Paige threw up in Johnny’s bathroom for the third morning in a row.
The sound was a wet, choked retching that carried through the thin door and down the hall to his bedroom. Johnny sat on the edge of his bed, still in his boxers, the January cold seeping through the window glass beside him. He stared at the closed bathroom door. He’d heard her get up, the floorboards creaking under her bare feet, then the click of the lock. He’d lain there, counting the seconds of silence before the vomiting started.
When the toilet flushed and the faucet ran, he pulled on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. He found her sitting on the closed lid of the toilet, her head in her hands. She wore one of his old flannel shirts, the sleeves rolled past her elbows. Her face was pale, her dark curls stuck to her damp forehead.
“You okay?”
She didn’t look up. “No.”
“Was it the eggs yesterday? My mom makes them kinda greasy.”
“It’s not the eggs, Johnny.” Her voice was flat, hollowed out. She finally lifted her head. Her eyes were red-rimmed, the dark brown almost black with fear. “I’m late.”
The words landed in the small, tiled room like stones dropped into still water. Johnny leaned against the doorframe. The cold from the porcelain sink at his back seeped through his shirt. “How late?”
“Two weeks.”
“But you’re on the pill.”
“I know what I’m on.” She snapped it, then immediately winced, pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes. “Sorry. I’m… I missed one. In December. When we had that El Niño storm and my mom couldn’t get to the pharmacy. I took it late. I read the pamphlet. It says it can mess with the effectiveness if you take it late.”
Johnny remembered the storm. Three days trapped inside, his parents working extra shifts. Paige had climbed through her broken window with a backpack of stolen snacks and a bottle of her dad’s whiskey. They’d spent those days in his room, under blankets, watching static on the TV, fucking out of sheer boredom. He’d come inside her every time. She’d told him it was fine. She was covered.
“Okay,” he said. The word felt stupid in his mouth.
“It’s not okay.” She stood up, shaky. She pushed past him into his bedroom, pacing the narrow strip of carpet between his bed and his desk. The flannel shirt hung open over her tank top and shorts. She stopped, her hand going to her lower stomach. “I feel fat. I feel… bloated. All the time. And now this.” She gestured vaguely toward the bathroom. “Every morning for a week.”
“You need a test.”
“No shit.” She hugged herself, her fingers digging into her own ribs. “I can’t buy one. Someone will see me. My mom knows the cashier at the Rite Aid.”
“I’ll buy it.”
She stared at him. The bravado, the teasing challenge she wore like armor, was gone. Stripped away by fear. She just looked like a fourteen-year-old girl in a boy’s too-big shirt. “You can’t buy a pregnancy test. You’re a guy. They’ll ask questions.”
“I’ll say it’s for my sister.”
“You don’t have a sister.”
“They don’t know that.” He walked to his closet, pulled a hoodie over his head. “I’ll go to the pharmacy on the other side of town. Where no one knows us.”
Paige didn’t move. She watched him lace up his sneakers. “What if it’s positive?”
Johnny’s fingers stilled on the knot. He looked up at her. The morning light cut across the room, highlighting the dust in the air between them. He didn’t have an answer. The possibilities—telling parents, a doctor, a procedure, a baby—were shapes too large and dark to look at directly. They lived in the periphery, a looming shadow. “Let’s just see,” he said, his voice quieter than he intended.
She nodded, a quick, jerky motion. “Okay.”
He stood, shoved his wallet into his pocket. “Stay here. My mom thinks you’re still asleep. If Jim bothers you, tell him to fuck off.”
“Johnny.”
He turned at the door.
“Hurry,” she said.
He took his bike. The air was a brittle cold that burned his lungs. He pedaled hard, the chain rattling, his breath pluming white in front of him. He passed the familiar streets, the bowling alley, the empty lot where they’d met in her friend’s car. The world looked normal. Frozen grass, gray sky, cars with their headlights on in the morning gloom. It didn’t match the frantic drumbeat in his chest.
The pharmacy was a twenty-minute ride, a boxy, fluorescent-lit place next to a laundromat. He leaned his bike against the brick wall, his hands numb. He pushed through the glass doors, a bell jingling overhead. The warmth inside smelled like antiseptic and cheap perfume.
