Lion and Lace [Tom Hiddleston]

Episode 13

I'm not good. Nothing is good. Four weeks. Fuck.

"I brought supplies," Rachel says when I open the door, and I see she has a shopping bag in each hand. "Cookies, chocolate, ice cream and wine. You sounded weird. You look weird, Becca. What's going on?"

"Nothing," I say as I close the door. She sets the bags down on the small table and opens the ice cream. "Good thinking, I don't have a freezer."

"Bec, please. What's-"

"I'm late."

"Huh? Oh. How- how late?"

"Four weeks. Yesterday."

"Becca!" She yells loud enough that I jump and shrink back a little from the ice cream, which she promptly hands to me while she paces.

"Have you done a test?"

"No. It has to be stress, or jetlag or something."

Rachel laughs. "Jetlag? Really?"

"Stress, then. I haven't been eating or sleeping properly."

"Becca, honey. You have to do a preg-"

"Don't say it, I swear to god Rach I will vomit on you."

"A test. I'm going to get you one, and you're going to do it. Now."

I shake my head violently and suddenly ice cream doesn't seem like such a great idea. Rachel has already picked up her bag and doesn't even see my protest, by the time I find my voice she's gone.

When she returns so quickly I imagine her doing a quick doorknock of the other rooms on my floor asking if by chance they have a pregnancy test in their bathroom and immediately burst out laughing.

"What's so funny?"

She hands me a paper pharmacy bag and I wonder if I can permanently hire her as my assistant for my personal life. She could track my periods for me so we wouldn't have this problem again.

"Nothing. Did you just sprint there and back?"

"Pretty much. Now go."

"I can't pee on demand, Rach!"

She sits down and takes the remaining ice cream and looks at me expectantly. "You can't have any more until you pee on that stick. I'll even read it for you."

I curse under my breath on the five steps to the bathroom and return a few minutes later to hand her the box.

"It's done, it's on the sink. I can't look, I know it's negative. It's just stress."

Rachel hands me the tub, which is now almost empty, and puts a hand on my shoulder. "You're rambling, honey. Breathe. You've got to wait three minutes."

The last time I bought one of these I was 17 and naive, and I still have a bit of a chuckle thinking about it.

Nathan and I had been together just over a year when we had sex for the first time, both of us virgins, and it was almost two months before we plucked up the courage to do it again. And then on our second foray into the wonderful world of sex, the condom broke. To Nathan's credit, he realised and stopped and managed to replace it with another and keep going; it was then I knew that he was a keeper. If he could keep an erection through a freak out about STDs and pregnancy, I wasn't letting him go.

Fast forward a whole four days, and my period is due. When it hasn't started by early afternoon he drives me out of town to a pharmacy where no one knows us and on the way home we stop at a McDonald's so I can pee on a stick.