“I’m pregnant,” she says. “I mean, I’m pretty sure.”
I look at her. Her whole face is shining. It’s like staring at the sun.
“You think or you know?”
“Think,” she says. “Know?”
“Bella.”
“I know. It’s crazy. I started feeling strange last week, though.”
“Have you taken a test?”
She shakes her head.
Bella was pregnant once before. A guy named Markus, whom she loved as much as he loved cocaine. She never told him. We were twenty-two, maybe twenty-three. Our first stumbling, dazzling year in New York.
“I missed my period,” she says. “I sort of thought maybe I’d get it, but I haven’t. My stomach feels weird, my boobs feel weird. I’ve been putting it off, but I think…” She trails off.
“Did you tell Aaron?”
She shakes her head. “I wasn’t sure there’d be anything to tell.”
“How long ago was your missed period?”
She takes another sip. She looks at me. “Eleven days ago.”
We go to the store as we are — she in the nightgown with a sweatshirt thrown over, me in my running clothes. There is no one at the small-town drugstore but the woman who works there, and she smiles when we hand over the test. It always surprises me that we’re old enough to receive smiles now, have these moments be blessings, not curses.
When we get back, the house is still quiet, asleep. We crouch in the downstairs bathroom, just the two of us, sitting nervously on the edge of the tub stealing glances at the counter.
The timer dings.
“You look,” she says. “You tell me. I can’t do it.”
Two pink lines.
“It’s positive,” I say.
Her face falls into a sea of relief so powerful I have no choice. My eyes fill with tears.
“Bella,” I say. Stunned.
“A baby,” she mouths.
We close the space between us, and she is in my arms — my Bella. She smells like talcum powder and lavender and all things dewy and precious and young. I feel so protective over these two beating hearts in my arms that I can barely breathe.
We pull apart, misty-eyed and incredulous and laughing.
“Do you think he’ll be mad?” she asks me suddenly.
All at once, she’s in the driver’s seat of her silver Range Rover and we’re listening to Anna Begins with the windows down. It’s summer, and it’s late. We were supposed to be home hours ago, but no one is at Bella’s house. Her mother is in New York for the opening of a restaurant and her father is traveling for work.
We’re coming from Josh’s house—,or is it Trey’s? They both have pools. We’re still wearing our bathing suits, but they’re dry now. The air is hot and sticky, and I have this sense in me — born of youth and vodka and the Counting Crows — that we are invincible. I look over at Bella, sitting back at the wheel, mouth open, singing, and I think that I never want to be without her — and then, that I never want to share her. That she belongs to me. That we belong to each other.
“I don’t know,” I say. “But it doesn’t matter. This is our baby.”
She giggles. “I love him,” she says. “I know it sounds crazy. I know you think I’m crazy. But I really, really do.” She puts a hand on her belly, right on top of her nightgown.
“I don’t think you’re crazy,” I say. “I trust you.”
“That’s a first,” she says. Her hand is still resting there on her belly. I see it growing, floating out in front of her like an inflatable balloon.
“Well,” I say. “Then it’s about time.”
Chapter Sixteen
Bella says she doesn’t want to tell anyone. Not this weekend, not until she’s back in the city with Aaron. Let’s just enjoy the beach, she says. And we do.
We bring coolers, chairs, and blankets to the beach and stay there, swimming and eating salty chips and dripping watermelon, drinking beers and lemonade until the sun slips into the horizon.
Ariel and Morgan go for a walk in between swim sessions. I see them down the beach, clad in matching board shorts, holding hands. David and Aaron toss a Frisbee for a little while. Bella and I lounge under an umbrella. It’s idyllic, and I have a flash of years forward — all of us here, together, and her baby, toddling by the shore.
“Want to go for a walk?” I ask David when he comes back. He plops down on the blanket next to me. His shirt is wet at the chest, and his sunglasses hang down by his nose. I take them off and see that the skin around his eyes is sunburned — rimmed. We love it out here, but neither of us was made for the sun.
“I was hoping for a nap,” he says. He kisses my cheek. His face is sweaty, and I feel the moisture on my skin. I hand him the sunblock.
“I’ll go.”
I look up to see Aaron dripping over me, a beach towel flung over his right shoulder.
“Oh.” I look to my side, to where Bella is fast asleep on a beach blanket, her mouth slightly ajar, her foot dangling softly in the sand like a limp puppet.
I look to David. “Problem solved,” he says.
“Okay,” I say to Aaron.
I stand up and brush myself off. I’m wearing board shorts, a bikini top, and a wide-brimmed hat I got at a resort in Turks and Caicos on a trip with David’s family three years ago. I tighten the string.
“East or west?” he asks me.
“I actually think it’s north or south.”
He’s not wearing sunglasses and he squints at me, his face scrunching against the sun.
“Left,” I say.
The Amagansett beach is wide and long, one of the many reasons I love it so much. You can walk for miles uninterrupted, and many stretches are nearly deserted, even in the summer months.
We start walking. Aaron loops his towel around his neck and pulls with each hand at the edges. Neither one of us speaks for a minute. I’m struck, not by the silence but by the crash of the ocean — the sense of peace I feel in nature, I feel here. I don’t think I realize, living in New York, how much light and noise pollution affect my day-to-day life. I tell him this now.
“It’s true,” he says. “I really miss Colorado.”
“Is that where you’re from?”
He shakes his head. “It’s where I lived after college. I just moved to New York like ten months ago.”
“Really?”
He laughs. “Am I that jaded already?”
I shake my head. “No, I’m just surprised whenever someone has spent a good portion of their adult life somewhere else. Weird, I know.”
“Not weird,” he says. “I get it. New York kind of makes you feel like it’s the only place in existence.”
I kick up a shell. “That’s because it is. Says its insanely biased inhabitants.”
Aaron threads his fingers together and stretches upward. I keep my eyes on the sand.
“David’s great,” he says. “It’s been nice to spend some time with him this weekend.”
I look down at my left hand. The ring catches the summer light in sudden, brilliant bursts. I should have taken it off today. I could lose it in the water.
“Yeah,” I say. “He’s great.”
“I’m jealous of your relationship with Bella. I don’t have that many friends from high school I’m still that close with.”
“We’ve been friends since we were seven years old,” I say. “I barely have a childhood memory she’s not a part of.”
“You’re protective of her,” he says. It’s not a question.
“Yes. She’s my family.”
“I’m glad someone is looking out for her. You know, besides me.” He tries for a smile.
“I know you are,” I say. “It wasn’t you. She’s just dated people who didn’t really put her first. She falls in love quickly.”