papa don't preach

[starchilde_lost]

Rachel didn't think she'd ever been so happy to have the flu in her life. Because it was the flu, hitting her hard after a week - almost two - of teasing with exhaustion and intermittent nausea, worrying enough to have her heading out to a drugstore for a pregnancy test. A test that had failed spectacularly, according to the test she'd had done later at the clinic which told her, definitively, that she was not pregnant. Nope, not in the least, despite the evil colored stick she'd ended up with at home. If there were an actual manufacturer she could sue for emotional stress, she might have done it, even in this ghost version of New York. False positive her ass, more like false nightmare-inducing panic attack.

But here she was, a couple days later, curled up on her couch with a heating pad, a mug of chamomile-ginger-something tea, and a remote control, flipping across TV channels while working her way through a third box of Kleenex. The apartment was a mess, there were take-out boxes everywhere, her entire body felt like it was in revolt, but for the moment, she was glad for it.

Because there was no way in hell she was ready to have that conversation with her boyfriend. Not now, and not ever.