Michelle returned home after another week, but alone. Josh was working overtime on his movie and didn't see the point of coming back to New York only to leave again in another couple of weeks.
"Now you know how I felt when Orli was filming," Jenn commented over the telephone while munching a mint Oreo.
Michelle sighed. "Did I ever not know how you felt?" Jenn couldn't decide if her tone was dejected or teasing, or perhaps a little of both.
"True," Jenn reflected, finishing her Oreo and reaching for another. "Why don't you come on over? We'll have some of that girl talk our husbands love so much." She sneered at Orli, who had just walked into the room and pulled a face at the mere words. He subtly worked the cookies away from their spot on the end table beside Jenn, who, not noticing, didn't even blink.
Michelle's voice brightened. "Really?"
"Yeah!" Jenn declared. "That's what I'm here for, your entertainment!"
Michelle snickered. "I think you do a little more than just entertain me."
"Yeah, well," Jenn said, faking modesty. "Come on over anytime."
"How about in a few minutes?" Michelle suggested. "I have to eat something for lunch."
Jenn grinned, even though she knew Michelle couldn't see her. "Sounds perfect."
"What sounds perfect, me coming over or lunch?" Michelle questioned amusedly, knowing full well about Jenn's wild cravings for food, especially now at the end of her pregnancy.
"Yes," Jenn answered, a trick she had picked up from Michelle herself.
"Bye, Jen!" Michelle laughed, raising her voice in false irritation. "I'll be over in a few."
"See you then!" Jenn hung up and reached for her Oreos. "Hey," she yelled upon discovering their absence. "Orlando Bloom, GET BACK HERE WITH MY COOKIES!" She sprinted off to find him as, the next block over, Michelle calmly spread mayonnaise on a piece of bread; as Orli ran from Jenn, unable to contain his laughter, Michelle gazed around her empty kitchen with a smile as she thought of the news she couldn't wait to share with Jenn.

Jenn expected Michelle to show up looking lonely and in desperate need of company, as she herself had shown up at Josh and Michelle's doorstep so many times before, but Michelle was absolutely glowing. Her skin was faintly tan, presumably from spending so much time outdoors with Josh, filming; her gleaming brown hair was illuminated with natural red highlights. In short, she looked great. Rumor held that she was a photographer on the set, though she hadn't mentioned it to Jenn and Orli, and obviously wasn't a main photographer, as she'd left in the middle of filming. Michelle walked inside without waiting for an invite and tossed her car keys on the end table by the door. "Jenn!" she exclaimed, and gave her a big hug.
Orli came up behind Jen. "Michelle!" he cried, and embraced her warmly. There was a faint sound of crinkling plastic as his body pressed briefly against hers.
Michelle pulled back, frowning. "Why is there a package of- something- stuffed under your shirt?"
Orli winced almost imperceptibly, while Jenn yelled, "So that's where you hid them, you… you-"
Orli placed a hand firmly over Jenn's mouth. "Here you go, Michelle," he said, tossing her the package. A bewildered Michelle caught it, looked at the package, and popped the very last mint Oreo in her mouth. "Fanks," she answered, voice garbled. Swallowing, she added, "Do you have some milk?"
Jenn stared on in absolute horror.

