Free-Falling by Nicola Moriarty

either.’
    â€˜You’re amazing. Oh, I almost forgot, I bought you some flowers. They’re out in the kitchen. I was going to put them in water for you first.’
    â€˜Let me guess, roses?’
    â€˜Yep.’
    â€˜Ah, babe, when are you going to learn? Lilies are my favourite! But thank you. And to answer your question, no, I sure as hell don’t have a thing for your brother. I have a thing for you.’

    â€˜So how are you holding up these days?’ Stacey asked when the two friends met for a catch-up at a café in North Sydney, around the corner from Stacey’s work.
    â€˜Holding up? What do you mean? Oh, uni assignments? Yeah – I mean, they’re pretty full on, but I’m managing.’
    â€˜No, actually, that wasn’t what I meant. How are you coping . . . without Andy?’
    Stacey never used to call him Andy; she would always refuse to shorten his name even though that’s what he actually preferred. The softness in her voice made Belinda melt a little. Her friend was normally such a logical, unemotional, straight-down-the-line kind of girl. That faded little line began to swim into view and she quickly hardened up again, scrubbing it from her mind.
    â€˜Oh, that. Look, you always knew we weren’t meant for one another anyway, so it’s like fate or something, right?’ Belinda nonchalantly lifted her cappuccino towards her lips but the aroma of the coffee reached her nostrils first and she recoiled from it,completely repulsed. She put the cup back down on the saucer with unintended force, causing froth to slosh over the side.
    Stacey’s eyes narrowed. ‘When are you going to announce it?’
    â€˜Announce what?’ Belinda looked genuinely bewildered.
    â€˜I’m your best friend and, to be perfectly honest, I can’t believe you haven’t even told me yet.’ Her soft tone from earlier had been replaced by her usual bluntness. ‘Honey, I’m not stupid,’ she continued. ‘You’re constantly running off to the bathroom to be sick, you keep pressing your arms against your boobs like they’re killing you and you’re looking at that coffee like it’s a cup of boiled cabbage. I remember when my sister was pregnant for the first time, she said one of the earliest signs was her sudden aversion to her morning coffee. Seeing as you usually keep Starbucks in business, I’m thinking something a little dodgy is going on here.’
    Belinda stood up, trembling. She turned to leave, but Stacey wasn’t prepared to give in on this one. She grabbed Belinda by the wrist and yanked hard so that she was forced to turn back to her.
    â€˜You need to deal with this, hon, and there’s no time like the present.’ She was staring fiercely into her eyes. ‘So snap out of it.’
    Belinda couldn’t hold on to it any longer. Those two neat little lines began to form and harden. They danced before her eyes; they twirled little canes and tipped their top hats at her. ‘We’re not going anywhere,’ they announced happily.
    A positive pregnancy test. It really was true.
    She slumped into her chair and rested her head in her hands, trying to take it all in. She looked up at her best friend. ‘I’m pregnant?’ she asked in a small, wavering voice.
    Stacey immediately softened again. ‘Oh, sweetheart!’ She dragged her chair next to Belinda and draped an arm around her.‘We don’t know for absolute sure that you are . . . although I kind of think you could be showing already.’
    Belinda saw the two lines again, now in razor-sharp focus. They were doing the tango. ‘Yes, we do know,’ she admitted. She started crying into her friend’s shoulder and, moments later, Stacey had joined her.
    She wailed into Stacey’s neck for a good five minutes, letting everything out – disjointed sentences between sobs and sniffles –