Sunday, January 17th, 1982

"Draw four, Ash."

"What? NO. You jerk..." I pouted as I drew four more cards. I swear Brinley always gets the good cards whenever we play Uno. Two greens, a five and a two, one yellow, and a red draw two. Not too bad. Mary Anne laughed at my misfortune. "You guys suck." I stuck my tongue out at my friends, but Brinley threw some popcorn at me.

"That's what she said." 

"Oh my god, Brinley grow up." Mary Anne rolled her eyes.

"What? It was right there, Mary. Come on." Looking back at my cards, it seemed as though I might have a chance to win but we'll see. The cards touched my nose as I brought them up comically, looking from side to side.

"Your turn Mary Anne, go!" I reminded. She waved a hand at me and put a card down.

"Reverse!" She exclaimed, making me groan loudly.

"Why are we playing this again?" I asked, slapping down a green card. I saw Brinley staring deeply at her cards, but she still heard my question. She answered as she placed down her move.

"Because... it was either we play a few rounds of Uno, or we could continue to address envelopes with painful calligraphy." Brinley rolled her head to face Mary Anne with a level of sarcasm that was only understandable if you'd been here earlier; Brinley and I had come over to Mary Anne's place (Brian's house) earlier today, we had bridesmaid's obligations to attend to. Arriving around noon to accomplish this menial task, it was now almost 6 pm if that tells you anything.

"How many people do you need to invite to the wedding anyway, Mary Anne?" I asked, moving my cards to my lap. Her eyes flickered to me.

"Because I have a big family, you know that. Aunts, uncles, four sets of grandparents, too many cousins..." Mary Anne shook her head at the mention of her crazy amount of cousins, it's true. She set me up with her cousin Mark back in '77, let's just say Mark has his own boyfriend now. The date was nice though, he paid for dinner if my memory serves me.

"Speaking of cousins, how's Mark been?"

"Oh, good question! Tell us, is he still with... What's his name again?" Brinley asked.

"Julio, and they're still together." She confirmed.

"Good! I'm happy for him. We're gonna see them at the wedding, huh?" Mary Anne nodded. I smiled and set down my red draw two card.

"Ha! Draw it, Brin!" She threw some more popcorn at me, making me flinch away. "Hey!"

"Everyone is in a happy relationship except for me," She looked up at the ceiling, "What the hell universe?!" Mary Anne patted her leg.

"Honey, it'll happen. Don't force it."

"That's good advice." I agreed. My eye flickered up from my cards to see both my friends attention on me. "What?" Why are they looking at me like a grew a second head?

"You've been avoiding talking about a certain someone, Astoria." Mary Anne stated.

"What gives, Ash?" Brinley asked me. I shut my eyes, flicking my remaining cards into the air and falling back into Brian's navy couch with a huff.

"It's that obvious is it?"

"Troubles in paradise?" I threw a pillow at Brinley.

"Shut up, Brin. I- We-" I sighed heavily, "I don't know, guys. I feel a bit clueless right now. Who knew guys could be complicated?"

I heard my friends share a chuckle before making the couch dip on either side of me, I still had my eyes covered with my hands. I really didn't know what was going on between Michael and I recently. New Years had been interesting to say the least, I'd gotten groped my his other brother which was the last thing that was bothering me out of everything that happened that evening. Michael had brought up my drinking, which I didn't like... and that comment that went with it about me not being pregnant! Did he want me to be pregnant? I had gotten my period only three days prior to New Years Eve, and it was the most relieved I'd ever felt in my life.

We hadn't made a big deal about the possibility of becoming parents. I didn't want it to be a big deal in the first place, I didn't need that kind of stress lingering in the back of my mind at every turn. If I was that relieved about not being pregnant, did that mean I didn't want to have his child?

No. It doesn't mean that.

I do.

I do. I do. I do. I chanted internally.

"Ash, darling?" I let my friend remove my hands from my face, revealing their concerned expressions. "What happened?"

Tears quickly compiled from my tear ducts, and began to fall in hot streaks down my face. I gasped as they fell, realizing how much the possible pregnancy scared the living daylights out of me. Brinley and Mary Anne wrapped their arms around me tightly, snuggling close to my shaking form. We sat there like that for a time before I was able to form any coherent words again.

