Prologue
The pregnancy test kits were lined up in formation like a marching band on her bathroom counter. Seven of them in all, one for each day of the week, four digital wands in the back row, three nondigital wands in the front.
Kyra watched Brandi closely as she stared down at the sticks. “You’re pregnant,” Brandi announced.
“Maybe it’s the brand,” Kyra suggested hopefully. “Maybe I should try different brands just to be sure.”
Brandi gave her a side eye. “You’re pregnant, Kyra.”
Kyra swallowed down a swell of nausea. What was that, morning sickness? Or was she just sick with worry? She couldn’t be pregnant. There was no room in her life for pregnant. “Maybe I should try the test in the middle of the night. You know hormones fluctuate at night.”
Brandi didn’t bother to respond to such inanity. She turned around and walked out of the bathroom.
Kyra reluctantly followed.
Brandi draped her supermodel-thin body over Kyra’s secondhand couch, then flipped her blonde Brazilian Blowout over her shoulder. “Did you call him?”
Kyra sank much less gracefully onto the matching secondhand chair. “I’ve called him, I’ve texted him. He hasn’t responded.”
“He’s ghosting you. It’s those damn destination weddings.” Brandi sighed. “Weekend romances are so intense, and then they never work once you’re back to real life. You should really avoid them.”
Kyra looked curiously at her friend. “It was your destination wedding, Brandi.”
“You know what I mean.”
Yes, she knew what Brandi meant—she should have been more careful. Generally, Kyra was on board with Brandi’s advice. They’d met when Kyra landed a job at US Fitness, a magazine devoted to weekend warriors. It was Kyra’s first real job out of college; she’d been hired on as a junior copy editor. She’d had great ambition when she’d started—she wanted to run her own magazine someday, just like she’d run her high school yearbook, and she saw the job at US Fitness as her springboard. She’d worked hard and volunteered for any extra work anyone would give her, and it had paid off—in six months’ time, she was promoted to copy editor.
Brandi was a senior editor at the magazine and had seen promise in Kyra. She’d taken her under her wing, told her about an editorial position opening up at the end of the year. When she’d found out Kyra was new to New York, she’d helped set Kyra up with a personal life. She’d made sure to invite Kyra when a group was going for drinks or to join them for a weekend outing . . . if that outing didn’t include a thirty-mile bike ride. Kyra hadn’t exactly gotten on board with the fitness part of her job.
Brandi had been engaged to Mark when she and Kyra first met. As good-looking and as fit as his fiancée, Mark introduced Kyra to his handsome and successful friends, several of whom Kyra had dated . . . maybe a bit indiscriminately. Why not? She’d been a full-fledged, card-carrying adult, and it was New York! Dating and sex were mandatory recreation for a single woman in New York. Before she knew it, Kyra had morphed into a party girl, and the party girl had lit up like a bonfire when Brandi and Mark decided that they would host a destination wedding in Puerto Vallarta.
“You have to come,” Brandi had said.
“I don’t know if I can swing it,” Kyra had responded, thinking of money.
“Kyra!” Brandi had said laughingly. “Since when do you turn down a good time?” She’d been standing over Kyra in her little work cubby, wearing fabulous high heels and a miniskirt that showcased her runner’s legs. “You cannot pass this up! It’s a chance of a lifetime, and it will be so much fun. And just wait until you get a look at the groomsmen.” She’d winked at Kyra. “My assistant is looking for a roommate,” she’d added as she’d walked on.
No doubt about it—a long weekend in Puerto Vallarta had sounded fabulous.
Kyra had wanted to go, but after a quick study of her bank account, she’d found it wanting. She’d called her dad in Florida to borrow the money for plane fare.
“Puerto Vallarta,” he’d repeated gruffly. Kyra’s father was a working man and didn’t think highly of vacations. “Sounds like a cheap beach hotel.”
“It’s a town in Mexico, Dad. On the Pacific Ocean. It’s supposed to be really beautiful.”
“Ocean! Come to Florida. We’ve got ocean, and it’s a hell of a lot cheaper than what you’re talking.”
“But Brandi isn’t getting married in Florida,” she’d pointed out.
In the end, he’d lent her the plane fare with a lecture about how he was an electrician and wasn’t rolling in dough.
Kyra had booked her flight, had shopped online for two fabulous dresses—one for the party the night before the wedding, one for the wedding—and made arrangements with Lisa, Brandi’s assistant, to share a room. And then she’d flown out of the country for the first time.
