just laughed and started picking clothes up off the bed, adding them to the pile. “I remember what our rooms looked like as teenagers. This isn’t any worse. Besides you know she’ll have a conniption when she gets home from school and finds out you’ve been through her stuff… just like we used to do.” The memories of their childhood together made Lily laugh. It was good to be back. “I can’t believe Georgie and Becs are ten already. Where did the time go? How did we become so old?”
“Jesus, I don’t know. It seems like yesterday I found out I was pregnant with the girls. I was in such a panic.” Charmaine looked up at Lily. “I don’t know how I would have survived without you, you know that don’t you?”
Lily averted her eyes, hoping Charmaine didn’t notice the color draining from her face. Stars popped in front of her vision. She sat down on the bed and folded one of Georgie’s shirts with her head as close to her knees as possible and tried to blink the stars away.
“Lily?”
Charmaine’s voice sounded far away. Lily took a deep breath and a long blink before looking up at her friend’s worried face. Blackness closed in on the edges for her vision. She blinked again and shook her head, trying desperately to clear it. She was not going to faint. Nausea rose up and she gave up the fight of trying to fool her friend and lay down on the bed, pulling her knees up to her chest.
“Lily! Are you all right?” Charmaine dropped the clothes in her hands and rushed over to Lily. She sat down gingerly next to her.
Her hand was cool on Lily’s hot skin.
“What’s happened? Are you sick?”
Lily managed a small groan before closing her eyes. She didn’t have the strength to go into details. Soon, she told herself, but first she needed to sleep.
*
Charmaine was still sitting next to her when she opened her eyes. She slowly sat up and looked at her friend. There was no more delaying. She had hoped she wouldn’t need to have this conversation for a few months yet, but from the look on her friend’s face, there was no use trying to get out of it.
“Are you all right?” Charmaine asked quietly.
She seemed nervous. A stab of remorse pierced Lily. She shouldn’t have made Charmaine worry. She should have told her when she called to tell her she was on her way.
“I’m…” The words stuck as a lump in her throat. What was she going to do? Panic threatened to overwhelm her again and when she tried telling her friend she was fine all that came out was a huge racking sob.
Charmaine wrapped her in her arms and rocked her like a baby. “It’s all right, it’s all right.” she murmured softly. She let her cry for a while, then, when Lily had finally got her sobs under control, Charmaine grabbed her hand and held it. “It’s okay, you can tell me anything,” she said, looking her in the eye.
Another deep breath. She could do this. She had to. She had to tell someone, and she knew she couldn’t tell her parents.
Not right now.
Not yet. Not after all these years.
Not after the lies she’d spun.
Not after the lies they told her.
Lily hung her head and shame washed over her. How could she have made such a mess out of her life? She was the top of her class in high school and had held the belief she could do anything she set her mind to. Her life in Toronto taught her differently. But she was unable to let go of her pride along the way and she had let her parents believe she was doing well. There was no way she could go home to them like this. Not when she came with absolutely nothing to show for all the years she’d been away. Well, nothing except for the little being she carried inside her.
“I’m pregnant,” she blurted.
Lily sat in her friend’s kitchen, sipping a cup of tea ‘to steady her nerves’ as Charmaine put it.
“What am I going to do, Char? I’ve got no job, no place to live and now I have a baby on its way.” An unexpected wave of protectiveness ran through Lily and she pressed her hand to her belly.
“You know you can stay here with Bradley and me for a while, just till you get on your feet. As for a job, there’s bound to be something around. Even with the economy how it is, there just aren’t that many people here. Surely there’s something. I’ll ask around when I’m in town tomorrow. I know Beth is looking for someone at the Cat Whiskers Café.” Charmaine paused to raise her mug to her lips, “Don’t worry, Lily, we’ll find you something.”
A small amount of pressure eased from her shoulders. At least she had somewhere to stay for a few days. Not that she expected Charmaine to cast her out, but it was nice to be invited. “Do you mind if I come with you to town? I’d better go see the doctor and I want to get some olives from the store, I’ve been craving them for days.”
Charmaine laughed, “Oh dear, you’re getting cravings already? It wasn’t until I was showing that I got mine. I always craved peanut butter and pickle ice cream when I was pregnant. Olives aren’t so bad.”
“Well, I was also hoping to buy some cooking chocolate as well so I can melt that and then dip the olives in it before I eat them.”
“You want to cover your olives in chocolate, and you didn’t know you were pregnant until this week? What kind of stuff have you been eating for that to be normal?”
Lily blushed, “Deep down, I knew. I just didn’t want to know. Look at me,” Lily spread her sweatshirt-clad arms wide, “what the hell am I going to do with a baby?” She had nothing to offer a tiny human. No job, no career, no home. She was going to be a horrible mother. She couldn’t even get her own life in order and now she was going to be responsible for another person. That’s what scared her most of all.
“Love it, honey, that’s all you can do.”
*
Lily replayed her friend’s words over and over in her mind on the drive into town the next day. Charmaine was right. All she could do was love her baby. And in a funny way, she already did. It seemed impossible to her to love something that didn’t entirely exist yet, at least not as a whole human, but the little group of multiplying cells growing in her belly already held her whole heart. And she’d do anything for it.
Finding a job so she could care for it was the first thing on her list. Then she’d work on finding a place to live.
Charmaine pulled up in front of the Cat Whiskers Café. There was a large ‘Help Wanted’ sign in the window.
The building had been recently painted and she could hear music pumping from the speakers when she got out of Charmaine’s minivan. This place sure brought back memories. She spent a whole lot of time here as she was growing up. It was always the place to be when she was a teenager. From the look of the clientele she could see through the windows, that much hadn’t changed, but it wasn’t just full of pimply faced kids anymore, it seemed that everyone from town had stopped in for lunch. She was sure she could even see Suzy Little
