Excerpt from The Almost Sisters by Joshilyn Jackson, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Yes. Yes I had, I remembered with a whole-body shame flush. I'd worn them both, laughing like an Arkham-level maniac astride him.

In the morning I was dog-sick and alone. He'd left a note on the pillow—You're amazing. Can't wait for the prequel—and a phone number with an area code that for sure was not Virginia. It was probably fake, and anyway, I was flying home to Norfolk in a couple of hours. I couldn't call and try to un-one- night- stand him with some legit dating. I'd thrown the note away, and with it any chance I had of finding him. Batman wasn't going to be a factor.

I got dressed, but I didn't go to Margot's office. I sat staring at a wall covered with smiling rabbits and baby deer in cotton candy colors. The raccoons all looked so smug, like they were laughing at me.

And why not? Unplanned pregnancy is tragic when the mom is a kid herself, but at my age some elements of comedy crept in. Shouldn't I by now know better than to drag an anonymous Batman back to my room by his utility belt? Shouldn't I at the very least understand the proper workings of a condom? People might not say it to me, but they'd say it to each other. They would think it at me, really loud.

And my parents! I dropped my face into my hands, cringing at the thought of their reaction. They were suburban Methodists, both originally from very small towns, the poster couple for conventional. I could picture my mother tutting and hand-wringing, while my stepdad, Keith, stood awkwardly behind her, trying to give me money. Plus, telling Keith was tantamount to telling Rachel, and that would be the worst.

My stepsister had never had a fender bender, much less an accident involving reproduction. She had made herself a family in perfect order, as if it were as simple as a playground song: First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Rachel with a baby carriage. I couldn't even get step one right.

The last thing I wanted was for Rachel to know that I had fetched up pregnant. She would be so irritatingly sorry for me. She would make excuses for me to our parents. We can't blame Leia, I could hear her saying. She must be so lonely. Otherwise she'd never have engaged in such a desperate, tawdry incident with an unfindable Batman. And the worst part was, she would genuinely be trying to help me. Rachel always helped me, sometimes so relentlessly that I wished I had a safe word.

There was a quick tap at the door, and Margot stuck her head back in.

"Do you have your pants on? You've been in here a while," she said.

Behind her, through the open doorway, I could hear children playing in the waiting room. Little piping voices. The bang of plastic toys and thumpy feet. I had barreled through that crowd of small, sniffling humans and their mothers on my way in. It was all mothers, though presumably each child had a father. Someplace. I had barely noticed the children, eager to get back here and let Margot correct the home kit's obvious mistake. But I heard them now.

Through the thin wall, in the room next door, a baby burst into a noisy squalling, rich with outrage. My head tilted toward the sound.

"What's wrong with the baby?" I asked.

Margot shrugged, tucking the ends of her jet-black bob behind her ears. "Poor little 'roo, he's getting vaccinations."

She came all the way in to close the door, but I could still hear him. He sounded so affronted. Thirty seconds ago he'd been as innocent as the pink rabbits on the wallpaper. He hadn't even known that things could hurt. Someone should have warned him that the world had jabby things in it and that adults would stick them in his blameless thighs. On purpose.

But even as I thought it, he began to quiet. He must be in his mother's arms, being bobbled and soothed, already forgetting. A real, live human baby. I put one hand on my belly. It felt soft, a little rounder than I would have liked, no different from usual. Yet inside, secretly, it was not the same. In the mortifying shock of being pregnant, I hadn't thought about getting a baby. But that was pregnancy's endgame, after all.

Excerpted from The Almost Sisters by Joshilyn Jackson. Copyright © 2017 by Joshilyn Jackson. Excerpted by permission of William Morrow. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.