The Boss (45 page)

The look I had been dreading crossed Neil's
face, a darkening expression like a thunderhead of over-thinking
rolling right in to spoil our dinner. "What job did she offer you,
exactly?"

I took a sip of water from the stemmed glass
in front of me. "Assistant creative director of her new
magazine."

"Good lord." He shook his head. "Well, I
suppose this calls for a congratulations?"

"I'm not taking it," I stated firmly. "She's
trying to control what I do in my private life. And Jake is just as
bad. I thought we were friends, but I guess I didn't notice how
obnoxious he was until I started working around normal people."

"I don't think there are any normal people at
Porteras
," Neil opined. "Myself, included. I cannot wait
until Valerie is able to take it off my hands."

I wasn't sure what would happen when he quit
working at
Porteras
. I didn't suppose he'd starve or
anything, but what would he do? Would he go back to England? I
didn't want to think about that now, even though I knew I should
before I finalized my decision. But I trusted him to tell me if he
didn’t plan to stay in the country, especially now that he knew I
was turning down a job for him. "How did the meeting go?"

"Not well," he confessed. "There is a lot of
concern that perhaps the subscribers were supporting Gabriella and
the culture around her, not the magazine. And Rudy and I spoke, he
should be calling you this evening to officially let you go."

"Rudy is going to do it?" I made a face at
that. "I thought you already fired me. Why do we have to drag him
into it? Now it's going to be all awkward the next time I see
him."

"But it's not awkward to fuck the man who
fired you?" He chuckled, but his laugh quickly turned in a grimace
of pain.

"Oh my god. Neil, are you okay?" I pushed my
chair back, intending to get up, but he motioned for me to sit.

"No, it's just these horrible contacts." He
pinched the bridge of his nose. "I'm not feeling well, Sophie. I
hate to suggest we cancel our plans - "

He looked pale, and slightly sweaty. This
wasn't him faking sick to get out of talking about our situation. I
was sure Neil would never do anything like that, anyway. He looked
really, really ill.

"If you need to go home, go home. Do you need
me to come with you?" I asked.

"No, no. I've kept you far too long this
weekend." He managed a tired smile. "Let me drive you home?"

I shook my head. "You look like you need to
go eat about an entire bottle of ibuprofen. I can get home fine on
my own. If you go to work tomorrow, I'll call you during your
lunch. And if you're sick, I'll come over and bring you chicken
soup. Which I will feed to you through a plastic bubble while
wearing one of those Ebola suit things, because I can't afford to
get sick again right now."

He tried to smile. He still looked miserable.
"I love you. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

"I love you, too."

I walked with him to the door. He tossed a
bill on the hostess's station and apologized for holding the table.
Outside, I wondered if I should offer my shoulder to lean on, he
looked so bad. For a second, I considered overruling him and
getting into the car with him to go straight to the emergency room,
but Neil was a big boy. He could be sick on his own, if he wanted
to. I saw him safely into his car, and watched the Maybach pull
away from the curb before heading toward the subway station on the
next block.

So, our date was a bust. And I was going to
get officially fired. But at least I knew I was turning down the
job with Gabriella's new magazine for the right reasons. I loved
Neil even when he was sick and nearly standing me up. That had to
count for something.

When I got to the apartment, I found Holli
and Deja snuggled on the couch, watching
A Christmas
Story
.

"Tell me it's not Christmas Eve," I said,
with a note of panic, gesturing to the television. "Because if it
is, I missed my flight home."

"DVD," Deja said. "It's the fifteenth."

"I thought you were hanging out with Neil
tonight," Holli said, moving her feet so I could sit on the
couch.

"He wasn't feeling well. I hope he's not
coming down with that thing I had." I waved her off. I wasn't
planning to stay up, I just needed some time on my own, and I
didn't need to horn in on their evening. I patted my stomach. "I'm
still not entirely over it."

Deja frowned, and traded a look with Holli.
"Um."

"Soph..." Holli began uncertainly. "We’ve
actually been meaning to talk to you about that. You've had that
twenty-four hour stomach thing for like a week now."

