She stares at her keyboard in the well lit, open office. Nervously, she looks around, checking behind her, before opening a chat window on her laptop.
She: He, you have to come here now.
He: Why? What’s up?
She: I got the thing in the post.
He: Oh, what? What was it?
She: A vinyl. A vinyl of an album we listened to in bed together.
He: Well, I mean, that’s nice, no?
She: Yes, but there’s more. Please come out and find me.
He: Haha, you’re crazy. OK. One sec.
She sits back in her chair, and swivels. Peering behind her, she sees a tall, well dressed Swedish guy emerge into the main foyer area. She leaps from her chair, runs over and grabs him.
“Haha, what’s wrong?” he giggles. Ah. He's so good-looking, so great, but weirdly, she has never flirted with him. Instead, his loveliness means she just wants to tell everything to him, everything awful. He is her priest to confess to, in a cathartic, Irish-Catholic manner. Which is funny, because she isn’t Catholic. It used to be that she would barely share anything with anyone, but more recently she shares it all. Except for with people she fancies. We can’t be our real selves with people we fancy after all.
Catholic or not, she needs to confess, to spill. Especially now, as she seizes and directs him quickly through the sea of awkward computer engineers. Peering into meeting rooms as she speeds by, she gasps an exclamation of glee as the final room is empty.
When in the room, he is still laughing. “What’s going on? The vinyl is nice though, right? It’s a thoughtful gift, aren’t you happy with it?”
“Yes… I am. I think? These goddamn boys keep giving me vinyl records, though they know I don’t have a record player.” This unsettles her. She can never tell if these gifts are really thoughtful (the vinyl are always perfectly chosen albums) or just an easy choice (she loves music, ferociously), that skate over the fact that these records simply sit, looking good but never played, in her tiny apartment, gathering dust.
“Anyway…” She shakes off that sad fact for the meanwhile. “Anyway… the thing is, I’m late.”
“...”
“Come on. YOU KNOW. My period is late.”
He suddenly takes a step back in horror, such is the wont of a boy in his mid twenties at such a statement, before bursting into laughter.
“Wait, WHAT? No, come on. Are you growing a little poet in there? God, his mother will be so pleased!”
She winces and grudgingly allows herself to grin. Her recent crush had been a charmingly penniless (well, enough pennies to afford a record) poet from London. Although she had been quite swept away by his luxurious language and thick hair, the fact of the matter was, his business was beautiful words and the seduction therein. He also was charming to the point of total insincerity, and being naturally on the back foot with men that she was utterly forward in every other sense with, she didn’t fully trust him. Were that not enough, he also lived with his mother. It’s a fact universally acknowledged that no man on earth can make living with his mother, sexy.
She is laughing.
“Yes, oh god, right? But, I’m serious. I noticed last week and then, just kind of...forgot? I only remembered again today and now… well now I think this will transform my trip to London this weekend.”
Yes, dear reader. She lost her mind and fabricated a trip to London, to manufacture a reason to be near the poet. Without wanting to come clean and admit, yes, she likes him, she instead magicked a fake business trip. Charming is as charming does, and of course, the poet picked up the proffered baton like a gentleman, and offered her to stay with him… and his mother.
“She, this is easy. Send him a Facebook message and say ‘Hi poet. My period is late...dot dot dot….’?”
He is still laughing. She hits him.
“Oh come on! I can’t do that!”
“If those kind of messages resulted in babies, I would have twenty kids by now. Was this... something you planned?”
If she hadn’t already hit him seconds before, she would smack him again.
“Planned?! Are you kidding me? Yeah SURE, I was planning this. Pricking holes in the condoms and stuff. NO, asshole, this was not planned.”
“But I mean, could it realistically have happened? Did you have any, you know, little slip-ins? Any little late night fumbles?”
“Ha, love a late night fumble. Actually no. He was incredibly conscientious about safety. Almost in a non-poetic way, now that I think about it. More so than any other boy I’ve known.” She grins wickedly, and adopts a sweet, questioning voice. “The only way I could have got pregnant is if you can get pregnant through the mouth?”
He laughs a deep laugh, lying somewhere between shocked and delighted.
“Oh God.” She is laughing too. “I wish I could use this in my comedy set tomorrow night, but I’ve invited the whole goddamn office.”
“Well She, I mean, I’m sure you didn’t give that little toddler the best start in life this weekend, did you?”
“Well, no actually….wait a minute FUCKER, fuck off, there’s no toddler for me to be abusing with substances yet! And for your information, I had a very moderate and well behaved weekend, so even if there were a goddamn toddler, he would be having a GREAT start.”
A colleague walks past, looking curious.
Without words, they both know that they need to go back to work. Still laughing, they walk back through the office.
He leans forward and tries to pat her tummy, “Look after that little fella in there!”
“Oh my god, shut up!” she hisses through the laughter.
She sits down and genuinely feels sheer, unadulterated panic.
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