Three Wishes Read Free

(blond, cutesy, cropped T-shirt) was in a state. She didn’t know whether to tell her boyfriend, Pete (dark, brooding, abnormal abs), about her drunken infidelity with a guest-starring troublemaker.
    “Tell him, Ellie!” said Cat to the television. “Pete will forgive you. He’ll understand!”
    The ad break came on, and a manic man in a yellow jacket bounced around a department store pointing an incredulous finger at the Christmas specials.
    “I booked that health and beauty thing today,” said Cat, using Dan’s knee as a lever to help her reach over him for the pepper. “The woman had one of those gooey, spiritual voices. I felt like I was getting a massage just making a booking.”
    For Christmas, she was giving her sisters (and herself) a weekend away at a health retreat in the Blue Mountains. The three of them would share an “exquisite experience” of “indulgent pampering.” They would be wrapped in seaweed, dunked in mud, and slathered in vitamin-enriched creams. It would be extremely amusing.
    She was pleased with herself for thinking of it. “What a clever idea!” everyone would say on Christmas Day. Lyn definitely needed the stress relief. Gemma didn’t need it but she’d be right into pretending that she did. Cat herself wasn’t especially stressed either, but perhaps she was, because she wasn’t pregnant and she’d been off the Pill now for nearly a year. “Don’t get stressed about it,” everybody said wisely, as if they were the first to pass on that hot little tip. Apparently, the moment your ovaries noticed you were worried about becoming pregnant, they refused to cooperate. Oh well, if you’re going to get all huffy about it, we’ll just close down.
    A health insurance ad came on. Dan winced. “I hate this ad.”
    “It’s effective. You watch it more closely than any other ad on television.”
    He closed his eyes and averted his head. “O.K. I’m not looking, I’m not looking. Oh God. I can still hear that woman’s grating voice.”
    Cat picked up the remote and turned up the volume.
    “Aaaagh!” He opened his eyes and grabbed the remote from her.
    He was behaving perfectly normally. She remembered that afterward and it made it worse, somehow. Every moment he behaved normally was part of the betrayal.
    “Shh. It’s back on.”
    Ellie’s betrayed boyfriend, Pete, appeared on the screen, flexing his freakish abs. Ellie gave the TV audience guilty looks.
    “Tell him,” Cat told her. “I’d want to know. I couldn’t stand not to know the truth. Better to tell him, Ellie.”
    “You think so?” said Dan.
    “Yeah. Don’t you?”
    “I don’t know.”
    There were no bells jangling a warning in Cat’s head. Not a single chime.
    She had put down her wineglass on the coffee table and was feeling a pimple that had just that very moment appeared on her chin, undoubtedly a malevolent herald of her forthcoming period. Each month it appeared like an official stamp on her chin. There will be no baby for this woman this month. Nope. Sorry, try again! Cat had begun to cackle bitterly, throwing back her head witchlike, as soon as the first treacherous spots of blood appeared. It was such a joke, such a crushing anticlimax, after all those years of anxiously ensuring she didn’t have a baby, after all those months of “Are we ready to make this momentous change in our lives? I think we are, don’t you? Ooh, maybe we should have one more month of freedom!”
    Don’t think about it, she told herself. Don’t think about it.
    “Cat,” said Dan.
    “What?”
    “I have to tell you something.”
    She snorted at his ponderous tone, pleased to be distracted from her pimple. She thought he was sending up the show. “Oh my God!” she said and hummed the Med School sound track that helpfully warned viewers when something dramatic and awful was about to happen. “What? Have you done an Ellie? Have you been unfaithful to me?”
    “Well. Yes.”
    He looked like he was going to be sick