Spring Break Secret by Holly Rayner
Louisa
A Month Later
“Maybe I should take another one,” Louisa said, staring down in shock at the little plastic rectangle in her hands.
“You’ve already taken three.” Her roommate, Alison, was sitting next to her on her dorm bed, two previously used pregnancy tests on the blanket beside her. “Lou, you’re pregnant.”
“But…” Louisa could hardly believe it. She had only been back at college for a few weeks after her incredible spring break visit to La Vega when she’d started experiencing an upset stomach. Alison had assumed it was just from bad dorm food and had brought Louisa ramen from the school store instead, but the symptoms hadn’t dissipated, and eventually they’d decided to try something else.
Now, Louisa was facing the fact that she was pregnant, and there was only one person who could possibly be the father.
“Tom,” she whispered, still unable to tear her eyes away from the bright blue lines on the test’s indicator.
“Is that the guy you hooked up with when you were home over spring break?” Alison asked.
Louisa nodded.
“You need to tell him,” Alison said. “Right away.”
Louisa frowned. “I deleted his contact info from my phone before I came back to California. We decided not to try to keep up a relationship.”
“What about your call history?”
“I deleted that too,” Louisa replied. “I didn’t want to be tempted into calling him. You know, be that girl who couldn’t let go.”
“We’ve got to find him,” Alison insisted, grabbing her laptop and balancing it on her lap. “What was his last name?”
Louisa realized, perhaps for the first time, that she didn’t know Tom’s last name. She didn’t really know anything about him, if she was honest.
“I…I don’t know,” she confessed. “I just know his name is Tom, he’s from Boston, and he goes to business school not far from where he grew up.”
“Boston?” Alison asked. “Like Harvard?”
Louisa shrugged. “He never told me the name of his school. I know his dad is some rich guy who owns a company, though.”
“What kind of company?”
Again, Louisa couldn’t think of anything. “He didn’t say.”
“Okay, well, we’ve got to at least try,” Alison said, typing away on her computer. Louisa knew her roommate was pretty technologically savvy, so if anyone could find Tom, it would probably be her. “Let’s see, we know he’s in Boston, his name is Tom, and his dad owns a business. Anything else?”
Louisa racked her brain. “His friends were called Nick, Kevin, and Jason,” she offered.
“I don’t think that helps, but if we find someone we think could be him, we can try cross-checking with his friends list.”
Louisa, still in shock from the news about her pregnancy, watched in silence as Alison pored through various websites, looking at different Boston colleges and their business programs, even looking at a directory of business owners in Massachusetts. But after a few hours of trying, all the searches came up empty.
“I’m really sorry, Lou,” Alison said, hugging her friend tightly. “I don’t think we’re going to find your mystery man.”
“That’s okay,” Louisa said. As much as she wanted to find Tom again, she knew that he had serious plans for his life, plans that didn’t even leave room for a puppy or a girlfriend or vacations, let alone raising a baby. It was probably for the best that she couldn’t find him.
It was clear that Louisa would have to figure this out on her own.