It wasn’t Cristina who announced her pregnancy; it was her ginger ale. An unassuming, detonated bomb resting on the table between us, exactly where a glass of Sancerre should have been.
It was at that dinner that I knew, my heart tender and bruised after our third round of IVF, my body reeling from a miscarriage just days earlier, but weeks would pass before she’d say it aloud. After living so many stages of our lives alongside each other—college suitemates, magazine colleagues, the free-for-all that is being 20-something single women in New York City—Cristina’s path and mine had reached the sharpest of forks. Our divergence, though, was made in silence.
And so began a new phase in our relationship, a complicated dance that shifted between revealing and withholding, between just tell me already and please, whatever you do, don’t say it out loud.
The night Tim and I went over for dinner a few weeks later, Cristina texted to say she wasn’t planning on drinking, but wondered if she should get a bottle of wine for us. Of course I’m fucking drinking, I thought bitterly; under normal circumstances that would have gone without saying. But I responded cheerfully. Yes! Probably. If you guys aren’t though, don’t worry about it, we’ll pick stuff up. She was wearing a roomy T-shirt and oversized cardigan when she opened the door a few hours later, and as I tried to steal secret glances at her tummy, I felt certain that this would be the night. Instead, I swallowed chunks of pork and potatoes and made conversation, awaiting an announcement that never came. Maybe she was waiting for me? I wondered, but I wouldn’t push her to reveal before she was ready.
There was no girls trip or wine night that could’ve offered what I really longed for from the women in my life back then—a willingness to make themselves uneasy on my behalf. To acknowledge—even tacitly—the truth of our paradoxical situations, and of the uncomfortable discord between them. To sit inside the honest, shitty moments we both wanted to crawl out of. I remember an afternoon driving around upstate with my childhood friend Jessie, when she was barely starting to show, and I was steeling myself for the next round of fertility treatment. We talked and caught up—How are you doing? How are you feeling? All the usual stuff—but there was something deliberate in the way we answered, as honestly as compassion would allow. She, careful not to heighten my pain; I, mindful not to blunt her joy.
It wasn’t necessarily an outright admission I was looking for from my pregnant friends, but something looser. Do you see this? I needed to know. How unfair it all is? That I’m suffering in the precise way that you are thriving? Inside, I screamed for someone to recognize the unbearable pain of our inverted fortunes.
I arrived at our lunch first, opting to wait at the table instead of languishing by the hostess stand. Cristina showed up a few minutes later with an effusive hello and a flurry of tote bags and cold-weather gear, which she dismantled before collapsing into the seat across from mine. I was feeling particularly upbeat that Friday, our fourth IVF cycle was newly underway, my period arriving just in time to start up with our new doctor before the end of the year, and the current of optimism charging through me was stronger than it had been in months. “Hi,” I said excitedly, “this is so fun! I never have lunch with anyone anymore.” Cristina flashed all her teeth. “I know! It’s such a treat.”
We skimmed over our menus and exchanged top-line updates, eventually settling into a rhythm of conversation. It was then that Cristina asked how this new cycle was going. “I love our new doctor,” I began emphatically. “I feel really confident with him, switching was absolutely the right call. He texts and calls and is the one I see in the morning for monitoring, so he’s really hands-on and couldn’t be more different than the last guy, and I truly trust that he’s going to be able to help us.” Cristina was nodding happily. “That’s so great, Amy. And you knew it, you totally trusted your gut. And look, it’s already paying off.”
I remember expressing my good news, and the next thing I recall is her sharing her good news, though there must have been a segue in there somewhere; we couldn’t have jumped right from my IVF to her pregnancy. Maybe it was when I eventually dared to ask something open-ended, an innocuous, “What’s happening with you?” I don’t know whether it was because she was a few weeks further along, or that my clear-eyed enthusiasm about our new cycle made me appear happy and well enough to receive the information, but Cristina decided to go for it.
“Welllllll,” she drew out the word, staring down at her plate as she paused long enough for me to understand what was about to happen. “I’m pregnant!!!!” She was beaming. I gasped a little, heat rising to my cheeks.
“Oh my God, Cristina! That’s so exciting! When are you due?” Quickly, the details began to tumble, and as I listened, I felt myself unclench; the anticipation was over, though what replaced it wasn’t much better. Hearing her excitement in sharing her due date, how sick she’d been feeling, that she’d know the gender in a week or so—I found it hard to stay in my seat. To endure the knowledge that she had been handed everything I wanted—and so quickly. They’d only been trying for a couple of months. I have no idea what my face looked like, but I did my best to smile, nod, ask questions, muster up every bit of what I was capable of giving as a friend.
Outside the restaurant, we said goodbye beneath snowflakes that had just started meandering to the ground. “Thank you for telling me,” I said, trying to convey the weight of my words through the pressure of our embrace. “Oh my God, of course!” she replied. “Thank you for being excited for me.”
As we parted ways, walking down the sidewalk in the direction of our own distinct futures, it struck me that those words were only partially true. She had almost certainly dreaded sharing her news with me, just as I’d dreaded hearing it. But there we were, relieved at having finally acknowledged it all the same.
Buried deep inside the ache of it all, there was shame—at the ugliness of my envy, my unbecoming hope that a friend would dim her own light, tamp down her own joy. Yet I’d like to think such a thing simply offers another way to shine. Rather than the lit-from-within beam of pregnancy, that primal incandescence, what if the thing that radiated was a softer, quieter glow. What if it became a beacon for those of us lost in the dark.
Excerpt adapted from You May Feel a Bit of Pressure by Amy Gallo Ryan, published by Unsolicited Press. © 2025 Amy Gallo Ryan. Reprinted with permission from Unsolicited Press.