“Do you need a bag?”
I shook my head. I tucked the EPT box into my purse.
Real Dream
Naelle
When I went home, I immediately went to the bathroom. I didn’t know if it was performance anxiety or just plain anxiety, but I just couldn’t do it. I put the stick on the counter and chugged two ginger ales, which tasted like ambrosia or unicorn tears…or maybe both.
A few minutes later, I was ready to take the test.
I put it back on the counter while I waited for the result, my mind a confused whirl. I didn’t know what I was even hoping for.
When the time was up, I looked at it.
The result was positive. I was having a baby.
I couldn’t process this, any of it. I knew that if I were responsible, I’d be making an appointment with a doctor to confirm my pregnancy and get…prenatal vitamins and some instructions or something. Was there some kind of parenting handbook?
I couldn’t do it alone. I needed to tell my parents…and maybe Emilio.
But I had an emotional overload for the day. I couldn’t do anything but wash my hands, put on my pajamas, and go to sleep.
Somehow, even though it should have been impossible with how many things I had on my mind, I fell asleep.
I was having the dream that I had every night when I closed my eyes. In it, Emilio was with me.
“Come back,” he told me.
“I can’t,” I told him. “I have to think of the baby.”
Dream Emilio reacted differently every other time.
He exploded out of his chair and came close to me before putting his warm hand on my stomach.
“You’re pregnant?”
“With your child, but we aren’t together anymore.”
Like a magic trick, he was holding my engagement ring in his hand. What a nice dream.
“We can be. Your child can have both parents if you just try to work with me.”
“Do you think we can?” I asked Dream Emilio. “I mean, my father literally hunts you for a living. How could this ever work?”
“You know that I take what I want.”
“Yes.”
“I want you, Naelle. Come with me. I promise that we’ll find a way to be together.”
I put my hand over his hand, which was still resting on the gentle curve of my stomach where our baby was growing.
I regretted the way that I had sent back the ring. At the time, I’d been so horrified that I was in love with a notorious drug lord that I couldn’t imagine raising a child with him.
But my time here in the cabin had changed my mind. I knew that he would be a good father. He might not be a good man. He was a murderer, who ran an organization full of criminals.
But he treated me like a princess, and I knew from the way that he treated his family that his blood meant everything to him. He would love our child just as much as he loved the rest of his family.