“Earth to Baptiste. Come in, Baptiste.”

I blinked, slowly focusing on my surroundings again. The bar. Hannah’s bachelorette party. Tipsy friends.

Right.

I looked around the table at all my best girls, trying to muster a smile, but it felt too unnatural. So I settled on a neutral expression, trying to look interested in the conversation.

“Dude, what the fuck is wrong with you?” Celia stared at me, her eyes narrowed like she was trying to figure out all my secrets. But I wasn’t going to give them up. Not to her, not to anyone.

Because knowledge is power, and I didn’t want anyone to have power over me.

“Hello?” Celia waved a short arm in front of me, looking pissed now. “Are you even in there right now?”

I shook my head. “Sorry, what?”

“Are you okay?” Jamy asked, more tactful than Celia.

And of course, she was proving once again that she was a better person than me. She’d been broken up with Sam for weeks now – since that same day Ruth had been buried, actually. And I knew better than anyone how badly my friend was suffering, because we lived together. She hadn’t been able to get out of bed for days, until Hannah had come by the other day and dragged her ass out for tacos and therapy.

But here she was, asking if I was okay.

I gave her what I hoped was a reassuring smile. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just that stomach bug,” I promised, hoping she’d believe the lie.

Because I didn’t have a stomach bug. I had a binge-eating-my-feelings-every-night-until-I-puked bug.

I had a heartsick-without-him bug. I had a nobody-to-blame-but-my-own-damn-self bug.

“Well,” Hannah said, holding her beer up in a salute. “At least you look good.”

Jamy laughed. “You are pretty boobalicious today,” she agreed, pointing to the deep V of the top I was wearing. I loved this top. It was purple, and paisley printed, and looked awesome with the leggings and strappy sandals I’d paired it with.

It was also loose and flowy, hiding the paunch I’d developed in the last few weeks. Because eating your feelings comes with consequences, y’all. Consequences like not being able to button your jeans, and having no fucking clue how you were supposed to zip up your bridesmaid’s dress in five days.

“She’s always boobalicious,” Hannah said, looking down at her own cleavage sadly.

“We can’t all be a founding member of the IBTC,” I teased, though my heart wasn’t in it.

“Hey!” Hannah and Jamy cried in unison. They both had not-so-generous breasts. But they both made up for it in other ways, and the men in their lives obviously didn’t care.

Neither did Celia, apparently, and not just because she rocked a C cup. She was still watching me, her expression suspicious. “Your tits look more awesome than usual, though,” she mused.

I shrugged. “Guess that’s what happens when you gain ten pounds in a month.”

“What?” Hannah squealed. She slammed her beer on the table, sloshing the amber liquid over the rim of her glass. “But what about my wedding?”

I chuckled dully. “Chill, Hanzilla. I will fit into my dress.”

Her green eyes were creased with worry. “If you say so.”

I let out a tired sigh. “I won’t ruin your precious photos with busted seams,” I promised.

Hannah opened her mouth to reply, but Jamy rubbed her shoulder, effectively shushing her.

“I can let it out a little, if we need to,” she assured my cousin.

I shot her a grateful look, glad for her sewing skills. Because we’d probably need to let the dress out. I wasn’t sure how I was going to drop those extra pounds that fast – especially when I couldn’t seem to stop eating. I was hungry all the damn time, and I indulged every weird craving that my lovesick brain could come up with. In other words, I took any comfort I could get.

“Whatever,” Hannah muttered. “I have to pee,” she announced loudly, because this was her third beer, and she was a little tipsy.

“I’ll go with you,” Jamy said quickly. Probably intending to further soothe the pre-wedding crazy in the relative privacy of the ladies’ room. I should probably have gone with them, too, maybe apologized for having the gall not to starve myself for someone else’s wedding. But I couldn’t really find the motivation to get up from my seat just then.

When they were gone, Celia leaned forward, reaching across the table and flicking my nipple. Hard.

