I have done more preparation for this night than possibly any other in my life. I have purchased a home pregnancy kit. I have agreed to meet Casey and her mother for dinner but insisted on picking them up at her apartment before we leave, knowing that I’ll be invited in for a few minutes and Casey will piss before we leave, as is her habit, and that she will not flush the toilet, as is also her habit. I have invited Alyna to meet me at the bar of the restaurant in which I will be dining with Casey and her mother. She doesn’t know that Casey and her mother will be there and assumes that I just wanted to have dinner with her to talk about how things ended. I am hoping to surprise her by publicly unveiling the possible truth about my pending fatherhood. I have rehearsed the “I know you’re not pregnant and here’s the proof” speech, making slight dramatic alterations to increase the amount of emotional duress I can cause both Casey and her mother without making Alyna think I’m a psychotic monster. I have done all of this as I pull up to Casey’s apartment with the home pregnancy kit tucked away inside my jacket.
I knock on her door, which is opened by her mother, who offers me a hug unprompted. I do not hug her back. As she presses her small and shriveled tits against me, she says, “Casey explained everything. You were just confused. I understand this is a big decision and it’s better that you came back to it after having doubts. It only makes your bond that much stronger. Luckily we can salvage some of the initial wedding planning we did.”
I offer nothing in response. As she lets go of me I hope more than I’ve ever hoped for anything that in a few hours I’ll be able to crush her soul one more time.
Casey comes out of her bedroom with a giant smile on her face, oblivious to the sledgehammer I hope to deliver to her psyche tonight.
She says, “Well, are we ready to get going?” and it seems completely possible that she’s going to walk out the door without peeing.
I’m about to ask her if she needs to pee when she says, “Just let me use the ladies’ room and then I’ll be ready.”
As Casey pisses, I can almost feel the home pregnancy kit getting warmer in my jacket pocket. Her mom says, “You should probably wait to apologize to me until we’re at dinner, you know, so it can be just right and so Casey can hear it, too. I think she’d like that.”
I say, “Okay.” I can hear Casey washing her hands in the bathroom as I stare at her mom, imagining myself waving the negative pregnancy test result in her face, telling her to fuck off and walking out with Alyna.
When she comes out I say, “I think I need to use the restroom, too. I’ll be right back.”
Casey says, “Hurry, the reservations are in twenty minutes,” as I shut the bathroom door behind me.
I walk to the toilet bowl and lift the lid. There below me in all its golden glory is a bowl full of Casey’s just-squirted piss. I pull out the home pregnancy kit. The directions require the possibly pregnant woman to hold the end of the strip in her urine stream for three to five seconds.
I dip the strip in the toilet for three to five seconds. The directions further require you to wait for seven minutes while the chemical effect takes place, producing either a blue or a pink result. Over the course of the next seven minutes, I’m sure Casey will knock on the bathroom door to ask me what’s taking so long. Instead I hear her ask her mom the same question and her mom actually cuts me some slack by saying, “Leave him alone. He’s probably nervous about this whole thing and he’s having some bowel trouble.”
At the end of seven minutes, the strip is neither pink nor blue, but instead the same tan color it was when I pulled it out of the box. Further examination of the directions reveals the following line:
Grip the strip firmly while urinating. If the strip is accidentally dropped into the toilet bowl, the test’s results should be considered invalid as water will dilute the necessary chemical reaction.
Fuck.
Realizing there’s no place I can safely dispose of the strip or the box in Casey’s bathroom without leaving a clue to my clandestine pregnancy test, I wash the strip off, put it back in the box, and put the box back in my jacket pocket, hoping that I don’t smell like piss. Then again, if I do smell like piss, maybe it will make the night even worse for Casey and her mom.
I leave the bathroom and we all get in my car to drive to the restaurant, where Alyna is going to meet me at the bar and my plan is going to fall apart miserably.
We walk into the restaurant, Lala’s, one of Casey’s favorites, and I don’t see Alyna at the bar, which is small enough for me to conclude that she is not here yet. We take our seats at a table near the bar. We get bread and water, and Casey’s mom starts in immediately.
She says, “So, now that we’re all here and sitting down to a nice dinner and everything is happening like it was supposed to…do you have something to say?”
I’m on the verge of sweating visibly as I think about how Alyna is going to react to this whole thing and about whether Casey is actually pregnant. I don’t say anything. Casey nudges me.
I say, “Uh, yeah. I, uh, I’m sorry for everything that happened last time you were out here.”
Her mom says, “Well, that wasn’t very heartfelt.”
My heart is about to jump out my fucking throat. All I can picture is Alyna crying when she sees me with Casey and her mom and I can offer no explanation for inviting her here to meet me.
I apologize for the apology. “Sorry.”
Her mom says, “Listen, it took a lot for me to accept the idea that you were getting back together. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like the idea of Casey getting married a lot more than I like the idea of her having to spend another year looking for another husband, but you seem a little ungrateful for my forgiveness.”
I’m momentarily jarred out of my paranoia by a quick shot of hate. I want to tell her mom to fuck off, but it’s not part of the plan, even though the plan doesn’t exist anymore. Every time someone walks through the front door, I know it’s one person closer to being Alyna and one second closer to being the last time I ever see her again.
