LOGIN“It’s positive.”The words rang in my head over and over again as I stared at Adrian, waiting for him to say something else because maybe I was imagining things. Right. Yeah, maybe that was it. Maybe I had heard him wrong because there was no way he had just said the test was positive.It could not be positive.My mind flashed back to all the fucking. The sex. Every single time we had been so caught up in each other that thinking about consequences had been the last thing on my mind.Oh my God.Nah.There was no way.I was not pregnant.I could not be pregnant.“Elena?”My eyes went straight to my stomach.There was a baby in there?No.No fucking way.How did this even happen?Okay, stupid question. I knew exactly how it happened. I had been there for the entire process, very willingly too, which suddenly felt like information my brain did not need to remind me of.“Elena.”“What?”I looked up at Adrian, and something about the way he was staring at me made me want to cry.“I cannot
I stood there staring at myself in the mirror while I dried my hands, trying very hard not to turn around and look at the test on the counter because I knew the second I did, I would start panicking all over again.I could see Adrian behind me through the mirror. He had not moved much since I sat down, and I could not tell if he was genuinely that calm or if he was just better at hiding whatever was going through his head.“How long do we have to wait?” I asked.He reached for the box and looked at it. “Three minutes.”I closed my eyes. “Okay.”Three minutes was nothing. I could wait three minutes.Except apparently I could not because less than thirty seconds later, I was looking at him again.“How long has it been?”“Not even a minute.”“Are you sure?”Adrian looked at his watch before looking back at me. “Yes, Elena. I am sure.”I nodded and turned back to the mirror.My period could be late for a million reasons. I knew that. I had been stressed, I had not been sleeping properly,
“What happened?”Adrian put the pharmacy bag on the desk and looked at me for a second before saying, “I ran into a teacher friend of mine on the way back, and honestly, Elena, she knows we have been fucking. I do not know how she knows, okay? She just figured it out.”“What do you mean she knows?”“I mean exactly that. She saw the tests, asked questions, and then your name came up.”“My name came up how?”“She asked if they were for you.”I felt my whole face change. “Why the hell would she ask that? Out of every woman in this entire city, why would she see you with pregnancy tests and think of me?”“That is what I asked her.”“And what did she say?”Adrian exhaled slowly and rubbed the back of his neck like he already knew I was about to lose my mind. “She said she has seen the way we move around each other. Apparently some of the professors have talked about how often you are around my office, and someone saw you leaving my office the other day looking… not exactly put together.”H
ELENAThe second Adrian left, I locked the office door behind him like somehow pregnancy could not get me if nobody else came inside.Then I stood there.Just stood there in the middle of his office with both hands on my hips, breathing too fast and staring at absolutely nothing because apparently my life had reached the point where I was waiting for my boyfriend’s father to come back with pregnancy tests.Amazing.Beautiful.Exactly where I saw myself at this age.I walked to the chair, sat down, stood back up almost immediately, then started pacing because sitting still felt disrespectful to the level of panic currently happening inside my body.“Okay,” I whispered to myself. “Okay. We are not doing this. We are not pregnant. We are simply late. Late is normal. People are late. Flights are late. Deliveries are late. Periods can be late. Everything in life is late.”That actually made me feel better for approximately three seconds.Then I looked down at my stomach.“No.”I pointed at
“And what exactly makes you think they are for Elena, huh?”Naomi looked at me for a second, then gave me this slow, almost offended look like I had just asked the dumbest question possible.“You really want me to say it?”“I asked you, didn’t I?”“Okay then. Because I think you and that girl have been fucking.”I stared at her.She shrugged. “What? You told me to talk.”“Watch your mouth.”“Oh, please. Now you want me to watch my mouth?” She stepped closer and lowered her voice, but somehow that made it worse because now she sounded even more serious. “Adrian, I have been watching the two of you for weeks. I am not stupid. Half the time Elena is around you, she looks guilty as hell, and you look like you are trying so hard not to look at her that it becomes obvious you want to look at her.”“That is your evidence?”“No. That is one thing. Do you want the whole list? Because I have time.”I stared at her.Naomi nodded like she had expected that answer. “Exactly. First of all, we alrea
ADRIANThe second I stepped out of my office, I knew leaving her alone in there was probably a terrible idea.Elena did not handle silence well when she was scared. She filled it. With talking, with jokes, with panic, with whatever came into her head first. If I left her alone for fifteen minutes, there was a fair chance I would come back and find her halfway through planning the child’s college education despite not knowing whether there was a child at all.I shut the door behind me and stood there for a second.Pregnant? NahI started down the hall.Students were everywhere. Talking, laughing, moving between classes like the world had not just changed shape inside my office.I kept walking.The pharmacy was only a few minutes away, and normally I would have sent someone. Normally, I would not leave the school in the middle of the day for something I could have had delivered.This was not something I wanted delivered.I wanted the test in my hand.I wanted an answer.If the test was