"He- I-." My breathing was heavy, like I had just come up from air after swimming underwater. I felt a hand rub my back gently. "We-"

"Shh, it's alright. We're here for you." Brinley's voice filled my ear. A sense of care filled my being as my friends held me together. I felt like I was falling apart, but why hadn't I realized it before? Why couldn't I tell Michael that I had been terrified about the possibility? My mind always imagined him and I together with a couple of children down the road ever since his sisters and mother showed me photos of him from his childhood the night I came over for dinner to meet everyone - officially - for the first time. Kids, sure. Nothing scary about children once they're here. But before they're born... Holy.

I'm afraid of being pregnant. WHY?!

My eyes flew open and I sat up at my realization. I couldn't determine where this sudden phobia stemmed from, but it was there inside me nonetheless. How the hell can something like that be fixed by a doctor? Can it be fixed? A million questions whirled around in my head as I sat there on the couch staring ahead at the wall. I probably look like some sort of vegetable right now...

"I'm afraid." I whispered aloud. My voice sounded small, distant. 

"Afraid of what, honey?" Mary Anne asked, looking at me sideways. I turned my head to look at my friend.

"I- Michael and I... We almost." I fiddled with my fingers as I spoke, "We had a pregnancy scare... after our first time." It sounds so weird to say plainly like that, it makes what happened real. That's the problem: it happened, it was real. I wiped my tears from my cheeks, removing the moisture from my hands by rubbing them on my jeans. The friction gave me a tiny form of relief, but not enough.

"Ash."

"Oh, darling."

My friends enveloped my in another hug. Maybe I wasn't cut out to be a mom, I mean, look at who I had for an example. My mom's dead in the ground, my father... Let's change the subject, shall we? Yes, lets. Their arms pulled away after another section of incalculable time.

"You're not...?" I shook my head. 

"I'm not pregnant, no. I didn't realize how petrified it had made me either, like I had froze on the inside." I ran a hand through my hair, glancing down at my socks that covered my feet.

"Did you want to be?" Mary Anne asked gently.

"One day, I think. But after our first time? Gosh, no."

"Have you thought about tracking your cycle?" Brinley seriously asked. I tilted my head sideways.

"Say what now?" 

"You know, 'family planning'? No? Ok, you come up with a way to track when you're ovulating by marking the calendar on the days you have your period. It's quite simple, I can show you." I'd never heard of anything that Brinley was talking about, it sounded like a foreign language - except for the part about marking the calendar, because I already did that. I've always made small black dots with a sharpie to mark when I had started and finished on my calendar, it was also nice that no one ever questions the black dots on it either.

I asked my good friend to elaborate more on the topic at hand, and even Mary Anne had some wisdom to throw in too. The more the three of us talked, the better I began to feel about the entire situation. Other than condoms, I now had a second back-up in my corner and that felt extremely nice. But then Brinley started talking about testing mucus consistency and I couldn't keep it together, gross.

"Is that really necessary? Brin, come on, that's nasty-sounding." My face contorted as my friend's eyebrows raised in merriment, she was enjoying educating me about this a bit too much...

"Oh, no! If you're mature enough to have sex with Michael, then you need to know all of this!" Faking offence, I put a hand to my chest in mock effort.

"You think I'm the immature one? OH. Let me tell you a thing..." So I sat and told them about what Michael didn't know about sex. Should I have told them that? Probably not, but they're my friends and I trust them. Mary Anne chortled at the confession, whereas Brinley didn't know what to say.

"How, how would he not know that? I-" She blinked, "Wow." She turned to Mary Anne, "Tell me Brian at least knows about pre-cum, right?" I covered my face with both my hands, trying not to think about Brian and pre-cum in the same sentence. 

"Yeah, he does."

"Did you have to tell him about it?"

"No, I didn't." Her attention moved from Brin to me, "Ash, we love you but Michael sounds a little clueless." Mary Anne admitted. I removed my hands from my face, my expression now neutral.

"Trust me when I say: he's not clueless. He knows what he's doing while were... you know. The man just has too many older brothers, and that can't be helped." I shrugged.

"Wait."

"What?" I asked.

