“So just spring it on him?”

“Totally. Rip off the Band-Aid.” She pokes the window with a fingernail as we approach a coffee shop, poke, poke, poking until I’m slowing down my car and putting on the turn signal, already conned by this teenage girl.

She smiles, getting her way.

“He’s probably going to need some time to process the information, but I bet he’ll be fine.”

“He’ll be fine? Him? What about me?”

Molly scoffs. “Oh you know how men are—he’ll find a way to take this news and make it about him.”

How right she is; my brothers have been doing it to me for years, and they aren’t even aware of it.

“Plus,” she goes on, “guys are such babies. He’s going to be all butthurt, and you’re the one with a baby in your belly. Like, it has nothing to do with him, and I bet his one feeling is going to be all hurt.”

We both roll our eyes as I drive up to the order screen and tell the barista what we want, laughing when we reach the window.

“When am I giving him the news?”

More thinking. More head tilting. “No time like the present.”

“Now?” I practically shout, panicking.

“Tonight!” Her head shakes. “Whoa, calm down. Relax—obviously we’re not going to do it now. He’s at work.” Eye roll.

We. “Are you planning on being at the house when I spill the beans?”

“Duh. As if you’d have the guts to do it without me.”

She’s not wrong about that. I take a sip of my decaf iced latte, slurping the deliciousness through the straw and managing to keep it down. Hallelujah!

“You think you know me well enough that I need you to be there with me, otherwise I won’t tell him?”

Molly turns her head, straw in mouth, smiling around it. “Not to be disrespectful, Ms. Wallace, but no—you definitely don’t have the lady balls to do it without me.”

“You little…” I laugh. “You just met me. And don’t call me Ms. Wallace—it sounds weird. Call me True.” I shoot her a sidelong glance. “Also, don’t you dare say anything about respecting your elders. I’m not that much older than you.”

“Older, but not older enough to not get pregnant,” the little shit mumbles beneath her breath, just loud enough that I can hear. If I wasn’t so amused by her, I’d be offended by her candor.

Still. She’s not wrong about that, either.

Wait… Did what she just said even make any sense?

Dammit, where did this kid come from, and what are her parents feeding her?

“Are you still puking your guts out?”

Um. “No—why would you think I’m still puking my guts out?”

Tripp’s neighbor girl—and my new confidant—snorts into the straw of her mocha something-or-other. “Please, you were puking when I got to his house. That didn’t look like a one-time thing.” She shoots me a glance across the front seat. “You didn’t actually think you could convince me you weren’t pregnant, did you? By pretending you ate bad food? Please.”

She scoffs.

“I told you by accident—I barely knew what I was saying that day.” I’m sort of irritated she didn’t believe me. “You’re way too cynical for a teenager, do you know that?”

“Listen, there’s puking, and then there’s puking, and you were practically inside the toilet. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out.”

My brother hasn’t figured it out.

Yet.

“Okay, what else gave it away?”

“That’s pretty much it. Mostly just an educated guess. But I was right, so…”

“And now you’re coming to my doctor’s appointment with me by tricking me into taking you to Starbucks.”

“I don’t know if you know this, but teenagers spend most of their lives operating on assumptions and manipulations. I happen to be better at it than most of my peers.”

“Where are your friends?” I blurt out. “Aren’t you in sports or something?”

“I play soccer, but it’s winter, so…”

Fine.

She plays soccer but it’s winter.

Which gives her plenty of time to stick her nose in my business. “Are your friends this nosey?”

“Nope.” Her answer is definitive, but then she goes on. “I mean, mostly they’re into boys at this point in their lives. Even my friends who play volleyball and stuff—boy crazy. Oh, and all they do is sit on their phones and obsess over the likes their posts on social media are getting, and do you know what it’s like when a fifteen-year-old has a meltdown because the algorithm sucks?”

I don’t want to know what that’s like. “Do me a huge favor and don’t bring any of them to the house while I’m hormonal—I won’t be able to handle it.”

“Yeah, I don’t bring them around anyway. Half of them have mad crushes on your brother, and it gets weird.”

“What’s a mad crush?” I am so not down with this lingo. Teen jargon or whatever.

“Um, a serious crush?” She’s looking at me as if I’m so utterly clueless, because I totally am. What the hell do I know about teenage girls? Even though it wasn’t so long ago that I was one myself.