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Liza Morris
Liza spent the next couple of weeks feeling listless and decidedly out of sorts. Because neither of these feelings was normal for her, she did them both badly. Each day came with the kind of let down that followed a major holiday or a fantastic trip everyone had been especially looking forward to. Every time she closed her eyes she was immediately back in Wesley's car. She was sitting beside him on leather that probably cost more than her entire car and trying to convince herself there was no real attraction between the two of them. Then she blinked and she was on top of him, her body full of righteous pleasure too good for her to believe it was real. Then her eyes opened, and she was back in her stupid apartment. None of the things that typically gave her pleasure did anything for her at all. She was on edge all of the time, quick to anger at the littlest thing. Fortunately, her current job meant that she didn't have to spend all of her days around other people. As such, her coffee table and blender took the brunt of her bad mood, and they weren't telling anyone anytime soon. The only person with any idea of how off she was currently feeling was Melony, and she didn't know the half of it. That was good, as far as Liza was concerned. It was how she wanted things to stay, which was why she was so completely dreading the girls’ night Melony had talked her into. She was so much dreading it, in fact, that she seriously considered pretending not to be home when her doorbell finally rang. For a couple of seconds, she sat stock still on the couch, her eyes wide and unblinking.
“Like she’s a T-Rex or something,” she muttered to herself and dragged herself off the couch. Melony could be worse than a T-Rex when she wanted to be. For one thing, she could still see you when you weren’t moving.
“Hey!” Melony called loudly from the other side of the door, almost like she could read Liza’s mind, “cut the shit, Liza, and let me in! This hermit routine is starting to feel like a bunch of bullshit, let me tell you.”
“I’m coming,” Liza mumbled, shuffling her feet slowly across her carpeted floor, “just stop shouting, will you? I have a headache.”
"That's what I'm here for!" Mel crowed. Liza winced and braced herself with her hand on the lock. She had no idea in which universe shouting made headaches better. Probably only in Melony's, which was a place in which all rules were negotiable. She would have given anything to be allowed to rest her forehead on the cool door frame for even a couple of moments more, but she didn't dare chance it; Melony's impatience was legendary. Any minute now she was going to start hollering again, and it would catch the attention of Liza's neighbors. Liza had a feeling that if she got a noise violation, it might be the final straw. She shuddered, sighed, and took the chain off the lock.
"Jesus, it's about time!" Melony bellowed. She gave Liza a disapproving look and bustled through the door, not bothering to shut it behind her. Liza stood in the frame, shoulders slumped, and peered out into the hallway. She looked surreptitiously up and down both ends for any curious neighbors. She had no desire to make conversation and if she made eye contact with anyone she would pretend to be busy and shut the door. The fact that she was looking at all was mostly due to her own morbid curiosity and foul mood. Also, and probably this most of all, she was stalling. The longer she spent in the hall, the longer she could avoid direct eye contact with Melony. It seemed like this was of paramount importance. Melony knew her too well. It would take almost no time at all for her to figure out something was the matter.
“Hey!” Melony called from the couch, again doing that annoying mind-reading thing, “I’m waiting over here! Just like I was waiting at the door. Seriously, what’s going on with you today?”
"Nothing, I'm fine. I'm just tired, okay?" Liza answered, shuffling over to the couch to sit beside her friend. She heaved herself onto one of the overstuffed pillows and let her head fall onto the sloped back. Her eyes slipped shut, and for one blissful moment, she thought she might fall asleep. When Melony's fingers flicked her on the forehead, she understood she would not be so lucky. Her eyes opened again, and she found Melony's face hovering only inches above her own.
“I hate to say it, lady, but you look more than tired. You look like shit,” Melony said sympathetically.
“Gee, thanks. Remind me why I invited you over again?” Liza asked dryly. Melony certainly had a way with words and her bluntness sometimes rubbed people the wrong way. For Liza, though, it was total reassurance. It was enough to get her sitting up straight and even smiling a little. Melony grinned back at her and reached for something by the side of her couch.