The family planning aisle was in the back, past the cough syrup and the bandaids. He walked quickly, his shoulders tense. A middle-aged woman in a puffy coat was comparing prices on aspirin. She didn’t look at him.
The tests were on the bottom shelf. A dizzying array of boxes with words like “Early Result” and “Clear Answer.” He crouched down, his knees popping. He picked up a blue box. It felt light, insignificant. The instructions on the back were a blur of tiny print. He grabbed two different kinds, a twin-pack of one and a single of another, as if buying in bulk would somehow guarantee a better outcome.
He stood, the boxes in his hand, and turned toward the front.
“Find everything alright?”
The cashier was a girl maybe a few years older than him, with dyed black hair and a silver ring through her eyebrow. She was chewing gum, her eyes already on the boxes in his hand.
“Yeah,” Johnny said. He kept walking, laid the tests on the counter beside a display of gum and batteries.
The girl scanned the first box. The beep was loud in the quiet store. She scanned the second. “That’ll be twenty-seven fifty.”
Johnny fumbled his wallet out, pulled two twenties from the fold. His hands were shaking. He willed them to stop. They didn’t.
The girl took the money, made change. She dropped the coins into his palm, her fingers brushing his. She didn’t smile. Her eyes flicked to his face, then back to the tests as she bagged them in a plain white plastic sack. “Good luck,” she said, flat, professional, utterly devoid of judgment.
He took the bag, muttered a thanks, and pushed back out into the cold. The bell jingled again behind him. He stuffed the bag into the front pocket of his hoodie, zipped it up. The plastic crinkled against his chest with every movement.
He rode home slower than he’d left. The weight in his pocket felt like a bomb. He imagined it ticking, the seconds counting down to the moment they’d open the box, read the instructions, wait for the lines to appear or not appear. His mind skittered away from the image of Paige’s face if it was positive. He forced himself to pedal, to feel the burn in his thighs, the sting of the wind. The physical reality of the ride was a anchor. This was happening. Now.
He let himself in through the back door, kicking the snow from his sneakers on the mat. The house was quiet. His parents were at work. Jim was likely still in bed. He walked down the hall to his room.
Paige was exactly where he’d left her, sitting on the edge of his bed. She’d pulled the flannel shirt tight around herself. She looked up as he entered, her eyes locking onto the bulge in his hoodie pocket.
He pulled out the white bag, held it out. She took it, her fingers cold against his. She didn’t open it. She just held it in her lap, staring at the crinkled plastic.
“There’s two kinds,” he said, sitting beside her. The mattress dipped. “The instructions are in the box.”
“I know how they work,” she whispered.
They sat in silence. The furnace kicked on in the basement, a low rumble through the floorboards. A car passed outside, tires crunching on the packed snow.
“We should do it,” Johnny said.
Paige nodded. She stood, the bag clutched in her hand, and walked back into the bathroom. She didn’t close the door all the way. It stayed open a crack.
Johnny listened to the rustle of paper, the tear of cardboard, the crinkle of foil. He heard the plastic cap click off. Then the sound of her peeing, a steady stream hitting the water in the bowl. It felt obscenely intimate, this most ordinary bodily function now charged with terrifying significance. He stared at a knot in the wood of his bedroom floor.
The toilet flushed. The faucet ran. The silence that followed was absolute.
He counted to sixty. Then again.
The bathroom door opened. Paige stood there, holding one of the white plastic sticks. Her face was blank, unreadable. She walked over and handed it to him.
“You look,” she said, her voice thin. “I can’t.”
Johnny took it. It was still warm from her hand. He looked down. A small digital window stared back at him. For a second, it was blank. Then a single word appeared, stark black letters on the pale screen.
NOT PREGNANT.
He blinked. Read it again. The letters didn’t change.
“Well?” Paige’s arms were wrapped around herself so tight her knuckles were white.
He held the stick out, turning the screen toward her. “It says ‘not pregnant.’”
She snatched it from him, her eyes devouring the word. She brought it close to her face, as if checking for a trick. She let out a sound—a half-sob, half-gasp—and sank onto the bed, the test still gripped in her hand. She stared at it. “It’s right? These things are right?”
