by Amy Pine
Now that she had both the time and the inclination—so much inclination—she was also having what was quite possibly morning sickness. Very-early-in-the-morning sickness.
After two minutes she dropped to the floor, appropriately falling into her favorite, most relaxing yoga position—Child’s Pose.
“You’re not pregnant.” She used her soothing voice that was a poor imitation of her yoga teacher’s.
Her phone started blasting “This Is Me” from The Greatest Showman soundtrack, which meant the five minutes was up.
Alissa gasped and jumped up to silence the timer, but she was suddenly in much less of a hurry than when she’d walked back through her front door.
Her phone chirped with a text notification.
It was Gabi.
Boarding the plane at Heathrow. Summer was amazing. Can’t wait to see you. Taking an Uber home so no one fights over who gets to pick me up—meaning you and Dad. ALSO, I HAVE NEWS! I met someone. Can’t wait for you to meet him! Love you! See you soon!
Love you too! she texted back, then winced.
Gabi met someone. In Europe. And she was bringing him home?
Oy. Talk about timing.
Alissa might have some news of her own. Some crazy, unexpected, what-do-I-do-now kind of news. But it was not the kind of thing you put in a text.
She stepped slowly and carefully toward the open master bathroom door, as if the way she walked could influence the results.
“Not pregnant,” she chanted in a whisper. “Not pregnant. Not pregnant. Not—”
There they were, a half-moon of sticks lining the sink, ready to reveal her future.
All she had to do was pick one up and look.
* * *
There was something about sitting with her legs in the stirrups at the ob-gyn’s office that made Alissa wistful for her pregnancy with Gabi.
Oh, who was she kidding? It made her afraid she would fart like she did the first time she tried the Plow Pose in her yoga class.
A short staccato knock sounded on the exam room door. Before Alissa had a chance to say Come in, the handle turned, and Alissa’s little sister, Becca—Dr. Becca Weiland—entered, chart in hand.
“You know,” Alissa said. “Some women have siblings who work in retail and give them free clothes or discounts on high-end fashion.”
“And you’re disappointed that I don’t?” her sister asked.
“On the contrary. I’m happy I finally get to cash in on my lifetime supply of free gynecologist appointments.” She batted her lashes dramatically and gave her sister a coy smile.
Becca crossed her white-coated arms over her chest. Her straight brown hair was pulled into a neat ponytail, and Alissa instinctively patted down her wild mane of waves. There she was, her perfect baby sister—perfect hair, perfect job, perfect husband and children. Alissa wasn’t proud of being envious of someone she loved so much, but sometimes it was hard not to compare. Not that Alissa regretted how her life had turned out. It just often looked like Becca’s path might have been easier. Yet had Alissa’s path veered in any other direction, there would be no Gabi. And Gabi was her everything.
Okay, Gabi used to be her everything, but now there was very likely another something growing inside of her, and Alissa needed to be 100 percent sure before she figured out what to do next.
“You do not get a lifetime supply of free appointments. Before-hours appointments when my kids and husband are still snug in their beds—like right now—sure. Though it would have been nice if you’d brought us coffee.” Becca raised a brow. “Also I still have to submit this to insurance. You know that, right? I could lose my license otherwise.”
“Family discount, at least?” Alissa asked. “I may need to come back soon.”
Becca narrowed her eyes. “You can at least tell me why you woke me at five a.m. in desperate need of a pelvic ultrasound, especially when you usually see one of my partners for your annuals. And so help me if you even mention googling your symptoms…”
Alissa waved her off. “Bex, please. You were up and on the treadmill.” She looked her sister up and down, Becca’s compression leggings not remotely hidden by her white coat. “And I couldn’t quite call one of your partners at five in the morning, could I? So for today I’m making an exception.”
Her sister crossed her arms. “Fine. I was up. But now Jeff has to dress Grayson and McKenzie for kindergarten, which means they’ll come home looking like either hoboes or pirates.”
Alissa laughed. “Grayson’s still on the eye-patch kick, huh?”
Becca winced. “I want to encourage his creativity, but it messes with the poor kid’s depth perception. He walks into a lot of walls. Anyway, you’re stalling. Why are we here, Liss? You said you were okay, but—are you sick? Do you think you’re sick?”
