Acting Royal #Wattys2017

Chapter 44

JJENNY

"Jenny?" Emma's voice accompanied yet another small knock. Jenny wasn't sure how long she had been in the bathroom for, but it had been a while and she still didn't think she was ready to move.

Another knock. Another feeble voice, "Jenny?"

Jenny finally stood up and pulled her pants up. But she had no desire to leave, the confines of the toilet felt somehow safe. So she closed the lid and sat back down. There was another little knock. "I'm kind of getting worried. I have a spare key... I don't want to use it, but..."

Jenny had been too shocked to think. But now that the shock was vaguely wearing off she was struck by the serious awkwardness of this moment. She had just found out she was pregnant, practically in front of her ex-best friend, oh, who also happened to be pregnant with the boyfriend that she had stolen from her years ago...

And now she was locked in her bathroom at the back of the shop she ran. It was like a scene from a bad movie, oh, and she was pregnant with a Prince's child. The Heir to the throne of some Arabian Kingdom. Wow! Could her life get any more odd right now.

She heard a key in the door and saw a tiny eye pop around the corner. "Jenny?"

"I'm fine... sort of. I think, maybe. I don't know." Jenny managed.

The door pushed open a little further and a face appeared. It was a face she had seen a million times before. The face she had grown up with, since they were two years old they had been best friends, she, Emma and Anton. The three musketeers.

"Hi." Jenny finally managed. "It's been a while."

"Three years." Emma said matter-of-factly. She glanced down at the pregnancy test in Jenny's hands. Jenny looked down at it and shrugged.

Emma smiled a weak smile that Jenny wasn't sure how to interoperate. "Can I get you anything?"

"No." Jenny shook her head.

And then she and Emma fell into a strange silence. She had imagined this moment a million times before- seeing her ex-best friend again after that fateful morning so many years ago. The morning she discovered that the guy she'd been in love with for years, something her supposed best friend had known, had been running around together behind her back. At the time she's thought it was the most painful experience anyone could go through, boy was she wrong.

"Congratulations." Jenny finally said looking at her stomach. Double awkward.

"Tha.. anks." Emma stuttered. "And you... " she tentatively pointed down at the test in Jenny's hands, "I guess congratulations too. Is it? Sorry, I don't mean to pry... but, well, sorry. I don't mean sorry about....ok, I'll shut up now. But congratulations, if it is. Anyway."

Was it? Jenny thought. Was it a congratulations moment. She was still in too much shock to figure out how she felt about this. How she felt about a little part of the man she once loved- now hated- growing inside her.

She stared at the pregnancy test again. The other pink line looked a little paler now... maybe she wasn't!

She held it up, "How many lines do you see?"

Emma leaned in. "Two."

"But the one is faint, right? Maybe it's disappearing, maybe it's...?"

Emma shook her head. "It's definitely there. But these things can sometimes be wrong, I went for a blood test to make sure..." She stopped talking and looked down nervously.