“The box said over 99% accurate.”
“Do the other one.”
“Paige—”
“Do it. We have two. We should use both. To be sure.”
Her voice was edged with a frantic need for confirmation. Johnny went back into the bathroom, retrieved the second test from the box. He read the instructions. This one used lines. One line for not pregnant, two for pregnant. He handed it to her.
She took it, her movements quick and efficient now. She repeated the process, her back to him. The wait felt longer this time. She set the stick on the edge of the sink and came to stand in the doorway, her arms crossed, watching it like it might sprout legs and run.
After three minutes, she picked it up. She held it under the weak bathroom light. A single pink line showed in the little window. Just one.
She showed it to Johnny. “One line. That’s negative, right?”
“That’s what it says.”
Paige leaned against the doorframe, her whole body going slack. The tension drained out of her shoulders, her spine. She closed her eyes, her long dark lashes fanning against her pale cheeks. “Oh, thank god,” she breathed. “Oh, thank fucking god.”
Johnny felt the coiled spring in his own gut begin to unwind. The cold dread that had been sitting in his chest since he heard her vomiting began to melt, leaving a hollow, shaky relief in its place. He reached for her, his hand finding her arm. Her skin was cool. “You’re okay.”
She opened her eyes. They were wet. “I was so scared.”
“I know.”
“I kept thinking… my parents… your parents… school…” She shook her head, the words failing. A single tear escaped, tracing a path down her cheek. She wiped it away angrily. “I’m not crying. I’m just… it’s the relief.”
“It’s okay.” He pulled her into him. She came willingly, burying her face in the hollow of his neck. Her body was warm and solid against his. He could feel the rapid beat of her heart through the layers of their clothes. He held her, his chin resting on the top of her head. He smelled her shampoo, the faint scent of vomit on her breath, the clean cotton of his shirt. Real. Here. Not pregnant.
They stood like that for a long time, in the middle of his messy bedroom, the two plastic tests sitting on his dresser like discarded artifacts from a disaster narrowly avoided.
Eventually, Paige pulled back. Her eyes were clear now, the fear replaced by a weary exhaustion. “I still feel like shit.”
“You threw up. That’ll do it.”
“No, I mean… the bloating. The weight. The pill messes with you sometimes. My body’s just… freaking out.” She walked over to his dresser, picked up the digital test, stared at the word again as if to memorize it. “I need to be more careful. No more missed pills. No more…” She trailed off, but her eyes flicked to him, then away.
“No more me coming inside you,” Johnny finished, his voice quiet.
She didn’t deny it. She set the test down. “It’s just… smarter. For now.”
A silence settled between them, different from the terrified silence of before. This was practical. Sober. The adrenaline of the scare was fading, leaving behind the gritty reality of what they’d been doing, what they’d risked. The secret world in his bedroom, in her bedroom, in the back of vans and cars, had just been shown a flashing red light. A warning.
“Okay,” Johnny said.
Paige looked at him, her head tilted. “Just ‘okay’?”
“What do you want me to say? You’re right. It’s smarter.”
She studied his face, looking for something—anger, disappointment, resentment. He kept his expression neutral. He agreed with her. It was the logical conclusion. But the agreement felt like a door closing on something, a wild, reckless freedom they’d taken for granted.
“We should get rid of these,” she said, gesturing to the tests. “Your mom can’t find them.”
Johnny took them, wrapped them in an old newspaper from his recycling pile. He shoved the bundle deep into his bedroom trash can, under candy wrappers and crumpled notebook paper. He’d take the bag out later, to the bin at the curb.
When he turned back, Paige was sitting on his bed, pulling on her socks. “I should go home. My mom thinks I’m at Marla’s.”
“You can stay.”
“I know.” She finished with her socks, reached for her boots. “I just… I want to be in my own room. I want to take a shower and put on my own clothes and just… breathe.”
He understood. The scare had contaminated his space. The relief was here, but so was the ghost of the fear. “I’ll walk you.”
“It’s four blocks.”
“I’ll walk you.”