Five minutes later, Jenn plopped herself behind the wheel of her Mustang as Michelle slid into the passenger's seat, on their way to the grocery store to buy some more mint Oreos. "So, Michelle…" she started, not knowing exactly how to begin, not knowing exactly what she was trying to say.
Michelle waited. "Yes?" she prompted when she realized Jenn wasn't about to say anything else.
"I don't quite know how to say this…" Jenn fumbled.
Michelle glanced over, eyebrows drawn together. "Jenn, is there a problem?"
Jenn shifted into reverse and slowly backed the car out of the driveway. "I don't know, you look so… so happy, and I thought you'd be more upset about Josh being out and you being on your own for a few weeks. I know that's how I felt when Orli was always away, and it's worse for you since Josh is across the country and can't even come home to dinner."
Michelle took a deep breath. "Do you really want to know?"
Jenn fought off the urge to sneer and bit back a sarcastic remark, sensing that neither was appropriate for the moment. "Of course!"
Michelle stared steadily out the side window. "After the car wreck, when I was still in the hospital, something weird happened."
"What?" Jenn interrupted quickly.
Michelle gave her a look. "I'm getting to it! Anyway, they ran a few tests on me, and… I had a miscarriage."
"That's why you're happy?" Jenn exclaimed in disbelief. "That's why you're happy?"
Michelle, frowning, put a finger to her lips, indicating she'd appreciate silence, and Jenn, thinking about it, realized just what was so good about Michelle's miscarriage. Her eyes widened.
"I had to have some minor surgery to complete the miscarriage, which is why I was in the hospital for an entire week, but Josh asked everyone not to tell you just yet. To be honest, I was beginning to realize I was pregnant right before the accident, but I hadn't told even Josh yet. I didn't want to get his hopes up for what could be no reason. It was the same feeling when I miscarried, and why we didn't want you to hear about it yet, especially not from some strange doctor or nurse. We wanted to know what would happen next before we got all excited."
"And?" Jenn prompted, feeling excitement building within her even though this was her friend's news and not hers.
"And… and… maybe I'm pregnant again?" Michelle sounded unsure.
Jenn reached over to give her a hug. "Michelle, that's so great!"
Michelle didn't return the hug; instead, she tensed up. "Jenn?" she asked, voice strained.
"Yes?"
"You might want to drive right now, and hug me in the parking lot or something," Michelle suggested.
"Ah," Jenn muttered, and steered the car back over to its proper lane. "Right. Sorry about that."
"But listen," Michelle continued, returning to the previous topic. "You cannot tell anyone about this yet. Not until I know for sure. Not Orli, and especially not Josh."
Jenn pulled into the parking lot and stopped to give Michelle a wide-eyed, disbelieving stare. "You haven't told Josh?"
Michelle held her gaze, her voice steady. "Not until I know for sure," she repeated. "I know how badly he wants kids, and I don't want him to get all hopeful if this is a false alarm. Besides, he has enough to think about right now." She shrugged. "Who ever knows, these days. I'm just stressed out, as likely as not."
Jenn smiled, a small smile, no teeth involved, afraid to feel happy just yet. "I'm still glad for you. Can I tell Orli about the miscarriage, at least? He'll probably be happier than I am."
Michelle nodded. "Just not that I might be pregnant again. I don't want to hope for too much."
Jenn nodded also, and pulled into a parking space. There, she gave Michelle the big hug she'd tried to give her in the middle of the road, and this time, Michelle returned it.
The heat was unusually formidable for early June. Michelle was clad in a form-fitting, bright pink halter and short, dark denim shorts with flip-flops. She'd pulled her hair up, but the loose tendrils clung to the back of her neck, sweaty in the abnormally high temperatures. Jenn's dark green, oversized tee-shirt felt plastered to her back; her fuzzy white slippers, which she wore everywhere these days, since her feet occasionally swelled up without warning, had definitely been a mistake for going out, she decided. Her long, reddish brown hair seemed too heavy to be fully dry, weighted down as it was with moisture, and her tan skin felt as though it were on fire. Entering the air-conditioned store was a relief.
"What do you mean, there are no more mint Oreos?" Jenn half-yelled at a sales associate down the cookie aisle. Michelle covered her face with her hands.
"I'm sorry," Jenn apologized moments later. "It's these raging hormones; you know how that goes, huh?"
The sales associate, whose nametag read "John," muttered his way through "No, not exactly," and went to see if there were any mint Oreos in storage, probably glad for an excuse to escape from the two women and recover some dignity.
He returned moments later, arms weighted down with mint Oreos, and handed one to Jenn before turning to stack the rest on the shelf. Michelle rushed to help him. Jenn stopped her, declaring, "We'll take them all."
"Jenn," Michelle tried to reason, "this poor man must have twenty packages of Oreos."
"So?" Jenn shrugged, then paused to consider. "Well, anyway," she decided, "we'll take five packs." John handed them over with a smile, barely concealing an undignified snort. "That just made my day," he told her, unable to resist laughter once he'd opened his mouth.
Michelle grinned maliciously, but Jenn clamped a hand over her mouth before she could open it, and went off to pay for the Oreos.

