You have to tell her. Might as well get it over with right away.
A knock sounded at the door, and I wasted no time in opening it.
“Yo!” Cammy was on the other side, a bottle of wine in one hand and a bag of Thai food in the other. “Move over, mama needs a drink!”
She slid past me into the apartment, and I found myself wondering if my best friend would even talk to me once she found out the truth.
“OK,” she said as she put the bag and bottle on the counter before opening a drawer to take out a corkscrew. “What happened? You just got sick out of nowhere?”
She deftly sliced the foil wrapper off the bottle, then used the corkscrew to do the rest of the work. She turned, grabbing a couple of glasses. I watched without saying a word as she filled one, then the other, with red wine.
“Here,” she said, handing me one of the glasses.
I didn’t take it, my eyes lingering on it. I couldn’t drink, of course. Her standing there with the wine meant that I either had to tell her the truth or come up with some kind of lie right then and there.
“I can’t.”
She cocked her head to the side. “What’s wrong?” Realization flashed on Cammy’s face, and she set down the glass. “Oh! Are you on antibiotics or something? God, I got so wrapped up in my day that I didn’t think to ask if you could even drink it.” She tapped her forehead, shaking her head.
It was another chance to lie. It would’ve been easy, too. All I’d have to say was that the doctor told me that I was stressed, that I needed to take better care of myself and avoid stuff like alcohol.
However, I wasn’t going to do that. Instead, I sat back down on the couch and took a deep breath.
“It’s… I’m not sick.”
Sensing something was wrong, Cammy put down her own glass of wine and hurried over to sit next to me.
“What is it? You can’t drink, but you’re not sick? What are you, pregnant or something?”
There it was. I couldn’t help but laugh, shaking my head at the absurdity of it all.
It didn’t take long for Cammy to realize what was going on. Her eyes went wide as saucers, her mouth slowly opening.
“No. Noway. You’re kidding, right? You have to be kidding. There’s no way…”
She trailed off. It must’ve been the look on my face because she seemed to realize right away that I wasn’t messing around.
“You…you’repregnant?” After she said the words, she let out a scream so loud I worried my eardrums might pop. Then she threw her arms around me and pulled me into a tight hug. “Sade! This isinsane! You’re going to be a mom!”
“OK, OK! Kinda choking me here!”
She let go of me, looking me up and down as if making sure she hadn’t broken me.
“What happened?” she asked, total disbelief in her voice.
“Well, when a man and a woman love each other very much…” It was a bad joke, sure, but I knew I needed to inject some humor into an otherwise crazy and surreal situation.
“Funny, funny.” She opened her mouth to speak but seemed to think better of it. “OK, here’s what’s going to happen – we’re going to eat, because you’re eating for two now, and you’re going to tell me everything that went down, including how you ended up in bed with some guy without letting me know about it!”
Some guy. That was a hell of a way to refer to her dad. Granted, she had no idea that it was, in fact, her dad that we were talking about.
“It was at the masquerade ball. I was there and spotted this really good-looking guy from across the room. We started talking, then one thing led to another, then…you know the rest.”
She grabbed my arm. “Don’t eventhinkyou’re going to get away with just that. Who was he? Let’s start there.”
The moment of truth. Part of me wanted to tell her that theheshe was asking about was her dad. But as I sat there with her, looking right into her eyes, I knew without a shadow of a doubt there was no way in hell I could do it.
It would ruin everything. There was no way she’d want to be my friend after learning that I’d seduced her dad.