F*ck Marriage(71)

She doesn’t answer me. My hands shake as I unwrap the box, the tequila curdling in my stomach like sour milk. Underneath the cheerful wrapping of bows and candy canes is a simple white cardboard box. I lift the lid, my hands shaking.

“Fuck.” I drop everything on the counter.

“I’m assuming you know what that is,” Billie says dryly.

I rub a hand across my face. “You’ve known about this and you didn’t say anything? Goddammit, Billie.”

“She asked me not to.”

I bend down to retrieve the slender white stick lying between my feet. Before flipping it over, I turn to Billie who is looking at everything except me.

“Is this a positive pregnancy test?”

She nods. I breathe through my nose trying to calm myself. In my often scandalous years of being a bachelor I’ve never once had a pregnancy scare. I turn the foreign white stick over in my hand and stare down at the single word in the tiny rectangular box: PREGNANT. Everything freezes when I see that word. How many days has she been gone? I count in my mind. I ended our relationship what—three ... four days ago?

I turn to Billie. “Is she still pregnant?”

“I don’t know. I’ve texted her, but she hasn’t answered me. I think she’s angry with me too?”

I run a hand through my hair wishing I’d insisted on seeing what was in that box sooner. But how could I have known? Jules and I have never spoken about children. She brought marriage up on several occasions, and though I hadn’t engaged with the idea, I’d not discouraged it either. It must have been nerve-racking for her to put that test in a box and wrap it without knowing what my reaction would be. In a blur, I search for my phone. I need to call Jules. Billie is pacing back and forth across the kitchen, eyeing the liquor cabinet.

I point at her and say, “No.” Firmly.

“Why not?” she fusses. “This is stressful.”

“You drink too much. And if I have to do this sober, so do you.”

She throws her hands up in the air. “Who said you had to be sober?”

I find my phone under a pile of our discarded blankets in the living room and dial Jules’ number. I sit on the couch waiting for her to pick up; Billie leans on the doorway looking like she’s about to throw up. Jules’ voice is sleepy when she answers.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey back.”

I scratch the back of my head wondering why I didn’t think some words through before I made this call.

“So, I opened the present you left…”

There’s silence on the other end of the line.

“Are you still—”

“Yes,” she says quickly.

I breathe a sigh of relief, massaging my forehead where I’m starting to feel the prickle of a headache.

“Are you okay?”

I can hear her breathing on the other end of the line, slow methodical breaths pressing back tears.

“I’m okay,” she says finally.

“Have you told anyone?”

“No. Why would I? Look, you broke up with me. I get it. You don’t want to be with me, and I don’t expect anything from you. I’ll deal with it.”

“I don’t want you to have an abortion—I mean, unless you want to have one.” I wait for her to say something. “I’ll support you through whatever you decide,” I finish.

I feel like an ass. Here she is trying to have Christmas with her family, and not only did she find out she was pregnant, but I broke up with her before she could even tell me.

I hear the sound of sniffling and I press the phone tighter to my face, my heart wrenching in my chest.

“Jules…” I say softly.

“Yeah.”

She’s crying. Oh God, she’s heartbroken and it’s my fault. I smell Billie before I see her; the mellow scent of woman muddled with her perfume that always makes me think of the jasmine bush outside my parents’ kitchen window. It’s intoxicating. My head swims. She touches my shoulder, her warmth seeping past my shirt and warming my skin. It’s comforting and disconcerting at the same time. The woman I love consoling me after I got her best friend pregnant.

“It’s going to be all right. Okay?”

“Okay,” she says.

We hang up after that and neither Billie nor I say anything about the call. She dutifully does the dishes while I clean up the living room of the tossed blankets and candy wrappers. After that we go to bed. Tomorrow is Christmas, though neither of us feels like celebrating.





Chapter Thirty-Five





I wake up to pounding on my front door. It’s cold. I wrap a blanket around my shoulders and stumble to the front door, almost tripping over Billie’s abandoned shoes. I kick them aside and when I open the door, my elderly neighbor, Mrs. Chartuss, is standing there in her robe, a strange hat on her head. Upon closer inspection, I realize it’s not a hat, but fat foam rollers. I’ve never seen her anything but styled and ready in one of her various fur coats.

“Mrs. Chartuss,” I say, pulling the blanket tighter around my shoulders. “Merry Christmas.”

She frowns at me like I’m the one knocking on her door at the crack of dawn on Christmas morning.

“I’m Jewish,” she says curtly.