He’s not in my Circle of Sad, where we try to be honest when people ask questions like that. So I say:

“What? Yeah. Totally. All good.”

All those days of denying myself, of doing the right thing, all that torture—down the drain. So I take another drink, then another.

“This is what got us in trouble in the first place,” Micah says, running his finger along the edge of my lacy bra. He’s just teasing—he’s trying, you know?—but it isn’t funny. Trouble? There are no words to describe what happened in March, but some are better than others, and trouble isn’t one of them. Gutting, maybe. That would be a good one.

This is Micah, I remind myself. He loves you.

But in the elevator up here, when he was tapping his foot and talking about the waves he’d caught this morning, I realized I didn’t give a shit about the waves, and the foot tapping might make me commit a homicide, it really might.

And, look, I know he was right. About what I had to do back in March. The pills, who knew what they would have done to the acorn inside me? Before it happened, the counselor and I talked, and she said that a pregnancy is an acorn—not the tree, not yet—but it contains the possibility of a tree. Acorn. Perfect, right? She didn’t know about Yoko, but it was like she kind of did know, on a psychic level only the sisterhood operates on. And she said it was okay to do whatever I wanted. Did I want to do this? And I told her about the pills and we talked about damage to acorns exposed to high levels of opiates and about risks, but how it’s also possible the acorn would be fine. And I told her about all the trees I wanted someday, I really do, and am I a bad person if I do this? And she hugged me and she said no, but that this decision was mine.

I don’t know what makes you a woman, but I don’t think it’s getting your period or losing your virginity or having guys suddenly notice you and the harassment beginning, especially when you have hips like mine. I think it’s the moment when you get to decide something for yourself, something that will affect the rest of your life.

And this decision: It grew me up.