If We Ever Meet Again

Lying stretched out on the couch in her living room, her eyes closed and an arm resting across her forehead, Ellie forced herself to keep her breathing slow as she tried to keep from moving.

Since the day before yesterday, she’d been feeling completely under the weather. Headaches, heartburn and her stomach was acting up. She was the sort of person who simply detested being sick. Of course she liked the occasional snow day with a bout of the cold during winter time, but it was the end of June, the temperatures were in the high twenties*, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky… It was so not the time for a fever, a sick bucket by the side of the couch and a headache that kept her from even moving…or giving the TV any sort of attention.

Tessa had announced that she was coming over just a short while earlier and laying there she was dreading the sound of the doorbell. She was feeling like crap, all she wanted was to be left alone.

But apparently that’s not what friends did.

No, they brought chicken noodle soup, company and pretty much anything else that would keep their sick friend satisfied as they played nurse… That she refused to say anything about where she might have contracted the cold wasn’t helping, not was her insistence that she wasn’t going to go to the doctor – she didn’t like doctors – all it did was make her friends even more determined to come hang out with her.

Since arriving back home from Slovakia a couple of weeks earlier, they had all been fairly busy with their jobs and they hadn't even had time to get together for the six year anniversary of their high school graduation. It seemed like a trivial thing to an outsider, but the five of them had attended different high schools and therefore they hadn't actually graduated together, so ever since they had made it a point to meet up around the year mark of the day just to hang out, have a bit of a BBQ in the park if the weather allowed and…just hang out.

But this year they hadn't even managed to plan anything.

Arriving back home they’d all been swamped with work, barely having time to keep up with what everyone was doing, much less plan an outing like that. Which was just another thing that caused her head to pound, she didn’t have time to be sick! She had work to do; her desk was all but sagging under all the papers currently spread out on it.

Groaning and squeezing her already closed eyes shut as the obnoxious sound of the doorbell traveled through the one-bedroom apartment, she reluctantly rolled off the couch and shuffled across the hardwood floor, not even bothering to check the peep-hole to see who was on the other side she undid the lock and pulled the door open. Only to glare at the blonde woman who was standing on the other side of it, beaming like she’d just won something.

Not greeting her friend, Ellie simply turned around and shuffled back to the couch, resuming the exact position she’d just been in.

“Oh it’s so nice to see you, please come on in,” Tessa rolled her eyes sarcastically as she stepped inside the familiar apartment and removed her wedge sandals before continuing on into the open planned living room-kitchen area.

“You invited yourself here, get over it,” Ellie replied darkly, refusing to move once again. Her stomach felt a bit like when you're on a boat in extremely rough seas…she was so not in the mood for snarky comments and sarcastic teasing.

“You look like death warmed over,” Tessa commented a short while later as she joined her friend in the living room after dropping of some stuff in the kitchen.

“Gee, thanks,” Ellie rolled her eyes only to regret it the moment after as it felt like her head might just explode.

“Ey, are you sure that you're okay?” Tessa asked concerned as she sat in the other couch, watching her friend’s skin color turn strangely ashy before she pushed herself off the couch and all but ran towards the bathroom. “Ellie!”

Ignoring her friend’s call, Ellie made a dash for the bathroom as it felt like she would be seeing her breakfast once again. And she did…

“Are you okay?” Tessa asked a moment later, deep frown across her forehead as she appeared in the doorway, finding Ellie sitting on the dark tile-floor, leaning against the wall and with her head in her hands, fingers tangled in her long hair.

“Yeah,” Ellie replied, though her voice was muffled and she refused to open her eyes as she heard her friend step into the room.

“Right,” Tessa was clearly not convinced, but she humored her friend and filled a glass with cold water before wordlessly handing it to Ellie who accepted it without a protest. “Have you eaten something bad? Is it a stomach bug?” she pried as she sat down on the floor next to her friend.

“No, not that I know of,” Ellie replied quietly without looking over at her friend, silently praying that the world would stop spinning. There was one thing she hated more than being sick: throwing up.

“Cramps?” Tessa continued prying. “Do you want me to go get you some medication…” she hinted, desperately trying to get her friend to say something, anything about what might be wrong with her.

Leaning her head back against the mosaic-tiled wall, Ellie tried to keep her breathing as something dawned on her and caused her to squeeze her eyes shut once again.

“El?” Tessa frowned as her friend placed the still half-full glass on the edge of the built-in bathtub and on her hands and knees crawled across the spacious bathroom. “What are you doing?” she questioned as she watched her dig through the drawers beneath the large sink.

“What daye is it today?” Ellie demanded, not acknowledging her friend’s questions.

“The 28th,” Tessa replied after a moment’s hesitation. “Why?”

Holding the familiar box with pink roses printed on it in her hand, the reality of what was really wrong with her hit head on. “I'm late,” Ellie whispered.

