Echoing J.A.C.I.E. (All Time Low Fanfiction | Jack Barakat)

Chapter 5

I was in my room, figuring out my schedule and how things could slot together, when there was a knock on my open door.

Before I could even look up from my calendar, Hazel's voice piped up. "Hey, Jacie, my period's two weeks late."

I finished a note I was scribbling down and looked at her. "Oh. Yeah, mine's late too."

"What?" She frowned.

I shrugged casually, not seeing the urgency. "Yeah."

"Are we both pregnant?!"

"No, of course not," I scoffed with a roll of my eyes. "My period tends to be late any time I experience any kind of stress: getting married, moving in with Jack, the Europe tour, getting married again, and now, well, moving out here."

She stared at me, the worry in her face not relaxing away. "Well, that's you, not me."

"Have you been through a big life change like this before?" I gestured towards the room, referring to the fact that we were literally living in a foreign country.

"No."

"So..."

But she shook her head rapidly. "I don't like it, I don't trust it."

"Okay, fine," I sighed and rolled my chair away from my desk. "Pregnancy test party?"

"Please," she nodded gratefully.

So, I got up to get ready for us to leave the apartment and find a drugstore. It was something Hazel and I had done ever since we started sleeping with people. Whenever one of us feared that we might be pregnant, we'd both take a test to take the pressure of the other. The first time we did it, it was nice because we didn't know how to take one, so we figured it out together. After that, it stuck. Many freak out moments were avoided. And they were always negative.

It wasn't long before we were both rushing down the streets in sweatpants and hoodies to get to the drugstore before it closed. The sun had already set and the streetlights reflected brightly off the puddles on the roads. We were lucky that we had some small shops just a few streets away from us. They came in handy when we were missing ingredients... or quickly needed to buy some pregnancy tests...

"This feels like some melodramatic soap opera," Hazel mumbled as we entered the small pharmacy.

I just let my eyes scan over the aisles with an assortment of medicine and beauty products. "Okay, where would pregnancy tests hide in this place?"

"No idea..." she shook her head as we started down one of them.

"Ah, over there!" I pointed to a section I spotted in the back. "Next to the condoms. It's like they're keeping each other company."

"Oh, shut up."

"What! They make quite the quaint couple," I giggled at my own joke.

We made our way to the aisle, where a colourful assortment of pregnancy tests greeted us. There were so many different kinds and different brands. It was hard to keep up with the different selling points. We didn't need early response tests anymore... but there were so many other options to consider.

"Should we just buy one of each? Create a control group?" Hazel commented with a laugh.

"I don't think that's necessary," I chuckled back, reaching out for a simple box of test strips.

We didn't need the whole digital and rapid results bullshit. This wasn't our first rodeo. The strips were always more than good enough. And they came in a box with multiple, so we'd have a few more left for future incidents if needed.