When You Left Without A Word

POV: Piera

I rolled my eyes the moment Dana glanced at the door monitor and said, "Mrs. Charles is here."

She burst through the door with energy. Her handbag was on her arm, her lips were pressed thin, and she was carrying the printed proofs I'd sent over yesterday in a way that suggested she was not pleased with them.

"Miss Carter." She set the proofs on my desk and spread them flat with both palms. "I think you'll agree these are not what we discussed."

I looked at them. They were exactly what we'd discussed. I had the email chain to prove it but I just smiled. "Can you tell me what you don't like about them?"

"The coral." She pointed to the colour on the product card. "It's orange."

"It's coral."

"It's orange on paper." She picked up the proof and held it toward the light from the window. "I specifically said coral. This is orange, and orange is too tacky for a skincare brand, Miss Carter, it is more like a Halloween colour."

I took a deep breath to suppress my rising anger. "The colour is a direct match to the hex code you approved."

"I approved it on a screen." She set the proof back down firmly. "Screens lie. This is why I asked for printed proofs. And now that I have them, I'm telling you that this,"  she picked up the sheet and turned it toward me, close enough that the paper was inches from my face, "is orange."

The smell hit me like a wall. It wasn't strong, but the faint chemical smell of print ink reached the back of my throat and my stomach folded in half.

I pressed my lips together to prevent the bile rolling upward. I held up one finger to excuse myself and walked to the bathroom at a pace I hoped looked calm. I opened the toilet bowl and wretched into it.

My whole body shook with the intensity of it. I sat on the cool tile floor, one hand braced on the wall, until my stomach quieted to a low murmur.

From outside the bathroom door I heard Dana's voice.

"Mrs. Charles, I'm so sorry about that. Piera has been unwell since yesterday — she couldn't keep anything down last night and she came in this morning because she didn't want to reschedule you."

"She should have said something." Mrs. Charles spoke, slightly mollified

"She didn't want to make it your problem. That's just how she is."

I pressed my forehead briefly against the bathroom door and made a mental note to buy Dana lunch for that smart remark.

I stood up and rinsed my mouth. I looked at myself in the mirror and said, quietly, "Get it together, Piera. You have a client to attend to."

When I came back out, Mrs. Charles looked at me with an appraising expression. I must really look unwell, because her posture had shifted from judgemental to compassion.

"I'll have someone call you to reschedule," she said, gathering her proof.

She left and I sat down in my chair. Dana spun slowly to face me.

"She almost escalated to Yelp," Dana said. "Before I explained to her."

"Thank you," I said.

"You're welcome." She folded her arms and gave me a knowing smile. "Now, when was your last period?"

I looked at her like she'd grown another head. “Don't get me started.”

"I'm asking," she said, "because you have been tired for two weeks, I saw you pour your coffee down the sink this morning, and you just got sick because someone held a piece of paper near your face."

"It was the ink."

"You can't fool me. You LOVE the smell of ink. I've caught you many times standing over the printer, savouring the smell of ink on paper like one would savour the aroma of their best food."

“I love it, yes. But you're describing it as if I'm an ink maniac.” I waved her off.

"It's probably stress."

"Mm." She turned back to her screen. "There's a CVS two blocks down."

I went to the drugstore because Dana insisted and used the test strip in the bathroom. I stared at the two lines and my mind went blank. I was pregnant.

I was twenty-six years old, freelancing out of a shared studio in Brooklyn, and I was pregnant with Orion Zigmund's child.

Dana was waiting outside the drugstore door. She took one look at my face and her expression softened.  She opened her arms and I walked into them, allowing her to hold me.

"It's okay," she said against my hair. "Everything will be fine."

I nodded slowly, hoping she's right.

"I'm going home."

"Take care of yourself," Dana said. "I'll handle the rest."

I drove to the Upper East Side apartment  Orion got for me four months ago. The  view from the living room window was the kind of view that appeared in lifestyle magazines.

I changed out of my work clothes, pulled on an oversized sweater that was Orion's but had gradually become mine by consistent stealing, and sat on the sofa with my knees drawn up.

I placed a call through to him, needing to hear his soothing voice after the drugstore discovery.

His face appeared on the screen and I felt light instantly. Like when you open the window of a stuffy room. He looked tired. There were shadows under his eyes and his tie was loosened but the moment he saw me, a smile lit up his face.

"Hi." I tucked my feet under me. "You look exhausted."

"I'm fine." He leaned back in his chair and stared at me. “You look pale.”

I touched my cheeks briefly. “It's all thanks to a very difficult client.”

I told him about Mrs Charles and the coral-that-was-apparently-orange, and he laughed. The sound of it loosened something in my chest that had been tight since the drugstore.

We talked for forty minutes.

"Ten more days," he said, near the end. "Then I'm taking you to dinner somewhere nice. And then I'll keep you in bed for two days straight." He winked at me and I smiled

"That sounds perfect."

I looked at him on the screen. At how he was still entirely focused on me despite the tiredness in his face. Then I remembered  the two lines on the test strip.

"I have something to tell you." The words came out before I'd decided to say them. "When you get back."

His brow lifted. "Tell me now."

"It can wait." I smiled,  "I want to tell you in person."

He studied me for a moment with those dark, perceptive eyes and then he let it go. "Alright. See you in ten days."

"Ten days," I agreed.

After the call ended, I sat in the quiet of the apartment and pressed my hand against my flat stomach, imagining the future with Orion and our baby when I heard a knock on the door.

I wasn't expecting anyone. Dana was the only person who visited with any regularity, and Dana didn't knock like that. I scrambled down the chair and went to open the door.

The woman on the doorstep was someone I had never met. But I knew her face.