“If you honestly can’t smell it, things are more dire for you than I thought,” she said with a mockingly forlorn tone of voice.
“Smell what?” Liza pressed, honestly curious now.
"The pizza, darling! Triple cheese, just the way you like it!" Melony produced the pizza with a flourish, holding it out on the palm of one hand like a waitress. Now Liza really could smell it, and her stomach growled uncomfortably. For a split second, everything felt normal, just the way it had been since the two of them were in middle school. Then the reason for her unhappiness and her subsequent avoidance of her best friend in the world came crashing back down on her head. She was careful to keep her face impassive, but her heart started jackhammering in her chest, and she felt vaguely like she needed to be sick. If her suspicions were correct, it was a feeling she would need to get used to for the foreseeable future. Say, give or take three months.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she said as chipper as she was able. She shifted uncomfortably and waited for her stomach to settle. It didn’t, not completely, but enough so that she was reasonably sure she didn’t need to make a run for the bathroom. Steady breaths and her new mantra: get through this moment and maybe everything will be okay. Its success was marginal at best, but Liza wasn’t giving up.
“Sure I did,” Melony answered, busying herself with paper plates and the unwieldy pizza box, “it’s part of the plan to help you get your groove back. I brought a massive bottle of wine, too, so you should be feeling good before we know it.”
"No! No, sorry, I don't want any wine. I'm...I'm just not feeling much like drinking today," Liza responded hurriedly. By the time the sentence was finished she sounded practically normal, but it was too late. Melony was sharp and did not miss the shrillness of that first ‘no.’ She looked at Liza closely, and the set the pizza plates down with careful deliberation. The thudding of Liza's heart grew more pronounced, and she had to fight the urge just to hop up and run. Never in her life had she been tempted to run from her best friend, but she was seriously considering it now. It wouldn't fix everything, but it would delay her stay of execution some. It wasn't much, but it was something.
“Okay, enough,” Melony said quietly, all of her usual bluster momentarily gone.
"I don't know what you mean," Liza answered feebly. She wasn't a habitual liar, and she wasn't any good at it when she did it either. The pitiful attempt at dissuading Melony from her prying didn't even make a dent. When Melony looked at her again, Liza understood. She would spill it all, every single sordid detail of the things she'd been up to as of late.
“Cut the bullshit, girlie, got it? I’ve known you for way too long for you to be able to pull the wool over my eyes,” Melony said matter-of-factly.
"Yeah, I guess you have. I should have known better," Liza sighed bitterly. Part of her was practically bowled over with relief, but another part of her was annoyed. It felt like an intrusion, not even being able to hold onto her secrets. It felt like she was losing hold of everything that was supposed to belong to her.
"Tell me what it is. Just tell me what’s wrong, and things will start to feel better," Melony prodded gently.
“You’re a smart girl, want to venture a guess?” Liza asked, unable to make herself say the words now that they had arrived at the heart of the thing.
"Are you pregnant, lady? Just tell me quick, like pulling off a band-aid," she said softly and in a decidedly un-Melony-like voice. Liza looked down at her twisting hands and started to cry silently. Even as she had watched the days tick by without her period arriving, Liza had not spoken that word out loud: pregnant. What a funny word it was, a funny concept. For some people, it was the only thing a person wanted to hear and the greatest news in the world when it finally came. On the flip side, thinking you were pregnant when you didn't want to be was its own brand of terror that simply could not be reproduced. It stayed with you, a gnawing suspicion in the back of your mind. It had been Liza's own personal Eeyore cloud for the last interminable days, and part of her was glad to have the word said out loud now. A more superstitious part of her was utterly convinced that now that it had been said aloud, it would simply become truth.
“Liza-?” Melony prompted, still in her rare gentle voice.
“I don’t know,” Liza answered hesitantly, then squared her shoulders when Melony’s expression turned to disbelief, “honestly, I don’t.”
