Hybrid

Chapter 9

It's raining, which means it's the best and worst day to go to the mall. There's nothing else to do outside, so shopping is the perfect activity. On the other hand, everybody else thinks shopping is the perfect activity too.

Mara and I have difficulty finding a parking spot, so we have to run though the parking lot in the pouring rain. By the time we get through the front doors, we look like we just jumped in the middle of the lake. "Coffee first," Mara says, immediately heading off toward the food court. I follow her.

The line for Starbucks is long, but we wait anyways. We finally order our drinks after ten minutes, and sit down at the first open table we see with our drinks in our hands.

"So, there's a very high possibility that I'm pregnant right now," I say casually. Mara's eyes widen and she starts choking on her drink. She takes another sip, and I watch as she swallows and gives it a couple sentence to all go down her throat. I start laughing once it's clear that she's okay, and so does she.

"Did you say you're probably pregnant?" she clarifies once our laughter had calmed down. I nod. "How?"

I repeat to her what Max has said to me last night, trying not to make it totally TMI. Mara looks at me, her jaw seeming to drop more and more as I talk.

"So you have to be pregnant then. There's no way you can't be," she states. "I wish it was late enough where you could take a pregnancy test so we could figure out."

"Mara!" I shriek. Hearing her talk about me taking a pregnancy test sounded like a foreign language in my ears. I think because it's still so early, and the prospect of me being pregnant just sounds like a joke. If anyone would have told me a week ago that I was probably pregnant, I would have laughed in their face and probably pissed my pants from laughing so hard. Even after a few days, sometimes it still seems unbelievable that I even have my mate. The thought of me being pregnant and taking a pregnancy test is laughable, even though there's practically no doubt in my mind that I am.

"What? I'm serious," Mara defends, pausing to take a sip of her drink. "I wish there was a way to tell so early on."

"I don't think it's a matter of questioning if I am or not," I say, feeling my cheeks heat up. They're hot enough to the point where I know the blush I put on this morning isn't going to cover it up.

Mara raises an eyebrow at me. "What do you mean? How many times did you guys do it without protection?"

I look away. "We've, um, never actually used protection," I mumble. I struggle to meet Mara's gaze and when I finally do, she's smirking at me.

"So you're pregnant."

"I mean, if I wasn't already pregnant after the first night, than I definitely am after last night," I say. It wasn't necessary to elaborate that much, but I kind of want to talk about it with her. It's so awkward to just randomly bring it up though, so I'm going to take whatever I can.

Mara laughs when I say this. "Did you go back to his house?" I shake my head. She stops laughing and looks at me with a horrified expression. "You did it at your house?" she all but whispers. I shake my head again. She looks taken aback and completely lost. "Then where the hell did you two go?" she hisses.

"Um. The woods?"

It comes it as a question and I totally don't mean for it to.

"WHAT!" Mara yells, causing a ton of people to look in our direction. I shush her immediately. The entire mall doesn't need to hear about my newly started sex life. "Was it even comfortable?"

"I mean, it wasn't horrible. It was hot, though," I say quietly, hoping she'll catch on and not yell out her response.

"Weren't you worried that someone would see you?" Mara asks quietly, seeming to understand that anything but quiet for this conversation is basically against the law.

"Not exactly," I blush, feeling the heat rise to my cheeks. I look down to try and conceal it, but Mara already did.

"Oh don't look embarrassed," she grins. "I'm sure when I meet my mate I'll be similar." I roll my eyes and take a sip of my drink.

"Come on," I say, standing up. "I wanna go shopping." Mara picks up her drink and follows me out of the crowded Starbucks.

"Where too first?" she asks.

"You know, I'm really in the mood for a whole new wardrobe so we should just start here and do a full lap. Go to any store we want," I say.

"What a coincidence, I want a new wardrobe too," Mara laughs.

"Great minds think alike," I say, going into Charlotte Russe.

Looking around, the signs on top of the circle racks say an additional forty percent of clearance. I go to the first rack and start looking through the leftover sweaters from the winter. Every single one of them is priced for under ten dollars.

"Mara!" I call, waving her over. "Everything on clearance is going to be dirt cheap!"

"That's perfect! I hope your wallet is able to handle this!"

An hour later we both walk out with two big bags a piece, and our wallets only a hundred dollars short. "That was a fucking bargain! I feel like I'm stealing!" Mara laughs.

"Not our fault," I respond as we start walking again. I think about bringing our bags out to the car, but I can still hear the rain pouring down on the roof of the mall. No way am I going out in that until we leave.

"American Eagle!" Mara points out, and we quickly rush in. Mara pulls two things off the rack and folds them over her arm. "This is definitely going to put a dent in my wallet."

"Oh definitely," I say, pulling a white dress off the rack and examining it. I set it over my arm and keep looking. I have a pile within five minutes, and I'm only half way through the store.

"I think I need to get a room started. Then I can get rid of these bags too," I tell Mara.

"Me too," she says. Her pile is as big as mine.

We out our stuff in fitting rooms with the help of an employee, and then we keep looking.

Four hundred dollars later (four hundred and fifty for Mara), we walk out with two more bags. "We need to find somewhere to put our bags," Mara groans. She walks over to a bench and sets her stuff down. "The weight is killing me."

"Maybe Lena is working today. We could see if she would let us leave our stuff behind the counter," I suggest. Lena's a girl from school we're friends with. She works at Hollister, and I'm hoping it's not a problem if we keep our things there.

"That's a good idea!" Mara gasps. She picks her bags up from the bench and we walk the distance to Hollister, skipping over a bunch of stores we want to go to. We'll backtrack after we drop our bags off.

Lena is working, thank the moon goddess. She bursts out laughing when she sees our bags. "Charlotte Russe got you guys too, I see," she grins.

"For less than a hundred," I point out.

"Oh not bad," Lena says. "I think mine was seventy for, like, fifteen things."

"Not bad," I mock. "We were wondering if we could keep our bags with you. We're not even close to being done."

"Of course," Lena says. We pass our bags over the counter and she sets them on the floor. "I get off in," she looks at the time in the register, "an hour and a half. I'm assuming you guys will still be shopping, so please tell me where you are."

"Sounds good. Have fun," Mara laughs. The two of us head back out and go back the way we came.

"Are you going to tell her about Max?" Mara asks me quietly.

"Probably," I laugh.

"Like, everything? Or just that you met your mate?"

"No idea, I'll just go along with whatever she says," I say, but there's suddenly a pit in my stomach as I remember that I'm not even telling Mara the full story. She knows about Max and I, but she doesn't know what we are. I don't know what to tell her though. I don't think I can just come out and say "yeah I'm also half vampire and so is my mate". That conversation would not go well. We've always been weary of vampires even though we'd never come across one. Mara and I, along with everyone else in the pack, have been lectured and taught about them since we started school. They're not supposed to be good news.

Yet somehow, I haven't seen anything wrong with them.