Chapter 5

"You and my brother make with the mattress dancing and you still let him leave the country?" Emily said, freaking out at her best friend.

"I didn't 'let' him do anything. Well, obviously, I let him do certain things… But he'd planned to go to South America before we even saw each other again. He was going to go, so we… Okay, I was tired of being a virgin, and I like Jason, so…" Liz stared off, wistfully. Emily fumed a bit at her friend's words.

"You have been a virgin for 22 years! You passed up all the men who threw themselves at you in college, but my brother shows up out of nowhere and suddenly you're 'tired of being a virgin'? Does that sound weird to you, Elizabeth?" Liz stared at Emily and attempted to form a coherent response.

"Yeah, sure, when you put it like that, of course, it sounds… weird. But he caught me at a good moment. We were reminiscing, I felt sentimental, and your brother's hot. There was drinking, he's got those eyes, and he can kiss... championship kisser…" Emily made a gagging noise.

"Okay, we are delving into the realm of 'I don't want to know.'

"Em, you're the one who asked."

Emily threw her hands up. "No, I asked how you could make sweet, sweet love to my brother and then let him leave the country." Elizabeth thought a moment and then spoke. "You remember when we were younger, it wasn't even too long ago, and you used to tease me about crushing on Jason? Well, I did. But it was complicated, he had a girlfriend and was still such a... dork. And now he's all 'Jason Morgan, hot leather wearing, motorcycle driving stud'. It was a major turn on." Emily tried using her wiles on Liz, work the emotional angle.

"You're saying it was purely physical? You don't care about my brother?"

"I didn't say that."

"You just said, 'he's hot, we were drinking, leather, stud' stuff," Emily stopped, shaking her head, "Icky, icky, stop." Elizabeth rolled her eyes.

"What was I supposed to say, 'You have deflowered me, you must stay and marry me to redeem my virtue'? It's not the 1800's, Emily."

"You could have said… well, you could have said anything and he would've stayed."

"But how is that fair to him? It's like emotional blackmail."

Emily stood and started pacing in front of the couch. "Do you know how hard I worked to get him to remember you? Even just a little bit?" Elizabeth turned a little cold.

"All of your intensive reminding helped out when we got back to my place."

Emily stopped, looking at her best friend. Her first reaction was to reach over and give her two tight slaps. She quelled that thought. Emily was smarter than that, she knew that Elizabeth would rather start a fight than talk about her feelings. "Now, you're just picking a fight." Emily took a deep breath to rein in her emotions. "It may be deep down, and you may not be ready to deal with it yet, but you really do care about Jason. And despite everything he went through, he cares about you."

"But it was just sex," Liz was doing her best to bait Emily, evidenced by the next statement, "I mean, if we'd done it more than the four times then maybe there'd be an emotional thing."

Emily didn't take it, she knew better. "You can joke all you want, but sex means something to you. If it didn't, we wouldn't be having this conversation."

Elizabeth, seeming unnerved looked her friend square in the eyes.

"I don't want to talk about this anymore."

Emily knew it was time to back down, for now.

"I'm sorry, Liz, I just get hyper focused when it comes to Jason. I mean… I didn't want him to go in the first place…"

Elizabeth decided on a different tactic.

"What's going on with you and Nikolas? Do you have anything interesting to report on the romance front?"

Emily broke into a huge grin.

"Oh, I have interesting news. I have so much news I don't know whether to list it alphabetically, numerically, by level of importance…"

"Ok, just the headline please."

"Emily Quartermaine loses virginity to Cassadine prince, story continued on page 3."

Liz sat there with her mouth open for a second.

"You tart."

"Well, it started with him picking me up in the limo, dinner at Tavern on the Green, and back in the limo, and there were sweet nothings whispered, and that turned into sweet somethings."

"Come on Em, give me the skinny? Was it good? Did he have technique? Will there be a repeat performance."

Emily only blushed a little then her emotions bubbled over. "Oh, there will be a command performance."

Elizabeth didn't want to get too far into it, but... "I guess fun was had by all. And you know I'd tell you about my first time, but you know, the brother thing…"

Emily closed her eyes, shaking her head. "Yeah, I'm fine with not knowing. In fact, I pushed it a little too far, and I'm going to apologize for that. I'm really sorry."

Liz just laughed. The two woman continued their talk and plans for world domination far into the night.

About two months later…

"Oh, shit."

Elizabeth sat on the toilet seat staring at the last in what had turned out to be about a dozen pregnancy tests. Littered around her were many test boxes, First Response, EPT, Clear Blue Easy, various store brands, and their coinciding sticks and cups and little vials of blue dye.

