It took several hours after I left Luca’s place, for that intense and warm afterglow to slowly fade away, but my brain did start working again. Eventually.

And it sucked. I went through a whole shit-colored rainbow of emotions. It was like the stages of grief: there was denial, bargaining–whatever else the other stages are after that–and then the last one: acceptance.

That took a few weeks, the acceptance part. So I fucked Luca Gallo. Big deal. It’s not like it meant something.

He did text me and ask me to dinner again, but I’m sure “dinner” in this case just meant something like “I wanna fuck you again.”

I didn’t respond, obviously, as I was still in one of the earlier stages of grief at that point. Now that I reached acceptance, I know that responding to that text would make me go through those stages all over again from the very beginning. No thanks.

The sex was mind-blowing, which is how I know it was such a bad idea. Heroine or crack is meant to be mind-blowing, a total and utter rush, but people with common sense and reason don’t go around shooting heroine or smoking crack just because it feels good.

I have been trying to compare sex with Luca to something like that, like smoking crack. Something that if I only ever do it once, it won’t ruin my life.

Though they say anyone who ever tries one of those drugs will always remember that first time as the best...okay, so that’s even more reason to not do it again. A second time wouldn’t be as good as the first, and it would just make my whole life worse.

It’s like when I cut ties with my family. It was agonizing hard at first. My Dad kept calling me every day. He sent my cousins Stefano and Alessia around to constantly check on me. I had to be mean to people who I didn’t really have anything personally against, but who I wanted out of my life regardless. Seeing Luca a second time would open a whole Pandora’s box. All those people would end up in my life again, and then all of Luca’s family as well. I spent so long getting away from that, and I’d be so royally stupid to undo all that time and effort.

I just have to hope I don’t run into him again. It would be so much harder to say no to his gorgeous face, and his annoyingly effective charm.

I flick through my calendar to see if I have any homework due, but then my eyes bulge at something completely unrelated to homework.

“Period,” it says.

Period. As in, that period of the month where my uterus is supposed to be bleeding, to put it bluntly.

My periods are usually like clockwork, and the entry for “Period” was six days ago.

Dread clutches tight across my chest, and I remember with astonishing detail exactly how it felt when Luca Gallo came inside of me.

“No…” I whisper to myself. “Please, no.”

I’m not the kind of woman who likes to pretend everything will be okay. It’s not exactly a lack of imagination, more just that I am terrible at pretending.

“Drugstore,” I say to myself. “Get to the drugstore. Pregnancy test. It will show you that everything is fine.”

I can buy and pee on that thing in under twenty minutes. I only have to freak out for the next twenty minutes. That’s it.

The drugstore is in walking distance, but I can drive there faster. I nearly race there in my crappy little PT Cruiser, and I don’t even have any extra brainpower to dedicate to feeling embarrassed about buying a pregnancy test.

The clerk doesn’t even give it a second glance, and I almost consider running into the bathroom of the drugstore to use the damn thing.

The only thing that stops me from doing it is that if it turns out positive, the one-stall bathroom in the Rite-Aid is the last place I want to be when I find out that I’m carrying Luca Gallo’s baby.

Sara tries to small talk with me when I get home–she got back from work while I was buying the pregnancy test–but I tell her I have to pee and rush past her, cradling the Rite-Aid bag with the pregnancy test under my shoulder like a football I’m afraid to fumble.

I tear the thing open, go into the bathroom, and pee on it.

I put it face down on the sink, pull out my phone, and Google: “How soon can a pregnancy test know if you’re pregnant.”

I skim with a growing sense of dread. Two weeks, it says. It’s been two and a half. That relieves me, ever so slightly. If the thing comes up negative, then it is negative, it’s not just because I tried to use it too soon.

The box said it only takes two minutes, and I know it’s been almost three, but I don’t dare look too early. I don’t want to feel the relief of thinking I’m in the clear, only for it to turn into a cheery little blue “plus” symbol a few moments later.

At four minutes I can’t take it anymore. I want to have it all behind me, and I pull the thing off the sink and look at it.

That cheery little blue “plus” sign stares at me. It laughs at me. Taunts me.

My mouth is hanging wide open, my heart starts to pound. Tears well up into my eyes.

I’m going to have Luca Gallo’s baby.