“Ow!” I cried, because that had hurt like a son of a bitch. “What the fuck, Ruiz?”

She narrowed her eyes in a don’t-fuck-with-me kind of way. “Who’s the father?”

I spluttered, knocking over my club soda. “Who’s the… what the fuck?”

“Who. Is. The. Father?” she repeated slowly, like I was slow. Or a toddler. She had two of them, so she tended to slip into her Mommy voice without meaning to.

“The father of what? What the hell are you talking about?” I had no clue what she was getting at, and frankly, it was starting to piss me off. And not just because my nipple was still smarting.

She rolled her eyes. “Jesus, do I have to spell it out for you?” She leaned forward, mopping up my spilled drink with a handful of bar napkins. “I know you’re pregnant, bitch.”

I froze. Blinked. Counted back. Calculated. “No,” I said slowly. I shook my head. “No, I’m not. That’s impossible.”

“You think I don’t know the signs?” she barked, gesturing to her swollen belly. She was almost full term with her third baby, so yeah, I trusted that she knew the signs.

But there was no fucking way I was pregnant. She had to be out of her rabbit-ass mind to even think so.

She fixed me with a glare as she flagged down the waitress for a refill on my soda. “You’ve gained weight, most of it in your abdominal area,” she said, holding up a hand and ticking her fingers as she continued. “You’ve been throwing up on the regular. Your tits are huge.”

I shook my head. “My tits are always huge,” I argued, but my voice was wobbly.

Because she couldn’t possibly be right. I could not be pregnant.

“You’re not drinking,” she pointed out.

“I’m driving,” I shot back.

But I didn’t tell her that I’d volunteered to be DD because the mere thought of alcohol made me want to hurl right now. That would just fuel her delusions.

“You eat everything in sight,” she continued like I hadn’t said anything. “Your feet are swollen.” She pointed under the table, and okay, my feet did kind of resemble sausages stuffed into too-small casings at the moment. But I wasn’t getting enough water, what with all the puking. That was all that was.

She huffed. “And let me guess, it really hurt when I flicked your nipple.”

I glared at her. “Well, no shit. You flicked my damn nipple, heffa,” I complained.

She chuckled, tapping my forearm with her fingernail, so lightly I barely felt it. “And I did it about that hard,” she retorted.

I ignored her, because obviously she was lying.

“Have you been craving weird things?” she asked, her tone faux-innocent.

I rolled my eyes. “Yes. But that proves nothing.”

Because these were not pregnancy cravings, goddamn it. I simply had too much time on my hands, time I spent thinking about food, shopping for food, preparing food, ordering in food, going out for food. I was eating my bank account and my waistline into oblivion because I was going out of my mind with missing Eric.

There, I said it. I missed him. I missed him so much that my limbs ached, my heart throbbed painfully, and my guts churned. My body was going haywire without my regular fix of his. That was all there was to it. I would just have to ride this out, until I got over him. Then I would return to normal.

I snorted. That was bullshit, and I knew it. There was no normal anymore. There was no getting over him. I was ruined. My love for him had taken root the moment he tied me up with those stupid suspenders, the dark, damp tendrils unfurling through my body with every touch, every look, every word, until finally every part of me was invaded by him, tethered to him by pulsing, sticky need. I was miserable without him, because I loved him.

How fucking ironic was that? I’d done my best to keep it casual with him. I thought that if we weren’t in a relationship – if he wasn’t my boyfriend – then I couldn’t get my heart broken. I told myself over and over that we were just fucking around.

But I’d gone and fallen, and not just a little, either. I fell ass over tits, all the way down the rabbit hole, until I couldn’t find my way out again.

“Well, when was the last time you had your period?”

Celia’s sharp, suspicious tone cut through my melancholic thoughts, and I winced, worried that someone near us would hear.

“A couple of weeks ago,” I retorted, feeling smug. “And before you ask, no, I haven’t had sex since then.”