"Orli?" Jenn asked tentatively two weeks later, lying on the couch in pain, overheated despite the hurricane fan that perched on top of the coffee table right in front of her, sending constant blasts of cold air into her sweaty face. "I'm not feeling so- oooooh," she groaned as another spasm of pain shot through her.
Orli looked alarmed. "Do you think maybe this is it?"

Jenn rolled around, clutching her stomach in mortal agony. "Maybe."

Orli seized the suitcase he'd had sitting by the door for weeks ("Orli, I'm not due for almost two months!") and rushed out to the car. Jenn hobbled after him, breathing heavily.
"Orli," she muttered. Her voice barely registered and came out in a dry whisper. "Orli, what if it's just a false alarm? Most first babies are usually late, not early."
Despite his efforts to retain control, Orli looked panicked. "What if it's not?"
And then Jenn couldn't argue, though not sure she wanted to anyway. She laid down across the backseat of Orli's four-door car and fought off pain as he rushed through traffic.
"I think maybe yelling at officers is not a good idea, Orli," Jenn murmured twenty minutes later, after Orli had been pulled over for speeding. He'd been going roughly fifteen miles over the forty-five mile per hour speed limit, and had insisted that his wife was in labor and he needed to reach the hospital when the officer coldly informed him of this. Never mind that she might not be. None of the pregnancy books Jenn had read offered advice on distinguishing false alarms from genuine labor.
The officer was not impressed by Orli's story, and said that if he killed his wife through his "reckless driving," being in labor wouldn't matter so much anymore, now would it?
Orli had lost it and started yelling at him, demanding to know whether he had a wife and had ever had to drive her through rush-hour traffic so that her baby could be properly brought into the world and thus given a better chance for survival. Jenn, in her half-delirious state, found this speech very cute and touching, but the officer had simply asked for Orli's driver's license and written him a ticket, whereupon he'd wished Jenn, curled up and sweating in the backseat, the best of luck with her new baby (Jenn didn't bother to tell him there would be more than one). If the man hadn't walked away, he would have heard Orli swearing heatedly at him, and would probably have ended up writing yet another ticket, for being disrespectful to a cop or whatever.

"I'm sorry, Orli," Jenn apologized four hours later. "It felt real."
Orli waved a hand at her dismissively. "Don't worry about it. It's what I'm here for."
"No," Jenn insisted. "If I could tell the difference between false alarms and real labor, I would have saved you a crazy drive to the hospital and a ticket."
Orli shrugged. "I think I can afford a hundred and fifty dollars. Our babies are worth it." Hi demeanor changed from detached to fatherly. "I want these babies to have the best." He leaned close to Jenn's huge stomach. "Do you hear me in there?" he called. "You're going to have the best of everything. Even if that means a dozen unnecessary trips to take your mommy to the hospital just in case you're ready to be born. Even if I get two dozen speeding tickets for those dozen trips. You will have the best! And nothing less than that!"
Jenn, lying on the couch as before, laughed and pushed him gently away.

