We were heading down the shore the next day with a merry band of some of our closest friends to celebrate the Fourth of July holiday weekend.  I started to become suspicious of my own body a few days earlier.  I finally mentioned it to Toph as he prepared to head out for a run.

“I don’t want to make a big deal about this or anything because it could really be nothing, but I just wanted to say out loud that I’m five days late.”

We hadn’t been trying. We’d sort of just determined, in very casual conversation that may have happened during a commercial break of Must See TV, or between topics over dinner one night, that if it happened, it happened, and if it didn’t, well, then we’d just go right on living our 30-something independent lives and that would be fine for now.

He was filling a water bottle. I think he asked a few questions about the lateness and then we both treated it as a wait and see scenario.  He headed out for a run.

But I’d already decided that I couldn’t handle going to the shore with our friends for three days, wondering the whole time, feeling guilty for sipping beer and wine and pina coladas on the deck. I would run to the CVS to get to the bottom of this. I’d have an answer before his six miles were up.

I managed to endure the discomfort of buying a test and went directly to the upstairs bathroom.

I went about the whole process rather matter-of-factly, but I was shaking a little, and mostly expressionless.  I couldn’t sort through how I felt, or how I was supposed to be feeling.

The instructions say to allow two full minutes before examining the little window where your future is reflected, but I don’t know anyone who doesn’t look right away, and I did, too.  In an instant, that pink plus was seeping through. I set it down, though, and waited the two minutes as instructed, only to reconfirm the premature glimpse.

Suddenly I was just alone in the bathroom, with this knowledge, the rest of the house empty.  I left the test there and went downstairs to wait for Toph.

When he arrived, I let him cool down, stretch, have a drink. He finally headed up to the bathroom to shower and I sort of loitered in the hallway waiting for him to get acquainted with the surroundings.

“Uhhh, what’s going on in here?” he nervously called.  When I appeared, he was hovering over the test with the pink positive sign coming through the window clear as day.

We stood there in the bathroom staring at each other, our collective emotions flying around us like autumn leaves in a burst of breeze.  There were too many to be considered for any one to win out.  Toph couldn’t stop smiling. I almost immediately started crying.

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