"You think I should tell him."
"Tell him what?" Lenalee's words startled me, and it wasn't until I caught the curious look she was giving me that I realized I must have spoken my thoughts out loud.
I looked down at my lap; I had no choice now but to say it. After everything that had happened when I told her I was female, she really hated it when I kept things from her, and I knew she'd do everything she could to drag the truth out of me. So even if it felt like saying it aloud would make it true, I had to tell her what was going on. "The pregnancy test I took yesterday was positive."
Lenalee's wild eyed stare bore holes in the side of my head. I could tell that she was struggling to keep herself from squealing and making a scene in the middle of the mall. It felt like hours passed before she calmed down enough to speak. "Allen. Look at me."
That was something that I definitely did not want to do. When I finally managed to look up at her, our eyes locked, and the determined expression on her face made my heart race wildly. "You better not be thinking about aborting Kanda's baby."
Despite the randomness of the comment, I should have known that that would be her first concern; my best friend and my boyfriend were weirdly close. "Lena! You're way ahead of me there! I'll deal with deciding whether or not I'm keeping it after I know if I'm actually pregnant. Right now I'm just praying that it was a false positive."
She raised an eyebrow at me, and it was obvious from her expression that she knew exactly what it was that I was leaving out. "And how many of these 'false positives' have you had?"
Yep. She knew. It was terrifying how well she could read me. "... Five."
"Allen." The serious look Lenalee gave me scared me deeply. I was glad I was her friend and not one of her students. "Five positives isn't a fluke. Five positives means you're pregnant."
I groaned and buried my face in my hands. "Ugh. I know, I know. It's just too hard to process. I have an appointment at the health center tomorrow morning. Maybe if I hear it from a doctor, it'll click."
I found myself wrapped in an awkward sideways hug. Lenalee's arm around my shoulder both helped and made me feel worse. "Maybe it would help to talk about it. You've at least accepted it enough to be thinking about telling Kanda, so- ... It is Kanda's, right?"
Her grip on my shoulders had tightened with the abrupt question, but she relaxed when I nodded. "Phew. Good. Now, where was I? Oh, right. Would you walk me through it? When did it happen? When did you suspect that you might be pregnant? Are you experiencing any morning sickness yet?"
The way she stared so earnestly at me while she fired off questions told me that even though she had asked if I wanted to talk to her, 'no' was not an acceptable answer to that question. I sighed and fiddled with my empty smoothie cup, debating whether or not I actually wanted to tell her anything before I decided to just go ahead and get it over with. Lenalee was my best friend for a reason. "Well, I honestly have no idea when it happened. Kanda and I were practically inseparable through winter break, so it could have been any of a dozen different nights."
"Really? You couldn't have just said that it happened over break? You had to tell me how many times you two had sex?" Though her words were full of repulsion, her tone was joking. We both knew that when it came to my sex life, she would always want more details than I was comfortable giving. And that had always been a little disturbing; even if it did mean that she had absolutely no romantic interest in my boyfriend.
Playing along was easier than complaining, so I snorted and waved her off. "One: if you're going to ask questions that make me feel uncomfortable then I'm going to give answers that make you feel uncomfortable. And two: that was nowhere near how many times we had sex over break."
She smiled at me, but I couldn't bring myself to match it, so I sighed and kept talking, answering one of the other questions she had fired off earlier. "The morning sickness hits me every morning at nine o'clock on the dot. It has for about three weeks now. I thought it was just stress from my final semester. Until yesterday, when I realized I hadn't had my period in a while."
We sat there in uncomfortable silence for a moment before Lenalee was suddenly grabbing my elbow and pulling me from my seat. I protested the treatment, but I knew from experience that following her was the safest option; she knew how to hurt me if I didn't cooperate. "Where are you taking me, Lenalee?"
Her grip on my elbow tightened, but she actually answered the question. "You seem to think that you don't want your baby, so I'm going to prove that you're wrong."
I blinked. Her answer was very confusing. I had never said anything about not wanting the baby. In fact, I still had no clue whether I wanted it or not. Assuming, of course, that I actually was pregnant. But maybe that was what she was talking about. Maybe she thought me not wanting to accept my pregnancy was me not wanting a baby.
When we ended up standing outside a children's clothing store, I was even more confused than I already was. But when I found myself dragged inside and to the baby section, everything made sense. Lenalee was going to try to use the tiny little outfits to convince me that all I wanted out of life was to be a mother.