"So why exactly did Josh decide to pick up filming again?" Jenn asked Michelle over lunch the next day. Michelle had listened to Jenn's story of the false alarm from the previous night, and Jenn had taken her time telling it. Michelle was a very good audience, laughing during the right parts and gasping or commenting knowledgably at all the appropriate moments. Jenn was tired of talking and ready to be an appreciative audience herself.
Michelle shrugged and rolled her eyes, indication of what she considered her husband's fathomless stupidity. "His passion is acting; he's not in it for the fame," she started, sounding as though she were quoting. "He doesn't like the idea of being famous or thought of as a teen icon, but he doesn't want to let what other people think of him get in the way of his doing what he loves." With a dramatic sigh, she continued, "It doesn't matter to him if all these crazy people he's never met are wild about him, and he doesn't care if his acting means that crazy teenage girls who've never met him in their lives will write crazy delusional stories about how they're married to him and have kids with him, including gory details about the sex…"
"I get it, Michelle," Jenn interrupted.
Michelle stopped abruptly. "Sorry. It sort of reminds me of us before all of this happened."
"All of what happened?" Jenn questioned, not understanding.
Michelle waved her hand in the air, taking in their expensive clothes and brand name purses, as well as the large, genuine diamond necklace that glittered around Jenn's neck, a long-ago birthday present that Josh, Orli and Michelle had all pooled their money to buy. "All of… this. The money, the fame. Remember when we were just crazy kids and loved to imagine that we'd someday be married to celebrities, and never dared to hope that someday we'd be celebrities, in our own unique sense, when we just loved to write and sing and did it all for fun and never expected anything more out of it than the sheer pleasure and passion we got out of doing it?"
Jenn was impressed. "That was quite a speech." Her look changed to one of surprise. "You're pretty deep and philosophical today. What's gotten into you?"
Michelle shrugged. "Crazy hormones."
"Crazy hormones," Jenn repeated. "Is it that time of the month?"
Michelle raised her eyebrows. "You could just ask if I have my period," she responded, emphasizing the word, which tended to make Jenn as uncomfortable as if Michelle had informed her of the doings of her last trip to the restroom.
"All right then," Jenn began, determined. "So do you?"
"Do I what?" Michelle asked, eyes widening, the picture of innocence.
Jenn glared. "Do you have your period?" she asked, speaking loudly to prove she wasn't afraid of the word. The elderly woman at the next table gave her a queer look and hustled her grandson away.
"No." Michelle answered Jenn's question rather matter-of-factly.
"Then what's up with the wild hormones?" Jenn demanded, confused. Her eyes glazed over as she thought about it. "You don't… then… what…"
Michelle looked at her, a frown battling a smile for control of her mouth. "I went to the doctor's yesterday," she began.
Jenn looked up in alarm. "Is something wrong?"
Michelle stared at her. The frown won out over the smile. "Jen…."
"Yes?"
"I worry about you sometimes. I can tell you know exactly what I'm talking about. Why must you be so difficult?"
"You said you went to the doctor! What else was I supposed to think?"
Michelle rolled her eyes Heavenward. "Dear God," she intoned. Jenn wondered how she managed to make her tone melodramatic and reverent at the same time. "Why didst thou smite me with this thy…"
Jenn cut her off with, "Oh! I've got it!"
Michelle looked at her expectantly. "Go for it."
"You've finally gotten sick, for the first time all year."
Michelle sneered. "That's part of it."
Jenn relented with a smile. "So you really are pregnant." It was not a question.
Michelle's smile lit up the whole room. "Yeah. I am."
"Have fun with that morning sickness thing!" Jenn cried.
Michelle tilted her head to the left. "You don't seem all that surprised."
Jenn, who was sitting directly opposite Michelle, across the table, tilted her own head to the right, mirroring Michelle in Jenn's own form of mockery. "I think I knew from the day you told me you might be."
"I figured it was too good to be true, after all this time," Michelle admitted. "Hopefully this one will work out." Her face took on a dreamy, wistful expression. "I wonder if our last child would have been a boy or a girl."
Jenn reached across the table and grabbed her wrist. "Never start thinking like that," she emphasized. "You have to live in the present."
Michelle looked shocked. "Who's being all philosophical now?"