Page 33 of The Friend Zone

She broke into one of her dazzling beauty-queen smiles. “Are you going to break up with Tyler?”

And there it was.

I shook my head. “No. Josh and I are never going to be a thing.”

She wrinkled her brow. “Why not? It would be awesome. Me and Brandon, you and Josh. The Ramirezes and Copelands could buy houses next door to each other, raise our kids together…”

I scoffed. “Well, that escalated quickly.”

As if I hadn’t thought about how easy it would be. How perfect. But it was impossible because I was no different than his last girlfriend.

I needed to tell her. I couldn’t keep this from her anymore. Not now that Josh played into it.

I should have told her weeks ago, but Sloan couldn’t compartmentalize like I could. It would upset her. I mean, it upset me too, but I was able to accept it as one of the shitty things that happens in life that you can’t change, and go on with my day. But I couldn’t explain why I couldn’t be with Josh without coming clean. And I really needed to be able to talk to her about this.

“Sloan, there’s something I need to tell you.”

Her beautiful expression fell. She knew my tone. She knew this was bad.

I tucked my hair behind my ear. “You know I’ve had to give up a lot because of my periods.”

She knew. We’d been friends since the sixth grade. She was well aware of my three-week-long menstruation nightmares. I got an ulcer junior year from taking too much ibuprofen for the pain. I’d missed prom because my cramps were so bad I couldn’t even stand up. She’d driven me to the ER more times than I could count.

“I didn’t want to drop this on you before the wedding, and I’m sorry if it messes with you.”

I rallied myself to just say it, to tell her what I’d been dealing with for the last six weeks on my own.

“I’m having a hysterectomy.”

Sloan’s face broke instantly. Her hand flew to her mouth. “What?”

I’d finally gone for the nuclear option. I was done hemorrhaging for weeks at a time, suffering needlessly, not living my life. Enough was enough.

“They don’t normally recommend one for women my age. It’s elective. But the fibroids are severe and affecting my quality of life. The chance I’ll ever be able to actually carry a baby is almost nonexistent.”

“How did it get so bad?” she asked, almost in a whisper.

“Sloan, it’s always been this bad.”

She looked away from me, her eyes searching the floor. “Oh my God, Kristen. Oh my God. Why didn’t you tell me? I…I would have gone with you to the doctor. I would have…” Then her mouth opened and her eyes came back up. “You’ll never have a baby,” she breathed.

I shrugged. “I’d never have one anyway.”

She looked stricken. “But there is a chance you could get pregnant someday, right? Even if it’s a small one, there’s still the chance. If you do this—”

“Sloan, my uterus is a wasteland. It always has been. It’s been one thing after another since my very first period, and now it’s a fibroid-riddled holocaust too. I have the womb of a fifty-year-old and I’ve tried everything—you know I have. I spent the better part of the last six months bleeding myself into anemia again. The IUD I got as a last resort hasn’t done a thing. I still have bleeding and cramps almost all the time. The birth control pills that were supposed to help made the tumors get bigger. That’s it. I’m out of options.”

The defeat moved across her face as the reality of what I was saying settled in. This wasn’t some spontaneous thing I’d decided to do on a whim, and she knew it. I’d weighed my options. I’d seen multiple specialists. I’d read the “grieving my uterus” brochures. I’d talked with other women who were having the same issues and had gone through it.

“I’m not going to get better, Sloan.”

I looked down at my stomach and smoothed my dress over the small, firm, distended mound that was my abdomen. I looked three months pregnant. That had been the final straw. The thing that tipped the scales. The tumors had begun to distend my uterus.

Google searches had shown me women with my condition with stomachs so full of growths they looked six months pregnant. That was it for me. The final insult to my injury. I couldn’t let this continue until it got that bad. I’d given up enough dignity already.

“The doctor said they could get so big they’d make it hard to breathe. Push my other organs around. Look. Look at my stomach, Sloan.”

She stared at the triangle between my fingers. “When?” Her brown eyes blinked back tears.