“What?” Tessa asked, moving closer to her friend.

“I'm late,” Ellie smiled sadly as she held up the box to show her friend. “I…I haven't had to buy new ones yet. And I'm extremely regular,” she said softly.

“I know,” Tessa almost rolled her eyes; they’d practically been able to set the calendar after that one’s monthly visitor…

Dropping the box back into the drawer, Ellie closed it and pulled out the one below it, digging through the mess that had been created after years of living in the same place. Finding what she was looking for, she sat down on the cool floor and looked at the box in her hand. She really hadn't thought she would need one of these anytime soon.

“You're like a bloody boyscout,” Tessa commented dryly as she read the label on the box in her friend’s hand. “Why the hell do you have that?”

“My cousin, Alex, came to visit a couple of months ago,” Ellie told her. “She was late and had this huge freak out, I went out and bought this, but of course as soon as she got it in her hand she got her period,” she remembered. “I just didn’t throw it out and it’s just been lying in there since…” she trailed off.

“You want some privacy?” Tessa asked even if she didn’t wait for an answer before she stood up from the floor and when her friend finally nodded she walked out of the bathroom, pushing the door close behind her. “Don’t drag it out,” she called over her shoulder as she walked out in the kitchen. Chicken noodle soup wasn’t going to fix what was wrong with her friend, that was for sure…

Reading and then re-reading the label on the box, Ellie took a deep breath before she pulled it open and got out the plastic stick as well as the folded up instructions. With it being a rather straight forwards process, she soon finished and stood up from the floor, avoiding looking herself in the mirror as she did.

Pushing her sweatpants down over her hips, she did as the instructions told her to and placing the stick on the edge of the sink when she was done; she watched her hands and resumed her previous position of leaning against the wall as she willed time to move faster.

“Is it safe to come back inside?” Tessa asked just a moment later as she gently nudged the door open just an inch.

“If you want to watch my life crash and burn, them by all means,” was Ellie’s dry reply.

“You don’t know that,” Tessa pointed out.

“I’ve never been late in my entire life,” Ellie glared at her.

“So who’s…?” Tessa began, only to be interrupted before she could finish her sentence. “Shut up,” Ellie ordered as she glanced down at the white ceramic watch wrapped around her wrist.

“Do you want me to look for you?” Tessa wondered as she saw the apprehensive look that passed over her friend’s face.

“No,” Ellie shook her head slightly. “I got myself into this mess, I should be able to face the consequences,” she mumbled under her breath as she reluctantly moved across the room and reached for the stick laying on the edge of the rectangular shaped sink. Her cousin being a closet neurotic, she’d bought the one with the little box at the end that would spell out the result.

A decision she now regretted as it limited the chance of getting a false reading just because you wanted to see something that wasn’t quite there.

“What is it?” Tessa suddenly felt like she was the one taking the pregnancy test, she was that anxious and nervous to hear the result.

“I'm pregnant,” Ellie breathed.

This had never even been something she’d worried about. She’d always been overly cautious with birth control, condoms and not having sex outside of a relationship if she was anywhere near the time most likely to conceive. Unlike all of her female friends – and a few of her male ones as well – who all had had pregnancy scares during the years.

“Well, I guess that this is the time you usually say congratulations,” Tessa smirked slightly as she looked at her friend who was now leaning back against the dark wood cabinet.

“I guess it is,” Ellie managed a slight chuckle, not quite able to tear her eyes away from the little box at the end of the stick that was just screaming out the word ‘Pregnant’.

“What are you going to do?” Tessa asked carefully as she watched her friend, this was one of the few things they’d never really talked about.

“I don’t know,” Ellie admitted softly, placing the stick back on the sink beside her and glancing down at her flat stomach that was covered in a white tank top. “I really don’t know,” she added under her breath, placing her hand flat against her stomach. Something, someone, was growing in there…

“Is it…the guy from the hotel?” Tessa asked warily, ready for her friend to lash out at her.

“Yeah,” Ellie nodded once. “I mean, it has to be, I’ve been too busy to even think about meeting someone, muss less having sex with them since we got back,” she said seriously.

“Do you have any way of contacting him?”

“All I know is that he’s American, he lives in California and his name’s Jack,” Ellie told her with a dry smile. “I'm pretty sure that’s going to be a needle in a haystack.”

“Right,” Tessa agreed with a nod, her friend was certainly right there. “So what are you going to do?”

“I’ll figure it out,” Ellie shrugged. “I mean, I have to get it confirmed by my doctor and then I can really start thinking about what to do,” she bit her bottom lip slightly. “But…I’ll figure it out…”

It’s what she did after all, she was the responsible one. The responsible one who’d gotten pregnant after a one-night-stand whose last name she didn’t even know…