"But you think you are?" Mel pressed, relentless as ever. Sometimes it drove Liza bonkers, but at the moment she sort of loved her for it.
"I don't know. I think I might be. I've been wondering for the last week or so. I thought I was just being stupid, but the feeling isn't going away. It's getting stronger," she said miserably. She waited for the questions to come, just as she knew they would. It was only natural. She would have had plenty of questions herself had their current positions been reversed. The idea of answering anything, however, felt impossible. Someone might as well ask her to climb Mount Everest without any training. Every one of her nerve endings was on edge, waiting to fight or flee.
"And you couldn't just be stressed or something?" Melony asked hopefully. It wasn't the question Liza expected, and she could have cried for how grateful she was.
“Of course it could be. It’s just that I’m not usually late.”
“What do you mean by usually?” Melony asked, her face darkening.
“I mean never. The only time I was ever late was when I had mono our senior year of high school.”
“I remember that. You were sick as a dog,” Mel responded, her voice almost wistful. Liza thought she could understand why. It hadn’t been a good time by any means but sick as a dog was a whole lot less complicated than maybe, probably pregnant.
“I don’t know what to do, Mel. I don’t have the first clue how I’m supposed to handle this. It wasn’t supposed to happen, you know?” Liza said weakly. She felt pathetic even thinking that way, let alone saying any of it out loud, but it was all she had to contribute. It was also what was at the heart of what she was feeling: complete befuddlement. Pregnancy just wasn’t part of her plan.
"I'll tell you what you do," Melony said. She stood, hands on hips, and didn't even bat an eyelash when a wayward piece of pizza fell onto Liza's carpet. She looked like a woman who had just reached an unshakable conclusion. Liza peered into her friend's face and shuddered. She knew the expression well. She also knew that deterring Melony from a plan once she had her mind set was a nearly impossible feat.
“Look, I don’t know what you’re thinking-” Liza started, attempting to backpedal although she knew full well that it was too late.
"That's fine because I'm going to tell you. We're going to the drugstore, and we're going to get a pregnancy test. We're going to get a lot of them, actually."
“But those things aren’t one-hundred percent, you know?” Liza protested half-heartedly.
“Sure, that’s true,” Melonly smirked, “but I bet it’s a hell of a lot more reliable than your intuition.”
“Okay, but what if it’s too early? I think you have to wait for a certain amount of time so there might be no point anyway.”
"Uh huh. You really aren't up on the newest technology for this shit, are you?" Melony laughed. All of her unnatural gentleness was long gone. It had left with her feelings of uncertainty and helplessness and been replaced with grim determination.
"Why would I be?" Liza asked defensively. It wasn't typical for Melony to let that kind of sass slide but this time she hardly batted an eyelash. Her little way of showing that she was still sympathetic to the nature of the predicament, maybe.
“Okay, good point. All I’m saying is that there are tests specifically designed to tell you these things early and those are the tests we’re going to get.”
"I can't," Liza whispered, "I know it's stupid but I just can't. The second I buy one of those tests it'll be real, and I won't be able to take it back."
Liza fully expected to catch an earful for this pathetic gem. Melony didn't take well to weakness, especially not in the people she loved. Liza had wondered many times before if this was born out of fear that weakness made them vulnerable but had never quite dared to ask. This time, it wasn't relevant. Melony declared that she would go and get the tests, and turned a deaf ear to all of Liza's small protests. She marched out the door and left Liza sitting on the couch, wondering when everything had gotten so completely out of control. It felt like her friend had been gone for at least an hour, during which Liza managed to think up every worst-case scenario in this universe or in the next. In reality, Mel came back in twenty minutes tops with enough pregnancy tests to take care of an entire college cheerleading team. After much water and an upswing in nausea, Liza wasn't sure she would be able to ignore, she had her answer. Not just one, not just some, but all of the pregnancy tests gave the same answer; every single one of them telling her to expect a baby.
