The new paint was still tacky when Roxy and Lupe came up Vine Street with coffee and matching grins.
Roxy: So. The hotel bar.
Lupe: We want every last ugly detail.
Jolene kept rolling paint and kept her face turned away.
Jolene: There's nothing to tell.
Roxy: Honey, you came home at ten in the morning in yesterday's dress with a smile like a damn fool.
Lupe: Did he have a big one? Bigger than Dean's? That's not a high bar, I know.
Jolene: Lupe, oh my God.
Roxy: The people have a right to know.
The bell rang and a woman in a raincoat came in for a box of lemon bars.
Lupe: Just tell me one thing. Did that man go down on you?
Roxy: Lupe! Not in front of the lemon bars.
Lupe: She's a grown woman. She's heard of it.
The customer paid fast and left without her change, and she looked at Jolene like she was something cheap on sale.
Jolene: Yes. Okay. Yes, he did.
Jolene: And I forgot my own name for a whole minute, so there.
Roxy: Good. About damn time somebody treated you like a person.
Lupe: How many times did he get you off? I need a number.
Jolene: Lupe, I swear to God.
Roxy: Answer the woman. She's got a spreadsheet.
The memory came anyway. His mouth on her neck in the elevator, his fingers already under her dress.
In the room he kissed down her belly, and she got a fist in his hair and said his name out loud.
Jolene: Jude. Don't stop.
He didn't stop. She came with her heel dug into his back, and then he was inside her and the rest went by in a blur of sheets.
She had woken up alone and paid for, with his name and his laugh and nothing else.
Her stomach turned over like a door slamming.
Roxy: Jo? Honey, you're green.
Jolene: I'm fine, I just need, I need a second.
She threw up until there was nothing left but her own bad thoughts.
Roxy: Breathe. I've got you. Whatever it is, I've got you.
Jolene: It's the paint fumes. It has to be the paint.
Lupe was gone for twenty minutes. She came back and set a white pharmacy bag on the sink like it was a bomb.
Lupe: Don't yell at me until you've peed on it.
Jolene looked at the box and her whole body went quiet.
Jolene: I can't. The doctors said I couldn't. Two of them said it, Roxy.
Roxy: Doctors say a lot of things, baby.
Jolene: If this is real, it's his. The man with no last name and no phone number.
Lupe: Then it's yours first. That's how it works. Your body, your call.
Something huge and impossible opened up in her chest, and it scared her more than Dean ever had.
She started to cry, and then she laughed at herself for crying, and then she cried harder.
Jolene: I want it so bad I feel stupid.
Roxy: Stupid is the bravest thing there is. Now go pee on that stick.
She held it in both hands and felt something like wonder move under all that fear.
Jolene: If it's real, I'm keeping it. I don't need his name to love this baby.
Then the door clicked shut, and she was alone with the test and the impossible hope of it.