I Kept My Promise - #ModernLoveContest

Chapter 8

Did you know that you can get pregnant from sperm living in pre-cum? Because my catholic school never taught me that.

It was fine though, because I was in the later half of my cycle. I thought I was going to get my period the day he saw me.

I had gone to see my old college friend Becky for the first time in over a year on that Sunday afternoon, thinking my period would come save me in the middle of our reunion, praying for the awful pain of cramps to finally just make me feel a familiar kind of miserable instead of this intolerable unsureness about what had just happened.

My period has never been late. It's always been early.

The last time I saw her we went out to Mill No 5 in Lowell. She had a craft fair of her pottery and jewelry that I helped her pack up and unload into her studio. We shared a grilled cheese with tomato soup as well as some honey wine. She was the last person I saw before covid had closed everything up.

She set an alarm to come pick me up at 12:30pm from the bus station. I guess she had started falling asleep at 4am since her husband was out on a ship as a maritime engineer for four months, and she had been cooped up mostly alone. He was due to come home in a week. She had baggy boho sweats that were the same color maroon as her hair and her cami. She had clearly just rolled out of bed and was in search of some coffee from Dunks. I came in a new green bomber jacket that I had bought from the thrift store, a hummingbird button down with a matching green mask and earrings, a pencil skirt that almost made me look as skinny as I used to be. I felt like shit and I looked fantastic while doing it.

"I'm bisexual," she announced to me while driving and eating a ham and cheese crossaint breakfast sandwich.

"I thought you already knew that."

"No. I was biromantic. But... Yeah. TikTok really did me over. There just a few thirst traps... wow. And I told Matt and he wasn't really sure how to react. I mean, we're married, so that's not going to change, but I just wanted to let him know that... I also like women."

Girl, I could have told you that back in Spring 2014 when we went to that gay bar in New York with the Student Art Union and you kept dancing with all the pretty ladies until, like, 12am.

It's fine though. I respect the process.

She had just started to get back to throwing on the wheel in her studio a few months before. She showed me her inventory of octopus tentacle mugs. We played with her cat Maura who can speak fluent Human. Maura likes to play, be pet, held and properly cuddled. We went and got ice cream, but Becky forgot cash so some guy covered our bill.

"Five dollars? Just get the next person's tab next time."

"Thank you."

We spent too much time at Lowes looking at plants for her herb garden. She was so excited about the mint, basil, lavender, thyme and stealing succulent leftover clippings for replanting. I let her do whatever she wanted. I was happy to see her okay.

"My period's still not here," I said at the end of the day. We were waiting for our Asian food to get delivered before she drove me to the bus station.

She finally realized, "Did you have unprotected sex?"

Becky came from a hard core Protestant religious family and waited to have sex after she married her husband of 2 years.

"We did some sexual things beforehand," she admitted. "But we wanted to save that last part for the wedding."

When I came out to her as Ace she believed me. When I told her I might also like dating women, she was okay with it. When I told her I had sex, she was okay with it. She didn't even blink.

I know I have a lot of anger against religion, but I'm really okay with it as long as it makes you feel at peace with yourself and gives you a community to rely on. I don't like when it tells me I'm not allowed to be a part of it because I'm different.

I nodded my head.

"Oh shoot." She just hadn't realized that had happened. "Do you want to get Plan B?"

"I think I should."

"I think it just gives you your period sooner, right?" Not exactly, but at the time I didn't realize that. The pill will delay your egg dropping from your ovaries, but after that has already happened, it will make it harder for a fertilized egg to attach to your uterine wall and make a mucus on your cervix so sperm has less of a chance to make it in.

"When's your bus?"

"7:15." We had about 30 minutes to eat.

"What about that stop that starts with an A? It's a T?"

"Huh? Attleboro?"

"No."

"Um, Andover? Are you talking about Alewife on the Redline?"

"That's it."

"You meant 'T' like 'T-stop'."

"Yeah, we'll eat, pick up what you need at CVS, and I'll just drive you to the redline when we're ready."

God, she was being so casual about this, and at that very moment I probably already had Weirdo Marine sperm that had taken the challenge of swimming through precum after my one and only night of unprotected sex, willing itself to wriggle up through the acidity of my vagina, through the almost impentrible barrier of my cervix, because there's always that one guy who doesn't know when to fucking quit. The rest of the sperm is just absorbed and conquered by the awesome power of my immune system. Then that one idiot tadpole binded with my stupid-ass egg that should be on the second half of its leiutal cycle, but was probably somehow still very fertile because she was pretty sure she didn't want to be fertilized, but it had been a long time alone in my ovaries, so maybe she'd just try it once. And then before my egg even realized what was happening, that damn sperm would duplicate cells in a fast mad fury which would make itself into an equally strange and bizarre baby that would take over my life. I know this is how this works because I watched about a million youtube animations about the miracle of life before going to go see her.

I took a bite of the shumai. "Wow." And then I went for the fried shrimp sushi. The dumplings and udon were very delicious. None of my fortune cookies made sense.

"Maybe you want some nail polish to take off the edge?" She looked at some chapsticks as well and then ended up finding some chocolate covered pomegranates that we shared in the car on the way over.

"I'm kind of angry. Not at you," Becky clarified, "but that pill is probably 3 dollars tops to make, they made you pay 50 dollars for only one." We went for Plan-B One Step instead of the generic CVS brand, because maybe the extra $10 would make it more effective. "And then they packaged it up in that locked up box so you had to ask someone to get it for you, and you couldn't discreetly pay for it through self-checkout."

"Yeah, that's the pink tax." Apparently some states allow pharmacists to deny people the morning after pill if it's against their religious or moral beliefs. The lady at the front counter looked worried, but for the most part, didn't pass judgement.

We had to use a safety pin from a sewing kit in her glove compartment to puncture it open. They packaged one singular pill in this big 5 inch plastic box like it was some Holy Grail. As soon as that fucker was out, I took a swig of fizzy peach water and chucked it down my throat. "Thank you for being there for me."

"Awe."

"I mean it. Otherwise I would have had to go through this whole thing alone and it would have been miserable."

She drove me to Alewife and gave me one hug in the car and then another bear hug after she got out. I nearly picked her up she's so tall and skinny.

"Let me know that you get home safe."