CHAPTER TWO

I stared at them as though if I blinked hard enough they would disappear, fade into an illusion, or vanish back into nothing but they didn't. They stayed, smug on the plastic stick in my trembling hand. Unwavering. 

Positive.

I breathed. It was shaky and I felt empty. My heart pounded so loud it covered everything else- the whine of the broken bathroom fan, the traffic on the city streets in the distance, the soft thrum of my own thoughts… everything.

I was pregnant. I laughed. One of those quiet, bitter laughs that were alien and deep.

How? Oh who was I kidding? I knew how.

One night. One stupid, hot, beautiful mistake. But it wasn't supposed to follow me. It wasn't supposed to cling to my insides like a secret I couldn't keep.

I dropped the test in the sink. The sound it made was too definitive. My knees gave way beneath me and I fell across the edge of the tub and looked down at the cracked tile below me. The air clung heavy, stickily sticking to me like guilt and my throat burned with unshed tears.

He didn't have a name, or any pointer. Just a ghost with steel blue eyes and a scarred chest. A man who bled on my couch and kissed me like I was the last decent thing he'd ever touched.

And then he vanished. It has been two months. He never stopped by. Not even to say thank you. I had hoped he would but along the line, I gave up. And now… this.

I didn't hear the apartment door opem. Didn't hear the footsteps. But I felt it when the bathroom door creaked open behind me.

"Aria?" I didn't answer.

"Are you dead? You've been in here for forty minutes and I've already imagined at least five ways you could've fallen in and drowned."

I remained silent. Juno's voice softened the moment she saw my face. "Talk to me, babe."

I leaned down, grabbed the test, and handed it to her without a glance up. There was a pause of silence and then she shouted. 

"Well… shit." She paused and took a breath. "I mean… congrats?"

I let out a noise, half snort, half sob. The floor creaked as she stepped further inside.Then her weight fell beside me on the tub's edge, her golden locs tied up in a chaotic knot, eyes tracing my face for zero judgment and 100% sister-level concern.

"I'm pregnant," I rasped.

"Yup. That's definitely two lines."

"I can't… I can't do this. I don't even know who he was. I don't know why I let a stranger into my apartment, set him up like some bleeding bad-boy charity patient, and fucked him. What the hell was I thinking?"

"Perhaps you deserved one decent night after all the hell you've put yourself through?" she said gently.

I looked at her. She did not blink, she didn't even twitch.

"That doesn't excuse getting pregnant for a ghost, Juno!"

She shuddered, a little, subtle shrug. "No. But it makes you human."

I shrugged, messing up my hair. "But I don't even know his name. I was so in the moment, and then he was off before I could catch my breath. What if he's a drug lord or serial killer or… I don't know, someone evil? Am I supposed to raise a bastard?"

"Okay, well… we would need to find that out," she replied calmly. "But I am here, remember? No normal guy gets injured like that in the dead of the night so we have established that he might be dangerous. I am going to scold you for falling pregnant but in the mean time me need to focus on the issue at hand. "

Juno grabbed my hand. “Listen. We’re not talking about raising this baby on the street. You’ve got me. You’ve got options. You’ve got a working brain and a fire in your soul that doesn’t die out, even when life keeps kicking you.”

I swallowed hard. “I thought about… ending it.”

“I figured,” she said gently. I couldn’t meet her eyes.

"I waited an hour in the clinic waiting room and just could not do it. I was so frightened. I am still frightened. What if I am not right? What if I keep this child and the baby grows older and asks about their daddy and all I can say is a one-night stand story and no name to give?"

"Then you'll tell them the truth," she told me, her voice hot with anger. "That you had the courage to bear life despite fear. That you chose love over shame. That you acted when others would not."

That was too much. I buried my face in my hands and cried. She did not leave. She did not yell at me. She just stood there, firm and warm and unmoving, like the spine I no longer thought I had.

 ………

Two weeks later, I packed up everything. Which wasn't much, anyway. I couldn't remain in that apartment. Too many memories. Too many ghosts. The couch still carried his scent. My room still contained echoes I couldn't sleep past.

Juno helped me move into a smaller place in a quieter part of town two subway stops away. It had less noise and fewer memories. But ironically had more space to breathe.

I found a work from home job as an admin for a design firm. Underpaid, but easy. Nobody ever asked me about my past or why I spent every morning hunched over the toilet until lunch. It was fine enough.

But the silence was smothering. I didn't know what got to me more me more- his vanishing act or the fear he'd show up someday. I reminded myself he wouldn't. That maybe he was already dead. That whatever hunted him might have caught up with him at last. That the baby I had growing inside me never would have to question answers I couldn't provide.

But the lie bucked in my throat like ash. There were nights I dreamed of him. Steel eyes and knuckle-scars. Warm hands and heat-kissed whispers.

There were nights I dreamed of blood.

……….

On this Thursday morning, the sky hung low and gray, weighed down by moisture. I'd just left a checkup visit, holding in one hand a rumpled printout of my ultrasound and in the other a half eaten croissant.

The baby was okay. My doctor informed me that I was five months pregnant. That was supposed to improve my mood but it didn't. I didn't know the man but I missed him, I felt like he was the missing piece in my life's puzzle. 

I was thirsty and tired so I entered a café on the corner of Lenox and 57th, famished and hungry for hot cocoa and silence. Silence always had a way of pushing back the nausea churning in my gut.

The overhead doorbell rang as I pushed the door open. It was warm inside. Perfumed with something nice. A tranquil little bubble of life in a world that now felt too jagged. I ordered my drink and sat in the back corner. Taking the menu, I searched through it, looking for something I could snack on.  

But as I raised my head, I came face to face with the man I had thought was a ghost. He was standing behind the counter, looking as handsome as ever and my heart slammed into my ribs.

It was definitely him. His profile was unmistakable. The jaw I'd memorized in the darkness. The angle of his shoulders that was now under a fitted coat. His hair looked shorter now, like he had just had a clean shave. 

But those eyes…. Those steel-gray eyes turned and latched onto mine.

The world froze. He blinked as recognition flared behind his eyes.

And in that instant, I did the only thing my body could think to do. I stood, picked up my bag, turned and ran.