"Michael is - Was experienced before you both finally- ?" I nodded, confirming Brinley's hunch. Both my friends became excited by my movement, peppering me with crazy questions like I was a Magic-8 Ball. "WITH WHO?"

"Was it a lot of people? He doesn't have a disease, does he?" I rolled my eyes at Mary Anne's last question. I already knew my boyfriend is clean, thank you very much.

"He's only been with one other person, and I'm not going to tell you who because ya'll don't need to know in the first place." I shook my head, smiling at them.

"It's someone famous, isn't it?" Brinley asked, refusing to drop the topic. "Oh, oh, oh! Um, Marie Osmond?" I frowned at her, hoping to deter her questioning, but it didn't help. "No? How about... Oh, did Michael get it on with Cher? You know I always thought that they looked a little too cozy when they were bumping hips on the Sonny & Cher Show."

"Brin, Michael didn't have sex with Cher."

"SO HE DID HAVE SEX WITH MARIE-"

"No, he did not! Now, will you drop it? Jeez." Mary Anne had to open her mouth though. I really wish she wasn't so intuitive sometimes...

"He had relations with Diana Ross, huh?" My face fell.

Michael had been honest with me when he'd first told me about his 'relationship' with Diana, but I had a difficult time calling it a relationship because that's not really what it was. She had been using him in the worst way, being a selfish bitch in all honesty. Things with the two of them had ended a little bit after we'd began working together back in 1978, but he didn't tell me about it then. He'd finally confessed all of this to me in 1980. She'd gotten engaged and it 'crushed' him - Michael's words, not mine - but he'd found it easier to let her go by spending time with me.

"You make me feel alive again, like I have something worth getting up for in the morning..."

Eventually he must have realized how awful she'd been to use his affections for her personal gain, I hoped this was true at least. I remember asking him if that had made me his 'rebound girl', because I'd been frustrated to find this out after dating him for seven months. His arms had flounced about through the air, assuring me that his feelings for me were the real deal and nothing less. I believed him. Obviously, I mean, we're still together so that pretty much tells you everything you need to know.

I let it go. I accepted what he had told me, took my anger towards the sparkling primadonna, and let it all go. What else could I have done about it? The only thing that still ran through my brain ever so often when I become bored is finding out where that snake of a lady lives, and ding-dong ditching her house so I can throw eggs at her from behind a bush. That thought always gives me a serious amount of satisfaction whenever it pops into my head.

"Did you have to say the bitch's name, Mary?" Her sass flared at my rebuttal.

"Well we can't call her, 'She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named'. That's just overkill." She scoffed.

"It may be overkill, but it's a hell of a lot more appropriate. Saying her name aloud gives her power, and she deserves none." I grabbed the bowl of popcorn off the coffee table where our Uno cards sat, waiting. As I sat criss-crossed on the couch with the popcorn bowl in my lap, I thought about how the cards will probably not be picked up again this evening.

"Mary Anne, how in the world did you guess correctly on the first try?" Brinley sucked her teeth, curious. Mary Anne shrugged in response as I shoved buttery popcorn into my mouth. I'm not longer in a happy mood. I have officially went from happy to stress-eating, thank you, my dear friend, Mary Anne.

"Intuition is my only answer." I harrumphed with my mouth full at my friend's awful response to Brinley's question.

'Intuition' Yeah, ok. My eyes rolled in their sockets. More popcorn, please! Oh, what about a pizza? I can order one! I brought my wallet, right? I felt my jean pockets. BINGO.

"Is anyone else hungry right now?" I asked, eyeballing the phone that sat in it's receiver waiting for me to pick it up. My friends ignored my call of insecure food needs and continued to talk as I kept my eye on the phone, debating internally if I actually needed to order an entire pizza for myself or not. Slowly their conversation filtered into my hearing, running in one ear and out the other.

"This is ridiculous! Diana Ross? How exactly did that happen?" 

"You think I know the answer to that question, because, news flash! I don't know." Mary Anne deadpanned.

"Ok, ok... But the age difference, that's... Uhhg!" Brinley cringed out of my peripheral.

