Baby on Board

16

"I hate being pregnant," I grumbled, feeling the tears stinging my eyes. 

"I'm sure it's not that bad," Sophie stupidly said. I could hear the humour in her voice but until she was going through all of this, so couldn't pass judgement on it. And the day she does end up going through this, I will take great joy in telling her that it's 'not that bad.' "Ok, so you're at Sam's house, yeah? Where exactly in Sam's house are you?"

"Wardrobe."

"Were you calling me to help you choose an outfit for Sam, by any chance?" Sophie queried.

"Probably," I answer, shrugging my shoulders. "That would make sense. Right, so he has lots of shirts and jeans and not a lot of shoes. God, how am I supposed to help him choose an outfit? Sophie, I must say, going to New York this weekend was not a good decision. It was a bad decision. Terrible! How dare you leave me to deal with stuff like this? I should totally make Emma Godmother to this baby. You are so irresponsible!"

Sophie laughed. "God, you make a terrible preggers lady," she tells me. I could just imagine her rolling her eyes at me before doubling over, clutching her stomach as she laughed at my predicament. "Charlotte, I'm going to do you a massive favour, alright? I'm going to send my protgégé over to assist you in picking out a date worthy outfit for Sammy. I'm also going to ignore the fact that you're choosing Emma over me. As for coming to New York, Charlotte, it's the Met Gala. The Met. Gala. I can't not not be here. I'm going to hang up now but rest assured, help is on its way. Now, go lie down and eat a macaron or something. You'll be fine."

When the line goes dead, I force the phone back into my pocket and follow Sophie's instructions. Returning to the bedroom, I sit on the edge of the bed next to Sam, dip a hand into the pâtisserie box to retrieve a macaron and bite down on it before throwing myself backwards and curling up and bringing my knees up to my chest. Mimicking my position, Sam lies down next to me and places the box between us, allowing me to take as many sweet treats as I wanted. 

Since Sam moved out, I hadn't seen him as often as I would like. Before, I saw him every day, but now I was lucky if I saw him once a week, not that it had been that long ago since he moved out. Seeing as he's been busy with the art gallery as well as cramming for finals, I was really excited when he called this morning, asking if I was free to hang out. My happiness was short lived because as soon as I turned up on his doorstep an hour ago, he told me that he didn't have long as he was heading out on a date tonight. 

I frowned at his announcement; after his break up with his ex-fiancée-slash-girlfriend, Sam had sworn off women so to hear that he was meeting another woman for dinner confused the hell out of me. Having witnessed the first Sam-Jasmine break-up, I've been super protective of him. I wasn't all too thrilled that I hadn't vetted his new fancy lady. What if she was psychotic? Or what if she was a mean girl? Or, God forbid, what if she was a Lib Dem supporter? 

"What time are you going out tonight?" I ask, planning something in my mind. "Also, what is the girl's name?

"At seven," Sam answered. He gave a small little laugh and shook his head awkwardly against the mattress of the bed. "Her name is Ioana Ionescu. I told you all this earlier, Char."

Nodding, I contort my body slightly so that I could grab my phone from my back pocket and quickly pull up all my social media accounts, searching for Ioana Ionescu. Facebook came up with a few random women with the same name so I closed that page down and moved on to Twitter. Again, not particularly reliable, unless she was known as IONESCUIOANARO. Instagram wasn't much better but having gone through all the accounts Sam followed, I finally found an IIonescu that looked promising.

"Huh," I commented, shocked by the profile photo that matched the account name. I clicked through and went down her photostream, scanning each picture carefully until I landed on one that made my eyes narrow. "Really, Sam? She's a teenager!"