Just a Positive Pregnancy Test - London Casey Page 0,4

the cookies and then proceeded to tell me I finished too quick. That I needed to take the time to explore myself. And she wanted to make sure I knew about having more than one orgasm at the same time.

Another riveting conversation that I never expected in my life.

I finished the current cookie and reached for another.

Cookie crumbs fell to the table.

I looked like a slob.

I didn’t care.

All that soda. All that peeing.

And now ten pregnancy tests looking back at me.

Every single one telling me the same thing.

I was…

“Pregnant,” I said.

Holy hell.

I put the cookie into my mouth and sat back on the couch.

I looked down at my stomach.

There was nothing there. Yet.

You’d never know I was pregnant.

I looked to my left.

I grabbed a pillow and stuffed it under my shirt.

I touched the pillow and shook my head.

“Nope,” I said.

I ripped the pillow out from under my shirt and threw it across the room.

I thought about Claire and me when we were younger. We used to play house and take turns pretending we were pregnant. Putting pillows under our shirts. Walking around, grabbing our backs, mimicking all the cliché stuff we saw in movies and TV shows.

This was no longer a pretending thing.

This was real.

Very real.

I grabbed the cookie from my mouth and leaned forward again.

My eyes moved down the line of tests.

I kept checking, waiting to see if they would change.

Maybe I peed too hard. Or peed too much.

Maybe the soda made the tests come up positive.

Or maybe…

“Maybe I’m just pregnant,” I said, my mouth full of a bite of the cookie. “Right? Maybe I’m just pregnant by Silas.”

I shut my eyes.

I stuffed the rest of the cookie into my mouth.

Of course that’s when my phone started to ring.

It was Olivia calling.

I grabbed the phone and tried to swallow the cookie down.

I answered the call and began to cough.

“Oh… shit…” I coughed into the phone.

“Mila? Are you okay?”

“Just gagging… on cookies…”

“What?”

I grabbed for the last bottle of soda and downed the last little bit. It was warm, sugary, and flat.

Gross.

I cleared my throat. “Sorry. I was eating a cookie. Beth brought me some.”

“You sure you’re okay over there?” Olivia asked.

I looked at the pregnancy tests on the table.

I shook my head. “I’m great. What’s up?”

“I was going to text but I called instead. I know things have been crazy for you so I wanted to make sure you remembered the family dinner.”

“What?”

“Tomorrow night,” Olivia said. “Your mother is having a dinner. She wants everyone there. I know you’ve been… distant…”

“I’m not distant.”

“Mila.”

“Okay, I’m distant,” I said. “Oh well.”

“I’m not saying a thing about it,” Olivia said. “I’m just sorry for everything that happened. It really sucks. I know you miss Silas. I hope things can work out.”

“Yeah, me too,” I said. “Um, dinner? Yeah. Dinner. I’ll be there. I know where it is.” I laughed. A pathetic laugh.

“Mila, are you okay?”

“I’m just tired,” I said. “Honestly. Just got a lot going on inside me.”

Like growing a baby…

“If you need anything, you know you can call me.”

“I know. I appreciate it. Thank you.”

The call came to an awkward end and I tossed my phone to the couch next to me.

I went back to staring at the pregnancy tests.

All ten were positive.

For one baby.

I leaned back and touched my stomach.

And just like that, the first dumb, cliché question came to mind.

What am I going to do next?

Chapter Two

SILAS

I played the last chord of the last song and held up my guitar.

I gave a nod and everyone began to cheer for me.

The people in the back who had tables all stood up too.

There was plenty of whistling and even a few requests to keep playing.

My set was up though. No need to try and keep playing and piss off the owner.

Plus, I was done.

I was up on a stage where it always felt like home.

Only now it felt different.

Very different.

I took my guitar off and got close to the mic again. “Hey. Real quick. Thank you for coming out here and supporting me. I also think we need to make some noise for this band here. They’re the house band and they play with everyone that comes through. It takes a lot of skill to pull that off. These guys are great, aren’t they?”

The place got noisy again with whistles and cheers.

I turned to face the band and nodded.

Then I walked off the stage.

I went to the back and packed up my guitar.

Marv owned the bar-slash-club and he was right there, reaching