“Yeah, probably not,” I said with a small and completely fake laugh. “But I need a few things from there too.”

“Want to go tomorrow?” Michael asked.

I nodded as I put another heaping scoop of stew into my mouth.

That night, since I was feeling better, I was able to join the guys out by the bonfire. When the whiskey started getting poured, I wanted some—badly. But the lingering thought of possibly being pregnant kept me from taking a glass.

“Are you feeling sick again?” Rob asked when he saw that I wasn’t taking a drink.

“A little,” I lied. “But not too bad. I think I’ll just take it easy for another day or so, just to be safe.”

“Good idea,” Rob smiled. “Never hurts to go easy on the body.”

I sat and stared into the flames of the bonfire and was mesmerized by the popping embers as I got lost in my thoughts. I couldn’t be pregnant. I hadn’t even thought about having a baby, especially not anytime soon. I wasn’t ready. I felt like I had just finally found myself, and I needed time to focus on who it was that I wanted to be now that I had let go of the life that I had been trying to live for my mother. I needed time for myself, and time with Michael. I needed time to enjoy what we were becoming together and to think about what I wanted for a change, instead of what I didn’t want. I couldn’t be pregnant now. And to make matters even more complicated, how would I even know who the father was? After that erotic night in the garden, where I made love to all three of the guys; there was no way to tell who would have been the one to impregnate me.

At the store the next morning, it was a challenge to meander my way through the aisles and pretend like I was trying to choose between brands of tampons, while really sliding a pregnancy test in-between the things in my hands and getting the cashier to ring them up before the guys managed to catch a glimpse of things. When we got back to the cabin, I went to the bathroom to unpack and put away all of the toiletries that I had bought, carefully tucking the pregnancy test behind a pile of other things in the cabinet. I paused for a moment, thinking about taking the test right away, but then I walked back out and tried to take my mind off of it. That test was a last resort. I would give it a few more days, or at least until my nerves couldn’t stand it anymore. That was my plan anyway; it didn’t last long. By mid-afternoon, my nerves were shaking with anticipation and I found myself sporadically pacing the cabin for no reason. The guys were busy outside, building a greenhouse. It was Michael’s idea and both Adam and Rob got behind it. It would be a reminder of our precious, albeit turbulent time on the rooftop of the aquarium, and also a very useful and sustainable resource to use for growing our own food. Now was the perfect time for me to take the test. No one was around, and the guys wouldn’t even have to know anything about it.

When I got into the bathroom, I pulled the test out and sucked in a deep breath to mentally prepare myself. It was highly unlikely that I was actually pregnant. I rarely missed a birth control pill in the morning, so I was mostly covered. I tried to remember if I had taken the pill the day of the intimate garden interlude with the guys, and I was pretty sure that I had. I knew that it worked best when you made sure to take it every day at the same time, but still; I had to be mostly still protected against pregnancy. I had been under a lot of stress lately, which could totally explain why my period was late. That was a completely normal and reasonable explanation. But the more that I tried to talk myself into knowing that I wasn’t pregnant, the more panicked I became that I was.

“This is ridiculous,” I said to myself in a quiet, scolding voice as I looked at my worried face in the mirror. “Take the damn test and get an answer for god sake.”

Waiting the few minutes that it took for the results to appear was torture. I didn’t look at it at all. I brushed my teeth, washed my face, and then organized the soaps in the cabinet, just so I wouldn’t be tempted to look at it prematurely. When the time was up, I pushed all of my panic aside and flipped over the test defiantly to look at the result.

“What?” I whispered.

The result, which should have shown either one line or two, was nothing more than a wide blurry splotch in the tiny square window. What the hell did that mean? I pulled the box out of the trash and yanked the direction pamphlet from it. I skimmed over all of the useless information and disclaimers until I found the part about “reading results”.

According to the instructions, my test results were “inconclusive”.

The pamphlet listed over a dozen reasons about why the test results could be skewed; everything ranging from it being too early in a pregnancy, to a defective test. I should have gotten two. I threw all of it away and left the bathroom feeling even more frustrated than I had before. All I wanted was an answer. It was too soon to go back to the store without raising suspicion, so I would have to wait a few more days unless I wanted to deal with the reactions of the guys, which I definitely did not. In my haste and aggravation over the unclear test, I didn’t even think to cover it up in the trash can.

I walked out to join the guys outside and wanted to take my mind off the test. They had already started to build the structure of the greenhouse and it was really nice to see them all working together. As much as I was looking forward to being alone in the cabin with Michael, I was also going to really miss Adam and Rob, and the way that it felt when all three of them were acting like the best of friends, and like my own little protective pack of wolves. A small part of me wanted us all to stay together forever, making love when we wanted to, and laughing by the fireside every night. But a larger part of me wanted to start building a life with Michael; just Michael. There was something powerfully intimate about having one, single, other soul that your soul was drawn to. It was difficult to put into words, but it was something that I bet most people never found in their lifetimes. Even after all the shit I’d had to go through, I still considered myself to be luckier than most, especially now that my life was finally starting to begin over again in the way that I wanted it to. Well, at least I hoped that it would, assuming that I wasn’t pregnant.