"No, it's only been..." I counted backward in
my head. How long had it been? With my job going down the tubes, I
had lost time, like one of those alien abduction stories. "Oh my
gosh, it
has
been a week. Do you think I should go to a
doctor?"

Would my health insurance still cover that,
now that I was canned?

“I think you should,” Deja said. Why were
they talking to me like I was stupid? She went on. “This thing has
been coming and going, right? And you’ve been really tired.”

“It’s the stress, it has to be.” I shook my
head. “Stress is what causes ulcers, right? I’ve had this awful
heartburn - ”

"Sophie... oh my god. How are you not getting
this?" Holli's mouth dropped open.

"I know. Oh my god, I know." I shook my head,
one hand lifting my long bangs off my forehead. "I should have gone
last week, before my benefits were up in the air. If they want to
do tests or anything it’s going to cost a fortune, and I can’t
afford private insurance - "

And then I looked at Holli and Deja, and I
saw genuine pity in their faces. Well, pity and, "are you fucking
kidding me?"

And then I got it.

Oh god. I totally got it.

I'm pregnant.

Chapter
Twenty-Two

I'm pregnant.

"No." I shook my head. "No, no, no, no."

It wasn't an ulcer, it wasn't a stomach bug.
I was pregnant.

I couldn’t be.

My mind flicked back through every time we'd
had sex. It was impossible that I was pregnant. I was on birth
control. We used protection. If my pills had a 98% effective rate,
and condoms had a 98% effective rate, we should have been nearly
200% certain of this not happening, right?

Deja sat up, scooting Holli forward so she
could swing her legs off the couch. "Okay, okay, I've done this
before, there is no reason to panic. I’m going to Duane Reade to
get you a test. Holli, you keep her calm, and get a calendar. Try
to figure out where things got fucked up."

It was too late. Like hitting a run of pieces
in a jigsaw puzzle, everything fit together really fast. I hadn't
had a stomach bug. I'd had awful morning sickness that had just
come and gone at all crazy hours. And I wasn't tired all the time
from too much sex. Well, I was tired all the time from too much
sex, but mostly from being overloaded with baby hormones.

I felt like I was going to throw up, and not
as a pregnancy symptom. I raced to my room and grabbed my laptop. I
pulled up my schedule as Holli stood next to my bed, her arms
crossed over her chest.

"You guys weren't using protection?" she
asked, chewing on her bottom lip.

"I was on the pill, and we used condoms. We
only went without one time. But it seemed fine, you know, we'd both
had recent check-ups..." How could that sound so unbelievably
stupid now, when it had seemed totally sensible back then? “I’m not
crazy, right? I should have been safe.”

"It only takes one unlucky time, Soph. And
remember how you’re always saying that the green pills are a waste,
you don't even take them, because you can always remember what day
you need to start the pink ones?" Holli lowered her voice. "And you
just thought it might seriously be Christmas Eve."

Oh god. Had I started a pack late? Way late?
I thought I might hyperventilate and pass out at the slow
realization that I’d probably done exactly that. I’d been so busy
with work, and the takeover… and the stupid, reckless fun of a new
relationship. I’d probably been missing pills left and right.
Sophie. You’re an idiot.

“You know, this happens,” Holli tried in an
attempt at moral support. “Not to careful people. You’re just… I
hate to bust out the tough love, but I thought you were smarter
than this, homie.”

I looked up at her, and burst into tears. "I
just lost my job!"

She sat beside me and wrapped her arms around
me. "Hey, it's going to be fine. If you
are
pregnant, you
have some options. Neil isn't going to just abandon you, right?
He's a good guy."

He was a good guy. But how on earth was this
conversation going to go?
Hey, Neil, I'm really embarrassed, and
please don't flip out, but we've replicated and now I need to
borrow some money even though I've rejected every offer of help
you've ever given me and also I kind of helped sabotage your
company. Oh, and you divorced your ex over something similar. But
we’re cool, right?

Holli rubbed my back supportively as I looked
at my online calendar. But I couldn't remember when my last period
was. I had no fucking clue, because I didn't chart it, I used my
pills to keep track.

