Against the Tide by Nikki Groom

have belongings there for one, and all your paperwork, your passport.”
    “There’s nothing there I need.”
    “But it’s still yours, Megan, let’s just go there and collect it all. We can have your post redirected to here, and make plans from there,” Jamie suggests sensibly before standing up and rummaging through the medicine cabinet.
    “What’s up, J?”
    “Aha!” she calls finding a box of ibuprofen. “I have the worst period pains,” she informs me, popping two out of the foil packet.
    A ball of nerves knots tightly in the pit of my stomach as a realisation washes over me like an ice cold shower. “Oh shit,” I whisper under my breath. “Oh shit.” I grab a towel and jump out of the bath, the panic racing through me makes my legs unsteady and I sit on the loo seat where Jamie was before.
    “Meg, what’s wrong? You’re as white as a ghost, do you feel ill? Maybe the wine is really off?”
    I shake my head back and forth and stare at the black and white floor tiles. “I don’t think it’s the wine that’s off.”
    “What? Meg … Oh my god. You’re not?”
    “It’s a very big possibility,” I say, with the feeling of disbelief hammering at my temples. “I’m never late.”
    “How late are you?” she asks crouching in front of me and searching my eyes for information.
    “I’m not sure.” I shrug, “Two weeks maybe.”
    “Shit,” she curses before standing and pacing. “Well, whose is it?”
    “What?” I yell, jumping up. “It can’t be …”
    “Who, alley guy? Why not? Because you only screwed him once? Surely I don’t need to explain to you how babies are made, Meg.”
    “Jamie! I can’t believe you just said that.” I stomp out of the bathroom, feeling every bit the slut that Finn more or less told me I am. I slam my bedroom door behind me and flop down flat on my front on the bed. I want to cry, but I won’t. I want a cigarette, but I haven’t been smoking in the house as Jamie doesn’t like it, so that habit has been getting less and less frequent, and now, well, what if I really am …pregnant.
    Jamie knocks softly on the door. “Meg, can I come in?”
    “Yes,” I squeak out with my head buried in the pillow.
    She opens the door slowly and comes to lay next to me on the bed. “Want me to go to the chemist?”
    “No,” I pout.
    “Sure?”
    “No.”
    She laughs gently. “I know you want to be an ostrich, but this problem could only get bigger, literally, if we don’t sort something out early on.”
    “You mean it won’t go away if I pretend it never happened?”
    “I don’t think it will this time, Megs.”

    I lay flat on my back in the middle of my bed and stare at the ceiling. This is the longest I’ve been sober in weeks, and it’s fucking painful. My thoughts move too fast, spinning in conflicting directions and give me a banging headache, although that might also be due to the fact that I’ve had more alcohol intake than water for far too long now. After yelling at Megan I felt like a total prick, but I couldn’t help it. Hate boiled inside me, along with regret and guilt, wrestling with the part of my mind that wanted to push all that away and devour her then and there and never let her go. The state that my head is in at the moment, I just couldn’t cope with it. I wanted to tug on her lip ring with my teeth, I wanted to taste her again, I wanted to explore her body with my tongue, and I wanted to yell at her and push her away to make her hurt, like I’m hurting. If it wasn’t for her …
    “Hey, man,” Harley chirps as he pokes his head around the door.
    “Hey.”
    “How ya holding up?” he asks, perching on the end of the bed.
    “Been better.” I sit up and cross my legs. “I want a drink, and a line, and then I’d be just dandy.”
    “I’m sure you would be, for a few hours.”
    “Yeah, maybe.”
    “Then you would feel like shit, and you’d have to do it all over again to take away the feeling of feeling like