Author's Note: Welcome aboard... As usual, daily updates and reviews more than appreciated. The story should be relatively sweet (the first chapter is a tad bumpy but it's just the first chapter). I hope you'll like it!

First Trimester

Chapter One

Maura closed her eyes. She took a deep breath and tried to concentrate on her heart beats. She needed to make them slow down a bit. She counted until ten in her head then exhaled as slowly as she could. Her nervousness had reached its peak the moment she had walked in the cafe. All of a sudden, everything had become concrete and the irreversibility of the situation had begun to weigh a lot on her shoulders. If she hadn't had any doubt until now, her relative peaceful state of mind had vanished in the air as soon as she had sat down at a quiet table table by the large windows.

"Earth calls Maura."

The sound of a well-known voice cause her to get tense. She didn't need to open her eyes to know that Jane was now sitting at the table as well. Her friend must have come in during her meditation and she had spotted her immediately.

Maura opened her eyes anew. Here we are. She couldn't spend the rest of her life with her eyes closed anyway. It would go just fine. She had the maturity it took to handle the situation. Her courage was fragile but she mostly saw it as a reed: it often bent but never broke.

She smiled. Peacefully. Her stress had embraced her excitement to rise together with a quiet glory. The moment that had been haunting her mind for the last couple of months had finally come. She soon would feel relieved, and ecstatic. As a matter of fact, she had already reached this stage but knowing that Jane would join her in the frenzy of her feelings made it all even better. What they were about to live was unforgettable.

"Have you ordered something?"

Maura cast a glance at the cafe. Her eyes fixed upon the counter where a dozen of delicious homemade pastries waited patiently to be picked by a customer. She had chosen a neutral place, a spot that neither she nor Jane frequented. She wanted novelty and the comfort that only anonymity could bring.

They had very little chances to come across an acquaintance here which was exactly what Maura wanted to avoid at all cost.

"Yeah. I'm havin' a coffee." Jane looked at the cup Maura was holding. A few damp leaves darkened the relatively clear drink. "Is it herbal tea?"

"No, it isn't. It is a theine free tea. An organic one."

This semblance of a conversation was slightly dull – if not just ridiculous – but Maura enjoyed the comfort that emanated from it. She knew what she had to tell Jane, and how she would bring it up. Being blunt wasn't part of her plan. Thus she immensely appreciated their innocent introduction.

"Of course." Jane's smile didn't reach her eyes. As a matter of fact, she looked confused and worried. She crossed her arms against her chest in order to hide her latent nervousness. "So you invited me to a tea party?"

If Maura didn't want to be blunt, Jane saw things very differently. As usual. As much as Jane had immediately accepted Maura's invitation when her friend had sent her a text message earlier in the morning, she honestly wondered what was going on. Maura had remained vague. Too vague.

Jane didn't like it one bit.

"Not really, no." The tip of Maura's tongue brushed the edge of her lips. Her apprehension was palpable. She began to move on her seat, out of nervousness. "I've asked you to come here because I have something important to tell you."

Jane's timid smile froze. She didn't want to trust her instinct because her instinct told her that something was off yet Maura's statement had just made everything worse. It went in that dark direction Jane didn't want to believe in. She swallowed hard and tried to remain composed.

"You... You're not dying, right?"

The despair that showed in Jane's voice went straight to Maura's heart. However the incongruity of the question caused her eyes to widen in amusement. She soon burst out laughing. Jane was wrong.

"What? No, I'm not dying! On the contrary." Maura gave her friend a nod. "I'm very much alive, actually. Very, very much." A fragile sigh passed Maura's lips. She had to say something, if only to relieve Jane who was on the verge of a panic attack. Maura wasn't being fair to her. "I have received the results of a test I have passed and..."

"What kind of test?"

"I'm pregnant, Jane." Maura bit the inside of her cheek to prevent herself from screaming. For someone who didn't want to be blunt, she had miserably failed. "I'm going to have a baby."

Jane wasn't the only person who had frozen. The waitress who had come to their table with Jane's drink had stopped right in her tracks as well the moment she had heard Maura speak. Jane's cup of coffee in hand, the employee stared at Jane and Maura's table for long seconds, not really knowing what to do. She finally decided to turn on her heels and ran as far as she could from them. Bad timing.