Jesus, I’d really thought it wouldn’t happen
to
me
. And now it had and it was terrifying.

"What am I going to do?" I looked up at
Holli, fully aware that my mascara was probably running in rivers
down my face from the tears I couldn't hold back. I held up my
hands helplessly. "What am I going to do?"

"You're going to do whatever's best for you,"
Holli stated firmly, resting her cheek on my shoulder as she put
her arms around me. "You don't want kids though, right?"

"No, oh god, never." I sat back and shook my
head, feeling awful. Was I a bad mother?

No, that was crazy talk. I wasn't a mother. I
was an... accidental incubator. A horrible fear gripped me. "What
if he's changed his mind? He said he didn't want anymore kids, but
what if I tell him I'm pregnant and he wants to keep the..."

I couldn't even say the word.

"It's not up to him, Soph."

That didn't make it any easier. That just
meant I had to make this decision all on my own.

No, you don't
, I reminded myself.
You're just freaking out. Neil is in love with you. He's going
to be just as mortified by all this as you are.
I had to tell
him. Shit, before I even took the test, I had to tell him, if for
no other reason than to demand he buy a condom company, because
this was not happening again.

Oh, who was I kidding? Holli probably had an
entire drawer of condoms, in varying textures and shades. I could
have looked in her room that night. Instead, I’d made the stupidest
possible choice.

"I'm going to call him," I told Holli. "I
know he's not feeling well, but... fuck, does that make me a bad
person?"

"If you need to call him..." Holli shrugged.
"I suppose the worst that could happen is that he wouldn't
answer."

I wiped the tears from my cheeks and climbed
off my bed. "Okay. I'm going to go get my phone."

It took me two tries to make the damn call my
hands were shaking so badly. When I finally managed to dial him, he
didn't answer. Voicemail picked up after six rings, and I found
myself in a very strange predicament. What, exactly, was the
etiquette for telling someone you were eighty percent sure that you
were pregnant? You couldn't do that via voicemail. Texting was out.
Instead, I left a lame, "It's Sophie. Call me," and waited with
Holli for Deja to return.

Holli had made me some tea - "You'll need
something to pee, when she gets back," - and tried to stay chipper.
When she set the cup and saucer in front of me, she said, "So... I
bet Neil drinks a lot of tea. Being British and all."

"No, he drinks coffee, mostly." I shook my
head. "He's probably going to drop dead of a heart attack from all
the caffeine."

"Well, this is caffeinated, but I don't think
a little bit will hurt the... thing." Holli turned away from me
quickly and dumped way too much sugar into her own cup. "What do
you think Deja meant?"

I sipped my tea. "Meant by what?"

"She said 'I've done this before.' And then
she ran out to get a pregnancy test." Holli tried for a casual
shrug. She's never going to be a model-slash-actress, is all I'm
going to say about her attempt to be nonchalant.

"Maybe she had a pregnancy scare before." It
was totally selfish and unfair of me to wish something so awful on
another woman, but I was really glad to know someone personally who
had gone through the same thing I was going through.

"I know, it's just..." Holli shook her head.
"No, I'm being a jerk. You're like, legitimately worried about the
contents of your uterus and I'm acting weird about my girlfriend's
past."

"Girlfriend?" If anything could momentarily
take my mind off the idea of a chubby-cheeked horror slowly
siphoning away my life force, it would have to be good news about
my friend's life. "So you guys are like, official now?"

"Yeah, we're exclusive. I don't know, I
thought she was going to drive me crazy, she's so bossy and kind
of," Holli moved her hands all around her head, crossing and
rolling her eyes. "You know. I thought we might be too
similar."

"You're clones of each other," I pointed
out.

"Yeah, well." She grinned at me. "Turns out I
must be one narcissistic bitch, because I fucking love my
clone."

"A narcissistic model? You'd be the very
first." I made a finger gun at her. "I'm happy for you. Really
happy for you."

"Don't worry about this." She waved a hand at
my midsection. "If you decide to get rid of it, we can hang out and
have a post abortion slumber party with ice cream and cake."