That would put an immediate damper on things.

“Hey,” Michael smiled when he saw me walk out.

“Hey,” I smiled back. “This is incredible. You guys already have the frame started. How in the world did you get it up so fast?”

“Teamwork,” Rob grinned.

I laughed thinking about all of the arguing that probably happened while they were building it before I had walked out. At least at the moment, they were all smiling.

“Well it looks amazing,” I said. “I can’t wait to see it when it’s all done.”

“The fun part will be when you fill it with all of the plants and flowers that you want,” Adam said. “Any idea what kinds of things you want to put in it yet?”

I envisioned the inside of the greenhouse on the aquarium roof and then the garden on the Lineage campus, and immediately thought of something that I wanted to have.

“Can we put grass inside of it?” I asked.

“Grass, like real grass?” Adam said.

“Yeah, like a carpet of grass in the center of the greenhouse that we could lay down on.”

Michael snickered and I shot him a look.

“Not just for that,” I said as I rolled my eyes, keenly aware that he was thinking about lovemaking inside of the greenhouse again. “I mean, yeah, for that too. But also, I want to be able to just lay down and look at the stars or come inside of the greenhouse and read a book or think and have it feel super comfortable and natural.”

“I’m not entirely sure how to get living grass to stay alive inside of a greenhouse, but if plants can do it then I don’t see any reason why grass can’t do it. So yes, I will make sure that there is a living carpet of grass inside of this greenhouse for you,” Michael said with a confident smile.

The thought of that made me smile. Not just because I was excited about having the dream greenhouse built to enjoy, but also because I knew that Michael was always so willing to do whatever it was that would make me happy. Instead of enjoying that moment like I wanted to let myself be able to do, the worry of being pregnant immediately crawled into my mind again. If I was pregnant, all of this would be ruined.

“Everything okay?” Adam asked when he saw the look on my face change. “You still feeling okay?”

“Yeah, I feel fine,” I smiled as I pushed my anxiety back down again. “I’m just going to really miss you guys when you move out.”

That wasn’t a lie; I was really going to miss them when they left. It just wasn’t the worry that was at the forefront of my mind right this very minute.

“We won’t be far,” Adam said. “Trust me, we’ll still always be close enough to come running whenever you call.”

“Definitely,” Rob chimed in. “You can’t get rid of us that easily.”

I knew that the last thing he said was geared more toward Michael than it was toward me. But I felt like even he didn’t really want them to go too far; just far enough to remove the intimacy factor, but not far enough that we couldn’t all remain good friends.

The rest of the day was pleasant and uneventful for the most part. Until Michael found the test in the bathroom trash.

He didn’t say anything at first. But I could see the change in his demeanor while we were having dinner together. He was quieter than normal, and he watched me closely, as if he were trying to visually examine me for something. I don’t think the other two guys noticed. They were too busy talking about various things and were already on their second or third glass of whiskey. I didn’t even think about the fact that Michael might have seen the test. It was a stupid mistake, but my mind was so overwhelmed with things that it seemed like such a trivial thing at the time to remember.

“Coming?” Adam asked as he turned to look back at Michael and I sitting at the table, as he and Rob were getting ready to go outside and start up the bonfire again.

It was a beautiful night outside and this had become a nightly habit that I looked forward to. I got up from the table and started to walk toward the door, but Michael touched my hand and glanced at me with a look that told me he wanted to talk.

“We’ll be out in a few minutes,” he said.

Adam shrugged, and then he and Rob walked out the door together, putting an arm around each other’s shoulders as if they were best buddies, or at least drunken ones.

“We need to talk,” Michael said.

He held his hand out to me and we got up from the table together. Since I wasn’t expecting Michael to know about the test, it wasn’t at the forefront of my mind. And I started to worry about what it was that he needed to discuss with me. The look on his face was serious, and the afternoon had been so nice, that I knew something must have happened between the time of coming in from the greenhouse and dinner.

When he led me into the bathroom, and I saw the pregnancy test sitting on the edge of the sink instead of in the trash can where I had put it; anxiety began to wash over me.

“I can explain,” I started to say before I even had both feet inside of the door.

I knew that I could explain the reason for taking the test; a late period was a pretty black-and-white answer. But I didn’t have a good explanation for why the test result was skewed, and I certainly didn’t have a good reason for not telling him or the other guys about it in the first place. Which, of course, was the first question that Michael asked me about.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.