Free Eleven Weeks by Lauren K. McKellar Page B

bed, relaxing against the headboard. “The mum who said she’s not confident in your grades. The overachieving siblings.”
    “They’re fine.” I swallow.
    “Oh, come on. That must be hard shit to live up to.” Michael taps my arm.
    “Not really.” Lie.
    “How could it not be? Are you gonna be a doctor?” He edges closer till our legs are touching.
    “No.” My voice is small.
    “Did your mum apologise for that text about not graduating uni?” Michael’s voice is proportionately louder to my diminishing one. He seems to tower over me.
    “No.” Quieter than the last.
    “Do you have a steady boyfriend who’s about to propose?”
    Kapow!
    Boom!
    Boof!
    Owee!
    I am in a cartoon. No, I don’t have a boyfriend who’s about to propose. I have a baby whose fate I have to decide on. I have a guy I really like in my hotel room, who has finally said he has a crush on me but is about to go away on tour while I nurse a baby.
    Unless … I don’t.
    I think about Kate. Can I kill a human when a human my best friend loves is being murdered by a disease?
    Can I?
    “C’mon, Stace, answer me.” Michael bounces the bed a little, snapping my attention back to the present. “I can keep your secrets, you know.”
    That’s when I hear it. Kate’s bedroom door opening and shutting. The click of the pipes in the bathroom. The thuds of her footsteps as she walks back to bed.
    She can’t know I have Michael here. She doesn’t need reminding of Dave, and she sure as hell doesn’t need to know I’m not hooking up with some random dude on the beach when it was something she had been so adamant about.
    I whip around to face Michael. “Pretend to have sex with me.”
    His jaw drops, his brow furrowed. “What?”
    “I don’t want Kate to think you’re here, or that it’s some other guy I’m just … talking with.” I throw my hands up. “It’s complicated, but she needs to think I’m screwing someone. She was really keen on me making out with a random guy, having fun. Okay?”
    Michael is silent for a moment, worrying at his lip. “And why can’t she think I’m here?”
    “It’ll remind her of Dave.” And I don’t know that I can deal with talking about you being here with me. Not when I keep thinking about your lips.
    “Stacey, do you like me?” His intense brown eyes bore into mine and I’m naked. To my very soul.
    “I … you’re a good friend.” I nod, slowly.
    “That’s not what I mean, and you know it,” he hisses, pushing up the bed until he’s right in front of me. His face is all hard lines, his eyes glittering like stones.
    “Yes.” The word is an ant. It’s that tiny.
    “So why can’t we do something about it?” he yells, and I press my shaking finger to his lips. They’re soft, and big, and warm, and hell do I want him in this moment more than I ever have before.
    “You’re in a band … you’re going on tour,” I mumble, quickly jerking my hand back and picking at the threads on my dress. “And again, I don’t want to tell Kate about you because of Dave, and …” The words sound lame, even to me.
    “That’s wrong; you know that, right?” Michael’s eyes flash. “You’re so freaking embarrassed of me that you won’t tell your best friend that we’re—what? Friends?”
    “Michael …” I press my hand to his arm. What can I say? I want to be with you, but I’m pregnant, and I have a lot to deal with right now? I want to be with you, but I don’t think I can kill this baby and you can’t give your career a worthwhile shot if you have a girlfriend back home, let alone a pregnant one? “I just … I just want to give her some space to deal with this, and her dad, okay?”
    “And in the morning? What then?” His fierce eyes shine into mine, interrogating me.
    “I … I don’t know.”
    He shrugs my hand off his arm, turning his shoulders in on himself.
    We sit there in silence. I look out the window again. How can the world look so pretty when it’s really so