 That's exactly the kind of reaction I had been worried about, which was why I wasn't going to tell them who it was. Mary Anne just happened to be a big Jackson 5 fan while growing up and she hadn't missed a single television program that they'd been on either, making her much more knowledgeable than I when it came to Michael's past. My eyes moved from the phone, all ideas of a fresh, steamy pizza gone from my mind as I continued to listen to the critiques of my friends.

"She was born in 1944, which means... they're about 14 years apart, give or take a couple months." Mary Anne looked as though she had a sour candy in her mouth as she spoke, alerting me to how she felt about the entire situation with a single look. Little did she know that I had felt exactly the same when I had first been told about this mess; I can't hold it against him though, it happened before we were together - before we even kissed for the first time.

Michael is a lot of things, but a womanizer is not one of them. He's a good man. I should be able to tell him how I'm feeling about important things such as getting pregnant, or whatever else gets thrown our way. And I do, to an extent. He never pushes me on things, but I wish he would sometimes... I'm beginning to think I'm standing in my own way. God damn.

I ran my hands roughly down my face and back up through my hair, remembering that I had tied it up only once my hands became stuck momentarily. I'm acting like an emotional wreck of a woman. 

Pull yourself together Briggs! Where's that ride or die spirit? Where's your killer confidence and stride that would put runway models like Twiggy to shame, huh? Sit up straight, shoulders back! 

Now, let's get real for a moment: You've become everything you wanted to be and more. Look back for a moment, see how far you've come. Who cares what you're afraid of because look at what you've accomplished! You make almost six figures a year, you're a home owner, you're doing what you've always wanted to do with your life... and that's pretty, damn, cool. Not a lot of people can say that about themselves.

"Guys?" I asked. They stopped in the middle of their debate: who would win in a fight? Me or Diana Ross? The answer was a no-brainer: Me. There's no way I would let her win in a fight, plus I used to pitch for my high school softball team. When you pitch with both hands, they kinda don't have much of choice other than to put you on the team. I was known for my fast balls - that, and one of my throws almost broke an outfielder's hand. He was wearing a glove, mind you. With that being said, I stood up from the couch and set the now mostly empty popcorn bowl down on the coffee table.

"First, you both know I would kick her tiny ass into next Sunday. Secondly, let's finish the game of Uno." Both their faces lit up and we all moved back to our spots around the coffee table, picking up our cards. My left eyebrow raised as I glanced from my cards to the pile we were discarding into, it seemed as though I might be able to win this one...

Brinley must have been able to read my face like an open book, because when it looked as though the family game gods had finally shown me favor she piped up.

"So."

"So?" I replied, watching Mary Anne lay down a card.

"Michael likes small tits, then?" She smirked at me as I turned toward her, missing the card Mary Anne had laid down.

"Where the hell did that come from, Brin? We're playing Uno, not 'Guess the Female Anatomy My Boyfriend Prefers'!" She was holding back her laughter, anyone could tell as she bit her bottom lip.

"Um, well... You don't exactly have small tits now, do you?" I glared at her, my eyes narrowing.

"Would you hush up?" It's true though, my girls are huge. But he's also never complained about that piece of information either, which is probably because he's enjoyed putting his d- I'm not going to finish that sentence.

Mary Anne looked indifferent as she moved her cards around in her hand.

"Mary Anne, are you going to say anything?" I asked her. Without looking up from her three cards, she replied.

"Your turn, Ash."

I scoffed. My eyes rolled before looking down at the discard pile. I had been cheated!

"You bitch!" I exclaimed at Brinley. She had distracted me so she could gain the lead. Brinley simply let her laughter flow, leaning back as she held her two cards in hand while I needed to draw a card. I went from a healthy two cards to a whopping five before I drew something I was able to put into play. I'm never going to get rid of all these before someone wins... 

Blue was my least favorite color at the moment.

"UNO!"

"I hate you, Brinley." She knew she was rubbing it in my face, but that's what friends do. "When we have game night again and I kick your butt at Pictionary, you're gonna cry." I threatened. My cards popped on the table, face down. Mary Anne was chuckling across from me.

"You're such a sore loser, Ash." She put her remaining two cards down as well, "But that's a good idea, game night. We could play Pictionary on teams, bring the boyfriends... Yeah, I like that idea a lot. Brian could make fondue!" It was my turn to chuckled along with Brinley, who had her arms wrapped around me like