She didn’t argue. They dressed in silence—Paige in her jeans and sweater, Johnny grabbing his coat. They slipped out the back door into the brittle afternoon. The sky had cleared to a hard, pale blue. The sun was out but gave no warmth.
They walked side-by-side, not touching. Their boots made identical crunching sounds in the snow. The neighborhood was quiet, just the distant hum of a snowplow a few streets over.
“Marla knows something’s up,” Paige said suddenly, her breath a cloud. “I’ve been acting weird. She keeps asking if I’m sick.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That I have a stomach bug. She bought it.” Paige kicked a chunk of ice, sending it skittering into the street. “She’s been weird too, though. Since she found out about us. She gets this look sometimes, like she’s waiting for me to tell her more. Or like she’s jealous she’s not the one with a secret.”
“You trust her?”
“To keep the secret? Yeah. I think so. But it’s different now. She’s a witness. It’s not just us in our own world anymore.”
They reached the corner of her street. Paige’s house was visible at the end of the block, the white siding stark against the gray trees. She stopped walking. “This is far enough. If my dad’s looking out the window…”
Johnny stopped beside her. They stood on the sidewalk, the cold seeping through the soles of their shoes. The scare was over, but a new tension hummed between them, born of the near-miss. The world felt thinner, more fragile.
Paige turned to face him. Her cheeks were pink from the cold, her dark eyes searching his. “You were really calm. At the pharmacy. Buying those.”
“I wasn’t calm.”
“You seemed it.” She reached out, her mitten-clad hand brushing his. “Thank you. For going. For… handling it.”
He shrugged, a tight movement. “What else was I gonna do?”
She smiled, a small, tired thing. “A lot of guys wouldn’t have. They’d have freaked out. Told me it was my problem.”
“I’m not a lot of guys.”
“I know.” Her smile faded. She looked down at their hands, then back up at him. The vulnerability from the morning was still there, just beneath the surface. “It’s still us, right? Even with… the new rules.”
“Yeah,” Johnny said. He meant it. The scare hadn’t changed that. If anything, the shared terror, the shared relief, had welded them together in a new, deeper way. It was a bond forged in a bathroom, over plastic sticks and a single word. “It’s still us.”
Paige nodded, satisfied. She leaned in, quick, and pressed her cold lips to his. It was a chaste kiss, closed-mouth, over in a second. A promise. A seal. “Okay,” she whispered against his mouth. Then she turned and walked down the sidewalk toward her house, her boots leaving dark prints in the pristine snow.
Johnny watched her go. He watched until she slipped through her side gate and out of sight. He stood there for another minute, the cold finally penetrating his coat, feeling the ghost of her kiss on his lips and the heavier, more permanent weight of the morning settling into his bones. He turned and started the walk back to his empty, quiet house, the word NOT PREGNANT blinking like a neon sign behind his eyes, a reprieve that felt, in the stark January light, like both a gift and a verdict.
Johnny stood in his silent kitchen, the cordless phone cold and heavy in his hand. He’d been standing there for an hour, watching the clock on the microwave tick from 3:47 to 4:51. The right thing to do was call. The right thing was to hear her voice, to make sure the silence of her house wasn’t eating her alive. He punched in the number he knew by heart, the buttons giving a soft plastic click under his thumb.
It rang twice.
“Hello?” Her voice was small, stripped of all its usual bravado.
“Hey.”
A beat of silence. He could hear her breathing, a little shaky. “Hey.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Just… lying here. Staring at my ceiling.”
“Me too. I mean, not lying down. But the staring part.” He leaned his forehead against the cool cabinet door. “Listen. Whatever happens. However scared you get. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. No matter what.”
She didn’t say anything for a long moment. He heard the rustle of sheets, like she was turning over. “You mean that?”
“Yeah. I mean it.”
“Okay.” Her voice was firmer now. He could picture her nodding in the dark of her room. “I know you do.”
Another silence, but this one was softer. Shared. He could feel the weight of the morning still hanging between them, but it was a weight they were holding up together now, from opposite ends of the phone line.
“Johnny?”
“Yeah?”
“I love you.”
