The Silence Feels Like Losing

"Did you see this?" Tessa asked, popping her head over my cubicle wall, phone in hand. "A pic of you and Rhys Montgomery going at it on the balcony last night just hit Arch-Gossip."

"Rumors. We were discussing a project," I said, keeping my eyes locked on the screen.

"Right." She raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Because the rumor is you nearly shoved him off the balcony. And by 'shoved,' I mean hands, body, and eye contact that could melt steel."

I clicked open a complex CAD file, a little too forcefully. "That source needs to get their eyes checked."

Across the atrium, Rhys was leaning against the coffee bar, effortlessly charming some socialite trying to get into real estate. He whispered something in her ear, and she giggled, tilting her head back like he'd just delivered the wittiest line in history. I hated the perfect way his shirtsleeves were rolled up his forearms. I hated even more that I noticed.

I cleared my throat. "Don't you have a model to print?"

Tessa huffed. "Fine, fine. But I'm calling dibs on your corner office if he declares all-out war over the next landmark project."

She vanished. I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding and leaned back in my chair. A sudden wave of nausea rolled over me, making the lines on my monitor swim. My stomach churned.

I snapped my laptop shut and stood.

It was nothing, I told myself. Too many late nights, too much caffeine. A weekend of sleep would fix it.

A month later, the morning sickness hadn't gone away; it had intensified. The world tilted precariously every time I stood up too fast.

At the corner drugstore, I bought seltzer, saltine crackers, and—because I was apparently now the star of my own terrible romantic comedy—three different brands of pregnancy tests. It was just stress, I rationalized. Hormones. A late period. Project deadlines. It was not champagne and a penthouse and Rhys's hands on my waist as I drunkenly argued with him over who owned the goddamn skyline.

Back home, I paced the length of my bathroom as if the motion could somehow alter reality. The three tests lay on the marble counter, a jury waiting to deliver its verdict.

Three minutes.

I turned on the exhaust fan. I counted the floor tiles. I tried not to look.

I looked.

Two pink lines.

And another two pink lines.

No.

I snatched up the third, the digital one, my hand shaking.

The screen was brutally clear: PREGNANT.