I apologize again. “I’m sorry.” It’s all I can say.
Her mom says, “That’s fine, I guess.”
Casey says, “Good. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about the wedding. We should have it in a few months, I think—just like we had planned.”
Her mom says, “I agree. No sense in letting the planning we’ve already done go to waste.”
I can’t sit at the table anymore. I have to leave. I have to think, somehow salvage my plan.
I say, “’Scuse me. I have to go to the bathroom,” then leave the table without bothering to look at their reaction.
In the bathroom I pull out the pregnancy test, hoping against all hope that it has changed to some discernible color. No luck, still fucking tan. A guy is taking a massive shit in one of the stalls. Still, the smell of his deuce is preferable to the company of Casey and her mom.
I wash my hands and think about a few ways out of this:
1. Climb out the window.
2. Fake a stroke.
3. Force myself to shit my pants so we all have to leave before Alyna gets here, which should be any second.
4. Throw myself in front of a bus.
And then it hits me—I can just go on with my plan. I may not have the concrete evidence to back up a nonpregnancy accusation, but I might not need it. The accusation alone might be enough to bring out the truth. I’ll have to sell it, and once I go down that road I won’t be able to turn back. But I really have no other choice. Worst-case scenario—I’m still the father of Casey’s unborn child and her mom still hates me. Nothing lost, really.
I rinse my hands off, splash a little water on my face, and prepare to initiate a public scene.
As I walk out of the bathroom, I see Alyna sitting at the bar. She says, “Hi,” with sadness.
I say, “Hi. Watch this and no matter what happens, don’t leave.”
I don’t give her a chance to respond before I walk up to Casey and her mom, pull out the pregnancy test, and say loudly enough for most of the tables in the place to hear, “Casey, I know you’re not pregnant.”
I’ve never seen someone’s face when their heart explodes, but I’m pretty sure that’s what I’m looking at as Casey’s mom falls out of her chair and her mouth and eyes get big enough to make her look like a cartoon.
I keep going, “When you pissed at your house, I did a little test and it came back negative.”
Casey’s mom looks at Casey and says, “Pregnant?” in a way that makes me realize Casey never told her, which gives more weight to my current paper-thin argument.
The whole place is stunned into silence. No waiters or managers are telling us to shut up. No one is saying shit. They’re all just watching us.
Casey says, “Mom, I was going to tell you after we were married,” which takes my argument back down a notch.
Nonetheless, my course of action is set. I continue on with, “Casey, you’re not pregnant, I have the results right here.”
Casey looks at her mom lying on the ground, panting and heaving like someone shot her, then she looks back at me, like she’s deciding something. Then she says, “I am pregnant. Your test must be wrong.”
There’s no turning back. I say, “These things are ninety-nine-point-nine percent accurate,” having no real idea how accurate they are. “Do you think you’re the point-one percent that the test failed on? Not likely.”
From the ground her mom says, “I can’t believe you had premarital sex. Oh my god. Your father is going to be so disappointed in you.”
The line about her dad does something visible to Casey, who starts to cry. It physically hits her, changing the look on her face from wrongly accused innocent pregnant girl to Daddy’s biggest disappointment.
Casey says, “Fine. I’m not pregnant.”
Holy motherfucking shit. With those three words, Casey releases me from a prison that never existed in the first place. I’m washed over with an immediate and palpable sense of euphoria, like I just woke up with a hard-on after having a nightmare that my dick got cut off.
As Casey admits her lie, I look across the room at Alyna for the first time. She has a weird look on her face. I can’t tell if she’s happy or horrified. I turn back to Casey, who is now helping her mom back up to her feet, and toss the pregnancy test at her. I want to say something really cool or really mean to drive a nail into her coffin, but instead I say, “Here,” and walk over to the bar where Alyna’s sitting, grab her hand, and walk out the door.
On the street Alyna says, “So I guess you didn’t really just invite me out for drinks.”
“No.”
“That was fucking insane, by the way.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“Mad? No. I’m happy. For the past week I haven’t been able to eat. I haven’t been able to sleep. I haven’t been able to do anything except think about the possibility that I might never see you again and you’d be stuck in some shitty life raising a kid you don’t want with a girl you don’t love.”
What I feel for Alyna as I hear her say this is more than affection, more than respect. It’s unquestionably love.
She puts her arms around me, kisses me, and says, “Why did you invite me here to see all this, though? You could have just told me you found out she wasn’t pregnant.”
“I didn’t want you to question it, I guess.”
“Well, you accomplished that goal.”
“So what do we do now?”
“Pick up where we left off. But what about your ex-girlfriend and her mom?”
“Fuck ’em.”
As Alyna and I walk to my car, I don’t think about what’s happening inside the restaurant. I don’t think about Casey’s world being shattered. I don’t think about how she and her mom are going to get home. I think about Alyna, her perfect ass, her lips around my cock and fucking her doggie style as I press on her asshole with my thumb. And more than that, I think about waking up with her tomorrow morning.