The words landed in the center of his chest, a clean, sharp impact. He’d never heard them from her before. Not like that. Not sober, in the daylight, with nothing else happening. They weren’t gasped during sex or whispered in the dark as a prelude to sleep. They were just there. A statement. A fact.
He opened his mouth. Nothing came out. His throat had closed.
“You don’t have to say it back,” she said quickly, her voice dropping to a murmur. “I just… needed you to know. After today. I needed you to know that’s what this is.”
“Paige—”
“It’s okay. Really.” He heard her take a deep breath. “I’m gonna go. My mom’s yelling about dinner.”
“Okay.”
“Bye, Johnny.”
The line went dead. A flat, electronic hum filled his ear. He lowered the phone, his fingers tight around the plastic. The kitchen was utterly still. The hum of the refrigerator kicked on, a low vibration through the floor. I love you. The words echoed in the quiet, rearranging the air in the room. He set the phone down on the counter. It made a final, definitive click.
He walked upstairs, each step heavy. His room felt different. The bed where she’d sat, pulling on her socks. The trash can where the tests were buried. The window they’d looked out of this morning, waiting for the lines to appear. It was all the same, but it was all charged now, like the objects in the room had witnessed something and were holding the memory in their shapes.
He lay on his bed, on top of the covers, and stared at the ceiling. She was doing the same thing four blocks away. The symmetry of it was comforting and terrifying. He replayed the phone call. The two rings. The smallness of her voice. The way she’d said the words—not a question, not a demand. A delivery. Like she was handing him something fragile and precious and already accepting that he might drop it.
He hadn’t said it back. The moment had seized his vocal cords, locked his jaw. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel it. It was that the feeling was too big, too new, a wild animal in his chest that he didn’t know how to name without scaring it away. Saying it felt like releasing it into the world, where it could be judged, or ruined, or used against him. Against them. But not saying it felt like a betrayal. A failure.
The doorbell rang.
He didn’t move. It was probably Jim, having forgotten his key again. The bell rang a second time, more insistent. Johnny pushed himself off the bed, his body feeling leaden. He trudged downstairs and pulled open the front door.
Marla stood on the porch, her shoulders hunched against the cold. She wasn’t wearing a hat. Her blonde hair was wind-whipped, her cheeks bright red. She had her arms crossed tightly over her chest, but it was more a self-hug than a posture of annoyance.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey.” Johnny blinked, his brain slow to process her presence. “What’s up?”
“Can I come in? It’s freezing.”
He stepped back, holding the door open. She brushed past him, bringing a gust of cold air and the faint smell of strawberry lip gloss. She stood in the foyer, rubbing her hands together, her eyes darting around like she was looking for something. Or someone.
“Your parents home?”
“Bowling league. Jim’s at a friend’s.”
“Oh.” She seemed to relax a fraction. She unwound her scarf, a cheap, fuzzy pink thing. “I was just… walking around. I saw Paige go home earlier. She looked upset.”
Johnny leaned against the wall, crossing his arms. “She’s fine.”
“Is she?” Marla’s gaze was direct, probing. “Because she’s been ‘sick’ for three days. And then she comes over here for hours. And then she walks home looking like someone died.”
“She had a stomach bug. She came over to… I don’t know, get out of her house.”
“Right.” Marla didn’t look convinced. She took a step closer. Her voice dropped. “Look, I’m not stupid. I know you guys are… doing it.”
Johnny’s stomach tightened. He kept his face blank. “Doing what?”
“Oh my god, Johnny. Don’t. I saw you in the van at Christmas. I’ve seen the way she looks at you. I’m her best friend. She tells me things.”
“She tell you to come over here and interrogate me?”
“No.” Marla looked down at her boots, suddenly interested in the wet marks they were leaving on the mat. “She didn’t tell me to come at all. She’s been avoiding me since yesterday. That’s how I know it’s bad. When Paige avoids you, it means she’s scared.”
Johnny said nothing. He watched a droplet of meltwater slide from the toe of her boot onto the brown mat.
“Is she pregnant?” Marla whispered the word, like saying it too loud might make it true.