It was clear by test twelve that Elizabeth was pregnant. It was actually clear by test three, but she'd freaked out some, had a panic and bought nine more.

Elizabeth dragged herself from the bathroom and called Emily.

"Come over, now, please."

"What is it?"

"Just come over now."

"Okay... I'm on my way."

Fifteen minutes later, Liz was leading Emily through the apartment to the bathroom. Once there, she just pushed the door open and gave Emily a clear view.

Emily looked perplexed.

"Is this a new hobby? You're collecting pregnancy tests? Sticks you've peed on?" Emily then noticed that they were all positive. Realization dawned and Emily's next statement was, "I could understand two, maybe three. But, 1- 2-" she counts the assembled tests, "12?"

Liz ran her fingers through her hair, taking a ragged breath.

"Well, I noticed I'd missed a couple periods and since the timing seemed to match, I took the first test. Which was positive. Then, I figured maybe it's wrong, it happens. So I bought a different brand. And that one was positive. So, I tried a different test of that brand to see if it was the test, but that one was positive. Before I knew it there were twelve, and I was going until one of them came back negative."

Emily noticed the shrill panic in Elizabeth's voice and put her hands on the woman's shoulders. "It is okay. We will handle this. Do not panic."

Liz was taking deep breaths, nodding.

"Okay, so what I want you to do is go start the tea kettle. I'll take care of this and we'll talk about castrating my brother."

About a week later, Emily finally got Jason on a phone. Liz had sworn her to secrecy. She was not to tell anyone, especially Jason. So, Emily decided it was okay as long as she didn't tell anyone but Jason. That was fair.

Jason finally came to the phone after an interminable amount of time.

"Hey Jase, how's it going?" she said sweetly. "Hi Emily, I'm good. What's up?" he sounded tired, but happy. It made her almost not want to tell him. Almost.

"Oh, you know, just checking in. My brother's in an underdeveloped country, just want to make sure he's still breathing." she said lightly, mostly trying to soothe herself. She was beginning to regret her decision.

"That's nice, but it's a lot to pay just to say hi."

"Well, you know, Quartermaines scoff at long distance charges. What's another two hundred dollar phone bill? So, how it's going?" She was seriously about to change her mind, it was too tense. And Jason was getting irritated...

"Fine. Seriously, Emily what's up?"

"Well... I'm good, doing good with Nikolas, going out a lot, you know… Mom and Dad are good, doing the doctor thing, the hospital's good… Elizabeth's pregnant… got my hair trimmed yesterday…" she trailed off, letting it sit in there a moment. Jason finally spoke.

"Emily, are you kidding? Because you know I can't tell."

"No, she's preggers, like twelve home pregnancy tests pregnant," she took a deep breath, "Jason, the rabbit died."

Silence on the line for a minute or more.

"Jason, you there? Jaaaaason… you still on the line, am I talking to myself?"

Meanwhile at the South American end of the conversation, Jason was doing his best impersonation of a fish, opening and closing his mouth soundlessly.

"Seriously, Jason, talk to me. Did you have a stroke or something. Snap out of it!" Well, she'd done it. She'd broke her promise to her friend and told her brother that said friend was pregnant with his baby. Okay, calm, calm, everything's fine.

"What am I supposed to say? You drop this on me and I'm supposed to have an answer?" The stone was set in his voice.

"Well, something. Are you going to ask if it's yours?"

Another pause. "Well, is it?"

"To the best of my knowledge, Liz has only ever had sex with you. Just you, no one else. Thanks by the way, for that mental image."

In her mind, she could see him shaking his head. "Emily. What does Liz want me to do?"

"Well, you're not supposed to know, so I'll just give you her number and you can call her…" she started.

"And that doesn't seem suspicious to you?"

"Well, you know, you guys... with the mattress thing... and then you left... and maybe you want to check up... say hi…" Jason sighed.

"Right after she finds out she's pregnant?"

Emily started grasping at straws. "Well, it could be coincidence. Pretend you don't know anything."

"Pretend I don't know she's pregnant with my baby?" "Stop giving me a hard time, Jason, I am trying to solve problems here and you're being a constipator."

"I'll call her in a couple weeks. Just to say hi. I won't bring up the baby unless she does."

"Okay, in the mean time, I'll be working on her to tell you."

"Fine," she could hear him take a deep breath over the phone, "I have to go now, Em. I'll call when I can."

"Bye Jase."