She’d met Josh at the beach resort where the wedding was held and the guests had stayed. It was a beautiful oceanfront property with three pools and a private beach—all the amenities dozens of twentysomethings could possibly want. Kyra had noticed Josh, but at first she hadn’t realized he was following her around. When she figured it out and called him on it, he laughed and bought her a mojito.
He was an old school chum of Mark’s, a Prince Harry lookalike, a charming, dashing man with his tall, muscular frame, his winsome smile, and his ability to make her laugh.
It was embarrassing that she’d fallen so hard and so fast for him. They’d spent three fantastic days and two incredible nights together, and after the wedding she’d flown back to New York with his number in her phone and the belief that love at first sight could really, truly happen.
“What an idiot I am,” she said now, staring at the floor.
“You’re not an idiot,” Brandi said. “Well, the part about having unprotected sex was incredibly stupid, but you’re not a total idiot.”
“Gee, thanks.” Kyra couldn’t look Brandi in the eye on that one. A condom had not been readily available, so they’d used the old rhythm method . . . except that Josh’s rhythm was way off, and he hadn’t pulled out in time. He hadn’t pulled out at all.
“I get it, Kyra, I do,” Brandi said, sounding more sympathetic. “Who would have thought he would ghost you?”
“You had no idea he was like that?” Kyra asked.
“Me?” Brandi asked and shook her head. “I met him for the first time in Puerto Vallarta. He and Mark were college buddies, but they don’t really hang out. I saw the same thing as you did—supercute, nice guy, someone you could have a blast with.”
Oh yeah, she’d had some fun, all right. Just look at her now.
“But you’re definitely pregnant,” Brandi continued, “and now you have to pull on your big girl panties, and Josh needs to hike up his big boy briefs, and you two have to talk about this.” She glanced at her wristwatch. “I have to run. Will you be in the office Monday?”
“Sure,” Kyra said halfheartedly. She hadn’t even thought about how this pregnancy might affect her job. She hadn’t thought of what she might do if she was truly pregnant. She’d been so determined not to be pregnant, but now . . . now she couldn’t deny it, and uncertainty began to pound in her temples. What was she going to do? She had options, didn’t she? None of which felt like an answer as they flit through her head.
Brandi stood up, pulled Kyra to her feet, and hugged her. “Listen, it’s going to work out. Mark says Josh is a good guy.”
“Right,” Kyra said.
She had a really bad feeling about this. A good guy didn’t ghost.
That bad feeling only grew worse over the course of the weekend as she repeatedly tried to get in touch with Josh. When he wouldn’t respond to her phone calls or texts—even after she tried to assure him in another unanswered text message that she was not a stalker—she had to resort to drastic measures.
Monday morning, as she walked to work, she built up a good head of steam. She knew where Josh was employed, thanks to some pillow talk, and stopped outside of her office building to call his office.
“May I say who is calling?” asked the woman who answered the phone.
“Kyra Kokinos,” Kyra said. “Please tell him it’s important.”
A moment later, Josh was on the phone. “For God’s sake, Kyra,” he said impatiently. “What are you not getting? When a guy doesn’t respond to your calls or your texts, it means he—”
“I know what it means, Josh,” she said, cutting him off before he could utter the indelible I’m not that into you. She knew what was up, even if there was a tiny part of her hoping that maybe he’d lost his phone or had been hit by a bus and had been in the hospital all this time. How could she have been so wrong about their connection? “What part of important do you not get?” she shot back. “I wouldn’t have called you at work if you had just responded to a text or two.”
He sighed. “Look, Kyra, we had a great time in Puerto Vallarta. Fantastic. But this is—”
“I have to tell you something, Josh,” she said angrily. She was suddenly shaking. As in might-pass-out shaking. She sat down on a bench. “I’m pregnant.”
That was met with silence. Cold, hard, empty silence. And then, “Is it mine?”
“What? Yes, it’s yours! What do you think?”
“How can you be sure?” he asked, sounding a little frantic.
“Are you kidding me right now? For one, I can count. For two—”
“Kyra—you have to get rid of it.”
Kyra didn’t know what she’d expected him to say, but it definitely wasn’t that. There was no how are you feeling, or what do you want to do, or let’s meet to talk. Just a very firm get rid of it, spoken so decisively that it made her stomach twist.
“Look, there is something I didn’t tell you in Puerto Vallarta,” he said, his voice low.
Now Kyra’s stomach fell to her toes. She instantly assumed disease or drugs or something that meant she was carrying a mutant in her. “Oh my God, what is it?”
“I’m getting married in a couple of months.”
Those words didn’t register at first—they confused her. “You already met someone?” she asked. It had been six weeks. How had he met someone, proposed, and already set a date? Was that even possible?