I hadn’t had sex since the day Eric’s cat had died, in fact. But I was not about to tell her that. It would bring up too many questions, and this conversation was already draining me.

My answer seemed to bring her up short, because she looked away, chewing her lip. But then she got this gleam in her eye that would have scared the shit out of me if I’d been up against her in court.

“A really heavy period?” she asked.

I wondered what the hell bizarro world I’d landed myself in that I was actually discussing my menstrual cycle with a pregnant woman – at a bachelorette party.

“No, it was pretty light, now that you ask.”

She grinned in evil satisfaction. “So, more like spotting.”

I frowned. “I guess?” I took a sip of my newly-refilled club soda. “Why?”

She rubbed her hands together. “Because I spotted almost every month with Valentina,” she said. “My doctor said that’s totally normal. Your estrogen is high, and it can cause bleeding from your cervix. Especially right after sex.”

Well, shit.

I’d taken the morning-after pill almost three months ago now, after that first night with Eric and the disaster of the broken condom. And I thought it had worked. In fact, I’d never bothered to follow it up with a doctor’s appointment, or even a home pregnancy test. I’d happily explained away all these pregnancy-like symptoms with alternative explanations, convincing myself there was no way I’d actually gotten knocked up.

Because I’d gotten my period. Or so I thought.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck!

“Does this have anything to do with the fact that Todd’s best friend has been a mopey motherfucker for the last few weeks?”

Wait, what? He was moping?

Shit. I didn’t want him to be sad. I didn’t want him to miss me, too. If it was just me, I could deal with it. But if Eric, sweet, thoughtful generous Eric, who wanted to find his forever love and mistakenly thought he’d found it with me, was pining for me? I couldn’t handle that. I needed him to move on, to resume the search for the future Mrs. Levy.

He was not allowed to miss me, damn it.

“Because so help me,” she continued, not even giving me a chance to answer, “If you make my husband choose between his best friend and mine, I will kick your ass.”

And just like that, I melted, my other concerns forgotten for the moment. Tears threatened as I looked across the table at her. “I’m your best friend?”

She rolled her eyes. “Jesus, you really are pregnant. This is not that deep,” she grumbled, her cheeks reddening with embarrassment.

“Yeah it is. You said I’m your best friend.”

She scowled at me. “Slow your roll, Weepy McSobberson. You ain’t special.”

I cry-laughed, my tears spilling down my cheeks now. “You love me,” I teased, rising from my chair and sitting in the one right next to her.

She leaned as far away from me as she could with her belly in the way. “Touch me and die, Baptiste.”

I put my arms around her, of course. “And youuuuuu,” I crooned, “will always looooove meeeee.”

“Do not think I’ll forgive you just because you sang Whitney,” she threatened.

“That’s Dolly,” Hannah argued as she and Jamy came back to the table. She gave me a dirty look, but there was no venom in it. “And you stole my seat,” she added.

I shrugged. “It was a best friends emergency,” I told her, a big cheesy grin on my face as I wiped my eyes.

Celia shook her head stubbornly, pushing my chair away with her feet. “Besides, once Whitney sang it, that shit belonged to her.”

“So true.” Jamy nodded in agreement.

Hannah shook her head stubbornly. “Dolly wrote it, Dolly sang it first. End of story.”

“Is this just boob envy again?” Celia cracked, giving everyone a hostile look.

“Fuck you, Cee,” Hannah shot back, though she tempered it with an affectionate smile.

“Sometimes the cover just eclipses the original,” I explained.

Jamy nodded. “What was it you told me Otis Redding said about ‘Respect?’” she asked me.

I laughed. “‘Woman done stole my song,’” I quoted.

They laughed, and I smiled. Now this, I could do without forcing myself. I could shoot the shit with my girls. I could forget about my troubles for one night. I watched Jamy and Hannah move on to another topic, feeling almost happy in that moment.

Almost.

“You don’t have to do this, you know.”

