Tonight I know the taste of panic. It’s bitter metallic, welling up in my throat like morning sickness. No matter how many times I swallow, it doesn’t go away. Even all the liquor in this hotel room can’t drown it. A small bottle of tequila later, the realizations are just tasting worse than ever:

I’m having a baby.

In seven months.

With Nick.

Suddenly everything I’ve discovered with him doesn’t matter. All these emotions that I explore like a dark continent, vast and beautiful and mysterious. The freedom of finally becoming American. This thing called love. Because maybe I can’t trust everything I’ve discovered with him. No wait, just say it Nooshin — maybe you can’t trust him. The panic grinds my heart into doubts, and I hate myself for feeling this way. I hate myself for all of it.

I don’t feel very brave tonight, the kind of brave you need to feel when your brand-new American boyfriend gets you pregnant, when your very husband and in-laws still consider you their property, when your family wants to kill you to restore their honor, when you obsess to the point of vomiting about having no money and no car and no degree and no options.

I keep asking myself, is this really what Nick wants to choose, and so quickly? I know what he’d say, because he said it once before — he loves me. What more reassurance do I need, right? But I keep staring at this bare finger, still faintly indented by Saman’s grandmother’s wedding ring. That was my guarantee Saman would do exactly what was expected of a traditional Iranian husband. Nothing more, but also nothing less. The only connection binding Nick to me is this baby. He could leave me without even looking over his shoulder, just like he does every time we move across this map of Mexico. He’s a man in ceaseless motion, bent to his master plan, traveling light. Someday he’ll wake up and realize he’s with me — me, a stupid mooning girl — and vanish into my past.

There’s a painful relief in thinking he’ll dump me, in worrying myself into the bone-deep conviction that it’s just a matter of time. I don’t feel worthy of his love. I can’t live up to it, the same way I obviously couldn’t live up to the expectations of my family. The same way I couldn’t even keep my husband and in-laws satisfied.

Nick needs to find someone as wonderful as he is. A girl bound for glory of some kind. A girl who plays hard to get. A girl nothing like me. Because I can’t let him throw his life away on me. I just can’t.