Filed to story: Can’t Get Enough Of You
I shrugged.
The truth was, I had looked for him. The two days after my night with him, I went to the café outside my working hours, hoping I would bump into him.
But I had studies to focus on, a future to build with the money I was saving up. It was as if Nolan had never existed in reality. He was just a magical memory from a night carved out somewhere in the sands of time.
Finding him on social media was impossible. I didn’t even have a last name to go by.
“Tell me again why you left that morning before he woke up?” June asked.
I rolled my eyes. She was still adamant that I should have at least woken him up instead of just disappearing like that. But I’d woken up next to him and felt terrible for sleeping with him. Not because it had been wrong, but because I’d been an emotional mess. It shouldn’t have happened. Not like that, not just after a breakup.
That didn’t mean it hadn’t been the most amazing night of sex and connection, though.
That wasn’t the point.
Plus, there was the fact that he’d been perfect. And that had scared me. Men like that didn’t exist-they only seemed perfect until you got to know them.
And even though I’d looked for him, it was probably better this way. It was better that I moved on and did my own thing, and he did his own thing, and we kept it preserved in our memory as that one perfect night.
Or at least it had been one perfect night to me. I had no idea how he thought of it.
And it shouldn’t have mattered since he was leaving.
Looking back, I did wish I’d stayed a little longer to spend more time with him. But it was in the past now-I’d made my decision. I’d left his bed in the early hours of the morning with the same clothes I’d worn the night before, and I’d hailed a cab on the street a block from his apartment.
“Well,” June said after I explained to her exactly what I’d been thinking at the time, “the good thing is that it looks like you’re moving on from Ryan. That asshole doesn’t deserve a single tear cried over him.”
“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “I agree.”
“Good.”
“There is one thing I’m worried about,” I admitted.
June looked up at me.
“My period is late.”
She stilled. “Oh, my God. Are you serious? How late?”
“A while… I was waiting for it because sometimes it’s a few days late. But, well, it’s starting to become serious.” I fidgeted with the napkin in my lap. I’d been trying not to think about this new development, but it was eating away at me.
June hesitated before her next question. “Do you know whose it is? I mean, if you’re…you know, pregnant?”
I nodded. “It would be Nolan’s.”
“But you broke up with Ryan that same day…don’t you think…?”
I shook my head. “Things weren’t so great between us. Ryan hadn’t touched me the last month or two we were together. Honestly, I think he may have been cheating on me.”
June looked shocked when she leaned forward. “Okay, first of all, Ryan is such an ass. And second of all…oh, my God, Izzy! You could be pregnant from a guy you hardly know!”
“It might just be a scare,” I said.
I was hoping to God that was all it was because the alternative wasn’t something I was ready to face.
“You have to get a test,” June said.
I shook my head. “Absolutely not.”
“Why not?” she asked. “You’ll know for sure if you do. It’s stupid, putting it off and stressing about whether or not your period is going to come.”
I sighed. June was right, of course. She usually was.
“Okay,” I agreed.
June’s phone rang.
“It’s Bernie,” she announced, and she answered the call. I listened to June’s side of the conversation, then gasped in surprise and shame when she told Bernie we were all going to the store to get a pregnancy test.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I said.
“Of course I did! Bernie wants to be there for you just like I do.”
I shook my head. “It’s so embarrassing.”
“It’s not,” June said. “This shit happens. You have sex, sometimes you get pregnant. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Thank you,” I said. My friends really were the greatest.
“I mean, condoms fail sometimes,” she said as she pushed her plate away and glanced up at me.
I cringed.
“What? Izzy, you didn’t use a condom?” she asked, horrified.
I cringed harder. “I know, I know. We were stupid. But I thought I was on an infertile day, and you know, I didn’t want to ruin the moment.”