The air went out of the room. Johnny felt his pulse kick hard in his throat. He looked at Marla—really looked at her. She wasn’t gossiping. She wasn’t trying to be dramatic. Her eyes were wide with a genuine, fearful concern. She was thirteen, standing in his foyer, asking the most adult question she possibly could.
“No,” Johnny said, the word coming out rough. “She’s not.”
Marla’s whole body sagged with relief. She put a hand on the wall to steady herself. “Oh, thank god.”
“You can’t tell anyone, Marla. Not anyone. You can’t even act like you know.”
“I won’t. I swear.” She looked up at him, her eyes shining. “Is she okay? Really?”
“She’s… shaken up. But she’s okay. We’re okay.”
Marla nodded, chewing on her bottom lip. “She loves you, you know.”
Johnny felt the words from the phone call echo again, a second strike. “Yeah.”
“And you… you love her too, right?” It was a challenge, but a gentle one. A best friend checking the math.
He didn’t have the words. Not yet. So he just nodded, once. A tight, definitive movement of his head.
It seemed to be enough for Marla. She let out a long breath, her shoulders dropping. “Okay. Good.” She rewrapped her scarf around her neck. “I should go. My mom thinks I’m at the library.”
She turned to leave, then paused at the door. She looked back at him, her expression serious. “Take care of her, Johnny. She acts tough, but she’s not. Not really.”
“I know.”
Marla gave him a small, sad smile, then slipped out into the gathering dusk. Johnny closed the door behind her, the latch clicking into place with a sound of finality. He stood in the sudden silence of the house, Marla’s visit feeling like a dream. The private world had a witness, and the witness had just shown up on his doorstep to offer her blessing. It should have felt like an intrusion. Instead, it felt like an anchor. A confirmation that this thing with Paige was real enough to be seen, to be worried about, to be protected.
He went back to the kitchen and picked up the phone. He dialed her number again. This time, it rang four times before she picked up.
“Hello?” Her voice was cautious.
“It’s me again.”
“I know.” A pause. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Marla was just here.”
He heard her sharp intake of breath. “What? Why? What did she say?”
“She was worried about you. She guessed. About the… scare.”
“Oh, god.” Paige’s voice was a groan. “What did you tell her?”
“The truth. That it was negative. That she can’t tell anyone.”
Paige was silent for a long moment. “How did she take it?”
“She was relieved. She told me to take care of you.”
Another silence, thicker this time. When Paige spoke again, her voice was thick. “She’s a good friend.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry she came over. That’s my fault. I’ve been acting so weird around her.”
“Don’t be sorry.” Johnny ran a hand through his hair. “It’s okay. It’s… it’s better that she knows. The right parts, anyway.”
“Yeah.” Paige sniffled softly. He could picture her wiping her nose with the back of her hand. “I’m in bed. In my pajamas. They have penguins on them. It’s stupid.”
“It’s not stupid.”
“I feel really tired. Like I could sleep for a year.”
“Then sleep.”
“Will you stay on the phone? Until I fall asleep?”
The request was so small, so un-Paige-like, it cracked something open in his chest. “Yeah. Of course.”
He carried the cordless phone upstairs, lay back down on his bed, and held the receiver to his ear. He could hear the soft rustle of her sheets, the faint sound of her breathing. He stared at his ceiling. She stared at hers.
“Johnny?” Her voice was a sleepy murmur.
“Yeah?”
“I meant what I said.”
“I know.” He closed his eyes. The words were there, right behind his teeth. He pushed them out, a quiet exhale into the receiver. “I love you too.”
He heard her breath catch. A small, soft sound. Then a sigh, deep and satisfied. “Okay,” she whispered. “Good.”
Her breathing began to even out, growing slower, deeper. He listened to it, the rhythm of her falling asleep four blocks away. He didn’t hang up. He lay there in the darkening room, the phone warm against his ear, the sound of her sleep the only thing in the world. The scare was over. The secret had a keeper. And the words were out, hanging in the space between them, no longer wild animals but something tamer, something chosen. He listened until her breaths were long and steady, until he was sure she was deep under. Then, and only then, he pressed the button to end the call. The silence that followed was not empty. It was full of her.