Page 72 of Sexting the Boss
Positive.
I lower myself back onto the toilet lid and sit there with the test in my hand, my thumb pressed against the plastic casing likeit’s the only solid thing left in the room. My thoughts scatter, regroup, then scatter again.
Ethan flashes through my mind without warning. His hands. His voice. The intensity he carries like it’s second nature. The way he looks at me when he thinks I’m choosing him.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
This changes everything.
Not in a vague, future sense. Not in a theoretical way. It changes today. It changes tomorrow. It changes the rules I thought I was operating under.
My phone buzzes again, closer this time. I know without looking that it’s him.
I don’t move.
I sit there in the quiet bathroom, test still in my hand, heart pounding too fast and too slow all at once, and I understand with sudden clarity that whatever happens next is going to force decisions I am not ready to make.
I open my eyes and look at the test again.
It’s still positive.
16
LILA
The test stays positive no matter how long I stare at it.
Two lines. No confusion. No wiggle room. Just my life deciding to add a whole new folder and label it “urgent.”
We used protection. Condoms, the good kind, the way Ethan keeps everything else, organized and accounted for. There’s no sloppy moment to blame, no cute story to tell, no “we were reckless,” unless you count having sex with your boss as reckless, which I do, on paper, in permanent marker.
So this is an accident. The kind that happens anyway. I’m not celebrating it, but I’m also not pretending it isn’t real. The kind that doesn’t care that I’m not ready, or that I’m still sorting out whether Ethan wants me as a person or as an experience.
I sit on the closed toilet lid with the stick in my hand and feel my brain try to do math it doesn’t have numbers for. Timeline. Odds. Consequences. The part of me that likes control starts making lists, then the part of me that knows better kicks the list over.
First impulse is Ethan.
Tell him, I think, because he’s the only person in my orbit who can hold a problem without panicking, and I need that right now. He’ll go still, eyes doing that sharp focus thing, then he’ll ask questions in a row, calm and exact. Are you okay? Did you take a second test? Who knows? What do you want? He’ll make room for me to answer, and he won’t pretend the world is simple.
He also has a habit of deciding he can solve things, and my life is currently full of men who treat me like a project.
I pick up my phone, then set it down again, then pick it up again, because my hands can’t pick a side. I open Ethan’s thread and hover over the keyboard.
I’m pregnant.
I don’t type it. My thumb hovers, my other hand presses against my thigh, and I exhale hard through my nose.
I’m still doing this alone, I remind myself. I’m still allowed to think before I invite someone else into it.
My phone buzzes in my hand, and the screen lights up with a number I don’t recognize.
It rings again before I can decide whether to ignore it. Persistent. Bold. The exact flavor of attention I’m trying to avoid.
I answer anyway, because I am tired of living like my phone is a trap.
“Hello.”
A beat, then a woman’s laugh, light and annoying.