“Yeah. I mean, a long time ago. This wedding . . . it’s been planned for a while.”
The fog of confusion began to lift from her brain. The asshole had been engaged while he was hitting on her in Puerto Vallarta. “But you were sleeping with me.”
“Only twice.”
“Only twice?” she shouted into the phone. “Like that makes it okay? When does it become not okay, Josh? Three times? Four times? What kind of douche are you?”
“Jesus, don’t freak out, Kyra.”
“Too late! I’m freaking out! I don’t sleep with guys who are with other women, Josh! I don’t help guys cheat! Oh my God, I don’t believe you—I honestly thought we had something,” she said, railing at herself for being so dumb. “We had so much fun, and I thought it could be real, and you gave me every reason to believe it could be real, and you said you’d pull out, and then you didn’t! Did everyone know?”
“That I’m engaged? No, no,” he said, sounding miserable about it. “I haven’t seen Mark in a while. He sent me an invitation with a plus one, and I . . . I figured it was one last good time before I got married. So I didn’t mention it.”
“That’s insane! Who does that?” she exclaimed. That’s how blind she was—she had never once considered that he wasn’t being entirely truthful with her.
“Stop shouting! Where are you, anyway?”
“Honest to God, have I learned nothing?” Kyra exclaimed to the sky, ignoring the woman who pulled her son closer as they hurried by. “All the sex education in the world, and still I had unprotected sex!”
A man passing by gave her a sharp look.
“Don’t judge me,” Kyra snapped at him. “You had to be there!”
“Who the hell are you talking to?” Josh asked, sounding worried now. “Will you please calm down? I know, that was wrong, and I regret it, but it was great, and you were great, and it felt good, and I just . . . I just sort of lost myself,” he said.
“Great,” she said. “You just sort of lost yourself and now I’m pregnant.” By Josh, the guy who was engaged, who just sort of lost himself.
But she couldn’t put the blame all on him. She had been there, too, just as lost. God, what am I going to do? She supposed she’d been hoping that Josh would have some miraculous answer for her. But he was just making everything so much worse.
“Kyra? Are you there?”
“I’m here,” she mumbled and sighed heavily, the weight of her situation really beginning to sink in.
“You have to do something,” he begged her. “If you don’t want to get rid of it, then put it up for adoption. I’ll pay. You don’t have to worry about that, I’ll pay.”
It? It wasn’t an it. “I can’t believe you,” she said, her voice shaking right along with her gut now.
“Look at it from my perspective. Liz and I have been together for two years. Two years. The wedding is planned, our life is planned. You’ll ruin her life.”
“What about my life?”
Josh was silent. “I don’t . . . I don’t know what to say.”
Neither did Kyra. She hung up on him. She had in mind to hurl her phone into the Hudson, but she was two blocks away. She stood up and started walking. Marching, striding, desperate to reach the river and throw that fucking phone to the other side. She’d be late to work, but she didn’t care.
I have no one to help me. Her mother had been gone fifteen years, taken from their lives by brain cancer. Her dad—oh Jesus, he’d be pissed, and he’d be no help. And what about her job? Brandi said she was in line to get the editorial position, but that job required long hours and had deadlines that sometimes kept staff in the offices all night.
Kyra somehow reached the river without knowing how she’d crossed the streets, but here she was, staring down at the undulating current as the river flowed merrily along.
She knew nothing about babies. She didn’t know how to have one, she damn sure didn’t know how to take care of one. And what kind of money was she looking at? Diapers cost a lot, didn’t they? Her insurance sucked, and she didn’t have any money in the bank, because hello, she’d spent it on that damn trip to Puerto Vallarta. How was she going to pay for this?
Maybe Josh was right. Maybe she should abort it. What was she supposed to do, bring a baby into this world whose father didn’t want him and whose mother couldn’t afford him?
Kyra’s breath began to grow short. She braced her hands on her knees and bent over, desperately trying not to hyperventilate. “You can’t have this baby,” she whispered to herself. “You can’t. You can’t.”
It was several moments before she managed to catch her breath. She slowly pushed herself upright and shook her head, trying to clear the muck of so many jumbled thoughts. She dug her phone out of her bag and punched Brandi’s name on the contact list.
“Brandi Jenkins,” Brandi answered after two rings.
“Brandi . . . I talked to Josh.”
She gasped. “You did? What did he say?”
“I don’t . . . I—” She paused, rubbed her forehead. “He’s engaged.”
“What? Since when?”
“Will you go to Planned Parenthood with me?” Kyra whispered.
She heard Brandi’s breath catch. Her friend said nothing for a moment. “Oh, Kyra,” she whispered. “Of course I will.”