Big smirked up at her. "My pleasure, babe," he said lowly, pulling her down for another kiss. "Good luck with Q."
"Thanks. I'll call you later."
With that, she grabbed her phone and bag and shrugged into her coat. Pulling the door open, she came face to face with a bleary-eyed James. He had just lifted a hand to knock and was holding a brown paper sack in the other. She was sure it contained booze from the way he looked and smelled. In short, he looked about as awful as Maggie sounded. "James," she greeted coolly. She didn't know where the fault lay in this fight, but her loyalties were to her best friend. She heard Jake's footsteps approaching and she glanced over her shoulder at him once more and smiled before she walked out the door.
"Sup, bro?" Big greeted, stepping back from the doorway to allow his friend access. "You look like shit."
"Fuck you. I don't wanna talk about it. I just want to drink and play X-Box so I can blow some shit up. Okay?"
"Sure. What're you drinkin'?"
Alisha used the key she had to Maggie's apartment and let herself inside. "Maggie?" she called, her voice travelling through the empty living room. She shed her coat and hung it up, dropped her bag by the door. Clutching the paper sack from Duane Reade, she walked towards Maggie's room. The nerves she had in her stomach were balling up and making her feel sick; she couldn't imagine what her best friend was feeling.
Knocking lightly, she pushed open the bedroom door and found her Maggie in the middle of the bed, crying and scooping peanut butter from the jumbo-sized jar of Jif in her hand with an Oreo cookie. She was surrounded by junk food and discarded tissues while P.S. I Love You played on the large television.
It was worse than she thought.
"Hi," Alisha said softly, padding over to sit next to her friend. "Do you want to talk about it?"
A fresh batch of tears welled up in her eyes and ran down her cheeks. "Did you bring it?"
Alisha nodded and held up the sack in her hand before tossing it onto the bed between them. "What happened, Fabs?" she asked quietly, reaching out to smooth blonde hair away from her face before gently prying the peanut butter jar from her grasp.
The blonde scrubbed her hands over her pretty face, wiping away the excess tears. She inhaled deeply and picked at the imaginary lint on the duvet. "It's his job," she murmured quietly.
"What about his job, Q?"
"It's dangerous!" she insisted, lifting her hazel eyes. "Look what happened to Big!"
Alisha swallowed the lump in her throat that formed whenever she thought about what could have happened to her boyfriend. But as quickly as that thought entered her mind, she shoved it out again. He was fine. "Jake's okay," she said softly, "but I understand why James's job scares you."
"I told him that his job terrified me and he brushed it off like I was some sort of crazy person. He said he's never been hurt on the job and that he's always safe when he's working. When I pointed out that Big had been safe and he had still been injured, he grew so frustrated with me and told me I didn't know what I was talking about. I know he was upset when Big was in the hospital. It tore him up. I saw it, you saw it. I'm not crazy!"
"Of course you're not crazy," Alisha insisted. "You can't help how you feel about the situation. Did you tell him that?"
"Yes, but it just led to this big huge fight and we were both yelling at each other about all kinds of things—what, I couldn't even tell you at this point. And then he told me to take a Midol and quit bitching."
Alisha gasped. That didn't sound anything like James. (It sounded more like something her boyfriend would say.)
"I know, right? And then that Midol comment—I don't know, it dawned on me that I haven't had a period for a while and that's when I thought that I might be pregnant. Then, I started thinking about how I am possibly having this man's baby and he's going to end up dying in a fire and leaving us all alone because he's too fucking selfish to even listen to me. I never said I wanted him to quit his job, but I didn't need him to be a pigheaded asshat about it either." She flopped back against the pillows and buried her face in her hands.
"Did you tell him you might be pregnant?"
Maggie looked at her friend as though she'd grown a second head. "Get serious, Alisha. Of course not. I needed time to process and to find out if I really was so I could decide how to proceed."
Alisha brushed off the snippy retort (it wasn't the first, wouldn't be the last) and pressed on. "How did you and James leave things?"
Her eyes swam with tears again and her throat went dry. "I told him to get out, that I was tired of having a boyfriend that didn't listen to me and how I couldn't even look at him." The tears fell rapidly down her cheeks. "He—" she sniffled. "He asked if I was breaking up with him and—" Maggie began choking out sobs. "I said it seemed like it and asked him to please leave." She sat up and faced her best friend, worry marking her pretty features. "Alisha, I love him so much and I was just so awful. I don't want to lose him."
"Shh," Alisha said, wrapping her arms around her friend, hoping to offer some measure of comfort while she cried. "You two will figure this out. It was
