EDWARD HOSTS a bacchanal that Thursday to send Cali off. I’d been feeling a bit queasy all week, and that day I wake and am so nauseated, the very thought of coffee makes me nearly retch. It’s as though the tiny cells inside of me are asserting themselves, in case I’d thought I could forget them. I decide I’ll go to the party early and leave early as well; I don’t feel I can miss it. I’ve been texting with Gianluca—who’s been hot and cold with me this week, in addition to being decidedly pouty about the fact that Cali is leaving. I know I need to talk to him, but when and how to do this I don’t know. Once I know how he feels there will be no going back.

I realize I never pictured myself being pregnant. It wasn’t that I specifically didn’t want kids, but I always thought of them as a far-off abstract concept. And when I thought about kids, I thought about them as five-year-olds, old enough to run around with and teach to ski. But somehow I’d never really thought through what happens to a body when it’s invaded by a microscopic being siphoning resources from its mother to create itself inside of her. In addition to the gnawing churn of my stomach, my breasts ache, and I’m so tired I feel I could sleep for a thousand years.

My focus on my body had always been on what it could do outwardly: namely how fast I could hurtle it down a mountain, how sharply I could execute a turn, how close I could push it to the brink without destroying it. If I’d given any thought to how I would feel about being pregnant, I would have thought that I’d have hated it. But even though I feel physically awful, I marvel at the idea that the beginnings of life are stirring inside of me.