Looking between two of my closest friends, I wait for them to react to the bomb I just dropped on them, my heart racing. I hadn’t planned on telling them tonight that I’m pregnant; I wanted to wait and give them the news in some cute way—maybe with a card that said they were being invited to the Cool Aunts Club or a T-shirt saying something along those lines. But over the course of dinner, they’ve made comments about me not eating or drinking. Though I did eat, just not as much as I normally would have. And I haven’t had any alcohol, for obvious reasons, which wasn’t exactly a big deal until they invited me to go out after dinner to get drinks somewhere else.

The moment I turned down the invite, I could see they were gearing up to interrogate me, and it wouldn’t be long before I was spilling because I’ve never been good at keeping anything from them. Of course, my being pregnant isn’t a surprise to Molly, who is sitting next to me with her hand wrapped around mine. She was there when I bought the first pregnancy test, was the person who went to the store to buy more after that one came back positive and was the one who held me when I fell to my bathroom floor in a crying heap. But it’s a huge surprise to Georgia and Amelia, who both look stunned.

“I don’t even know what to say,” Amelia whispers, her hand holding her wine frozen in midair a couple of inches from her mouth.

“Are you keeping it?” Georgia asks, and Molly gasps while I instinctively cover my stomach with my hand. “What?” She looks around the table at each of us, then rolls her eyes. “It’s not too late to change your mind about keeping it.”

“Of course, she’s keeping it,” Molly answers for me. “Why would she tell you she’s pregnant if she wasn’t keeping the baby?”

“I don’t know.” Georgia shrugs, focusing on me. “You don’t want to be with Matthew anymore. A kid kind of makes it impossible to cut ties with him.”

“Women raise kids alone all the time,” Amelia says quietly.

“Except I’m not going to be raising this kid alone.” I hope that’s not a lie. I don’t think it is. Dayton did tell the doctor that he’s the dad, and he has been wildly attentive and sweet—like bringing me dinner last night and showing up out of the blue this morning with a bagel and decaf iced coffee. I feel like we’re becoming friends, although some of my thoughts about him are anything but platonic. “And the baby isn’t Matthew’s.”

Amelia’s eyes widen. “The baby isn’t Matthew’s?”

“Who’s the dad, then?” Georgia asks at the same time.