to the bed and keep me there.

My gaze follows along the designs on the ceiling while my mind runs wild.

So, this is what it’s like when your whole world changes. When your life as you know it is over.

I should tell Josie. I should go to her and tell her and have her calming voice figure out what to do.

But I can’t. Won’t.

Telling Josie will make it more real. Saying the words out loud...

I can’t. Not yet.

Jesus, how did this even happen?

I take the pill religiously. Josie is the one who’s always forgetting and giggling about it—“Whoopsie!”—on vacations and crazy nights out.

But me? I always take it.

I. Never. Miss. A. Pill.

Not that it matters now.

I can’t keep it. I can’t get rid of it either.

I turn on my side, closing my eyes, willing sleep to come.

Some days, some situations, the only thing that can make it better is the ultimate form of escape—sleep.

**

In my dream, I’m a giraffe. I have the longest neck imaginable, so gloriously long that it stretches all the way into the puffy clouds. I smile at the banana moon and the pumpkin-sized planets, my friends. The stars feel like sprinklers when I pass my head through them. They smell like bubble gum.

Only, someone’s got a chisel and is hammering away at the moon!

Knock, knock, knock... knock, knock, knock...

My eyes open.

“Wynona?” Emerson says from outside the door.

I stagger over to it.

My hand meets the cool of the handle when I remember.

“Hey,” I say.

“What’s up? Can I come in?”

Yes, my heart says.

No, my head says.

“No, I... I’m not feeling well,” I say. “Sorry I just left like that. I threw up.”

“Damn. Need to see a doctor?”

“No... I–I’m just going to go to bed,” I tell him. “I’ll call you later.”

A pause, then, “You sure that you don’t want me with you?”

“No, I’m... not that bad. Just need to sleep it off, I think. Bye.”

And then I go back to my bed before my strength fails me.

Because I want to see him. I want to touch him, hold him, smell him. I want those strong arms to wrap around me with the certainty that everything’s going to be okay.

But I can’t. Not now.

I can’t hold it together now.

So, I go back to bed and let the tears come and hope that sleep does, too.

I wake up sometime later to more knocking. I ignore it and go back to sleep again.

The next time I wake up, it’s my phone. I try turning it off but end up inadvertently answering it.

“Go away, Emerson,” I mumble.

“Oh, so you’re avoiding him?” Josie says. “Shit, Wyn. Are you? And me? I’ve tried stopping by your room a couple of times.”

I exhale the word: “Yep.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“I know,” I say.

“What are you going to do?”

“No idea.”

Background noises. Josie’s probably doing one of those brisk walks she always liked doing back home.

Back home... where I should be. Who knows, maybe if I hadn’t stayed on, stayed longer here, if I’d just gone home how I should’ve, then none of this would’ve happened.

If I’d just made that goddamn plane...

“Have you told him?” she asks quietly.

“No.”

“When are you going to?”

“I don’t know, Jos. Okay? This is a lot to process. I haven’t even decided what I’m going to do yet.”

Josie’s silent, and still, I find myself annoyed.

With her, with my own bitchy tone.

“Just say it,” I snap.

“Well, you should tell him,” she argues. “You don’t know. Maybe this wouldn’t mess things up how you think.”

There she is again. Josie Pollyanna Collins, eternal optimist. I could almost laugh—if I wasn’t sure that it would end in tears, that is.

“Get real,” I find myself snapping. “Emerson and I aren’t some tried-and-true couple thinking of settling down. We’re two exes who are still figuring out what the hell is going on. We’ve been together less than two weeks. Of course it will mess things up.”