I whipped my head around, my huge earrings slapping me in the cheeks. Celia was leaning in, giving me an uncharacteristically soft look, and she’d spoken just loud enough for me to hear.

“What do you mean?” I asked, checking to make sure Hannah and Jamy weren’t paying attention. I breathed a sigh of relief when I realized they were still arguing good-naturedly. Jamy exclaimed that Brett Favre was the best quarterback of all time, because reasons. Hannah shot back with the case for some dude named Kurt Warner, because blah blah.

I was not a sportsball fan, in case you can’t tell. Like, at all.

Celia’s gaze was sad when I looked back at her. “You’re not the only one who’s been abandoned, you know.”

I closed my eyes, my tears springing right back up again. Goddamn it, the woman was psychic after all.

I shook my head. “That’s not the point,” I argued, though I hardly knew what I was arguing for anymore.

“No,” Celia agreed, her tone still surprisingly gentle. “The point is that you’re the only one punishing yourself for the actions of others.”

I closed my eyes. God, I did not want to hear this right now. Because she was right. She was so fucking right. I’d taken all these things that had happened to me, all the ways in which my heart had been broken, and somehow twisted them until they were some kind of fucked-up armor. I’d girded myself with my heartache in a vain effort to keep out all the things that could hurt me. But I’d just ended up hurting myself.

“I seem to recall you telling me a few months ago that I deserved to be loved,” Jamy said from across the table.

I jumped. I’d been so caught up in my own head for a moment that I hadn’t noticed all other conversation had stopped. Everyone was now staring at me, giving me looks of concern and compassion. And love. So much love.

I swallowed. “You do,” I agreed. “You deserve that.”

Her green eyes were sad, and I knew she was thinking of Sam. “I’m trying to accept that,” she said. “I’m working on it. And you should, too.”

“Because you are amazing,” Hannah said. “And you deserve someone amazing.” She reached over and patted my arm. “I don’t know who you’re talking about, but you deserve him. Or her,” she added with a giggle.

“It’s Eric,” Celia said.

I glared at her. “You just had to blow my shit all up, didn’t you?”

Hannah’s mouth dropped open. “Wait. Wait a second. Eric Levy?”

Reluctantly, I nodded, shooting Celia another mutinous glance.

“He’s really nice,” Jamy offered, giving me an encouraging smile.

Celia nodded. “He’s Todd’s best friend,” she said, like that explained it all. “And we all know my husband has excellent taste.”

“But,” Hannah said. “Eric?” She shot me an incredulous look. “But he’s a nerd.”

“A hot nerd,” Jamy argued.

I narrowed my eyes at her. “My hot nerd.”

She gave me an uncharacteristically feisty smile. “Not unless you fix it with him.”

I bit my lip. Could I? Would he even want me back, at this point? Could he forgive me for pushing him away?

“He wants you,” Celia said. “He’s fucking miserable without you.”

I nodded, once again fighting back tears. “Okay.” I wiped my cheeks. “Okay. I’ll fix it.”

“Amen,” Celia cried. “And if you don’t, I will kick your ass,” she added, and we all laughed.

I looked around at these women who loved me so fiercely, wondering how I’d gotten so lucky.

And wondering what the hell to do now. How could I convince him to give me another chance?

“I’m texting you the number of my obstetrician.” Celia leaned in to talk quietly in my ear. A panicked glance told me Jamy and Hannah had gone back to their conversation, and it was just the two of us talking once again. “And make sure you stop by the pharmacy on your way home,” she added. “Get some prenatal vitamins. I’ll text you the good brand. Start taking those fuckers right away.”

“I’m not fucking pregnant,” I muttered, shooting her a murderous glance.

She shook her head. “Okay, okay,” she replied, holding up her hands. “But don’t blame me when you sneeze six months from now and a kid comes flying out your vag.”

I rolled my eyes, but privately, I decided I would stop by the pharmacy after all. To get a home pregnancy test.

Trouble was, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to prove her wrong, or prove her right.