"Jane...?" The silent reaction from her friend wasn't surprising yet it made Maura feel deeply uncomfortable. "Jane, please. Say something."

"Maura... You don't have to keep it if it's an accident, you know. I get it's delicate but I'm sure it happens a lot more often than what we think..." Jane squeezed her friend's hand tightly. She was shaking but she wanted to be supportive. She had to. "I didn't know you were seeing someone. Oh it wasn't planned, was it? It just happened out of the blue, right? I get it, now."

Yet Jane was surprised. Very surprised, even in shock. Of course, means of contraception weren't 100% effective but she didn't see Maura as being a collateral victim of it. Her friend was a control freak. It absolutely didn't fit.

"It isn't an accident, Jane. It was... It is planned. Everything is planned." Maura shrugged and rolled her eyes as tears of joy made her vision blurry. "I'm going to be forty years old. It's now or never. I'm ready for this."

The speech she had spent so much time preparing was finally coming to the surface. Sadly it looked more like an incomplete puzzle jigsaw than a real and beautiful statement. Maura's brain had shut down and only bits of these wonderful sentences she had learned by heart now managed to pass her lips.

Her awkwardness had caught her back.

Jane leaned over the table. She cast a glance at the customers who were sitting next to her and Maura and lowered her voice to make sure that nobody would overhear what she was about to say.

"Are you telling me you've used some guy to get pregnant, Maura? I know you're just fine with one-night stands but this isn't what they're supposed to be about! It's so wrong."

"I haven't had sexual intercourse with anyone, Jane."

Jane heavily blushed as Maura's voice sounded loudly and clear in the cafe. Of course, it was the moment the music had chosen to stop playing. Jane swallowed hard and tried to not focus too much on her efforts to pass unnoticed. It was vain. She knew it.

"Then..."

"I have used a sperm donor, Jane. Three months ago, I finally took the decision to go through the whole IVF process... I chose someone's sperm and I followed the medical procedure. The IVF worked out." Maura gave her friend a shrug. "The pregnancy test came back positive. I'm going to have a child and I'm going to need you by my side. Will you come with me to the first ultrasound picture? I have an appointment on Monday, at 9.30am."

Jane remained still. She was unable to speak. As a matter of fact, she could barely breathe. The world hadn't stopped turning but her life had surely stopped making sense. She had received way too much information within the last minute. She felt lost and dizzy.

If she had had doubts about the power of words once, she could now easily say that it was true: words could hurt a lot more than gestures. Because it was exactly what she now felt. Pain. She could see Maura's excitement but she couldn't reach it herself.

She wanted to share the joy that made Maura's eyes glimmer but she couldn't. A strong sentiment of betrayal had passed underneath her skin to go tighten an icy grip on her heart. She didn't understand anything anymore.

"Why did you keep it for yourself? It's not the kind of stuff we're supposed to hide from our friends. Even less from our best friends."

The sharpness of the remark took Maura aback. She hadn't anticipated such reaction. She had fantasized about a thousand scenarios but at no moment had she assumed that Jane could take it badly. Yet now that she was facing it, Maura had to admit that Jane's reaction was somewhat fair. And logical.

"I..."

"Don't you trust me?" Jane's voice broke. She stared at Maura for long seconds, unable to add the slightest thing. The quiet lump that had formed in her throat began to hurt too much. She stood up rather violently as the first tears ran down her cheeks. She felt humiliated, and terribly empty. "How... How can you ask me to be part of the whole thing when you hid it from me in the first place?"

Jane left with a quietness that frightened Maura. Alone at her table, she watched how her friend walked to the door with her head bowed to hide her tears behind a curtain of dark curls.

It wasn't how it had to go.

"Do you want the muffin?" With all the discretion in the world, the waitress looked at Maura. She was holding a plate with a small chocolate muffin in it. "She ordered it."

Maura gave the employee a nod. She was anything but hungry yet food had always been comforting when things didn't turn out the way she expected them to.