Alissa shook her head slowly. She wasn’t ready to say the thing out loud. That would make it real, and real meant dealing with the thing—like telling the father and making decisions, and Alissa wasn’t ready for decisions. “Don’t I do ultrasounds for my annual?”
“Nope,” Becca said. “And your annual was six months ago. Try again.”
Alissa pursed her lips. “I—uh—do biannuals now? And I heard ultrasounds are good to add as you approach forty.”
“Where did you hear this?”
Alissa shrugged. “I didn’t google,” she lied. “I just—I hear stuff. At yoga. At the bakery. I figure ultrasounds are going to be my new thing, and I want to squeeze it in before Gabi gets home. Sadie’s opening the bakery, so this seemed like the best time.”
Becca pursed her lips. “I still think it’s weird that Matthew’s sister is your assistant. You don’t? I mean, of all the burgeoning pastry chefs in all of Chicagoland, you had to go and choose her?”
Sadie was great. Sadie was super talented with fondant. Sadie was—her ex’s little sister, but in the six months they’d worked together since Alissa opened Take the Cake, there’d been no awkwardness between them.
Now everything was about to get super awkward. Sadie just had no idea.
Ugh. Why had she even brought up Sadie’s name? Now Becca had invoked Matthew’s name, which meant Alissa was thinking about Matthew while in the stirrups, which brought her back to when they’d found out she was carrying Gabi.
“Sadie’s good at what she does,” Alissa protested. “Plus, she and I have always stayed friends, despite…you know.”
Becca laughed. “Despite Matthew knocking you up in high school, divorcing you before Gabi was in kindergarten, and living his best drifter life since?”
“Matthew is really good at his job, and sometimes that job takes him to far-off places. Also I filed for divorce,” Alissa reminded her sister, as if that was any sort of win. Matthew had signed the papers without any objections. She groaned. “But yeah. Despite all that.”
Matthew was an environmentalist, working mostly with things that grew, like trees. He’d worked on projects as far away as Asia and as close as California, never staying in any one place too long. His whole save-the-world vibe was one of the reasons she fell in love with him more than twenty years ago—and the reason she let him go soon after.
Becca traced a circle in the air with her index finger, then pointed it straight at Alissa, zapping her out of her walk down painful memory lane.
“Fibroids? Bubbe Rivkah had those, right? An ovarian cyst?”
Alissa rolled her eyes. “No. Yes. And no.”
Her palms were starting to sweat. Her paper gown itched. And her stomach—oh God, she was going to—
“Trash can!” Alissa yelled.
“What?” Becca asked.
Alissa covered her mouth with one hand and pointed emphatically at the trash can on the floor with the other.
Becca’s eyes widened, and she tore the lid off the can and handed it to Alissa.
Alissa emptied the contents of her stomach into the bin—without her ankles falling out of the stirrups. She figured she deserved some kind of an award
for such a feat, but instead all she got was her sister’s wide-eyed, slack-jawed stare and her offer of a box of tissues.
Alissa wiped her mouth and forced a smile. “Surprise? Also, you wouldn’t happen to have any white chocolate Reese’s, would you?”
Becca gasped. “You’re pregnant? Ho-ly shit! Of all the things you’d call me in for, I did not think it was a geriatric pregnancy. I didn’t even know you were dating!”
Alissa gasped right back. “Technically, I’m not dating. And oh my God, geriatric?”
Becca laughed, then covered her mouth. “Sorry! It’s just a clinical term. Would you prefer advanced maternal age?”
Alissa’s mouth fell open. “Neither. I prefer neither.”
“That could have been me with the twins,” Becca said. “Luckily, the fertility treatments worked the first time around. It was still a high-risk pregnancy, though.”
“High risk?” Alissa’s voice rose an octave.
“Don’t worry. Things just change with age, but you’ve got me this time around.” Becca raised a brow. “Have you fainted yet?”
Alissa winced. “I thought you said things change with age. Plus aren’t all pregnancies different?”
Becca shrugged. “Pregnancy messed with your blood pressure once. It can do it again. I don’t know what your plan is for telling Mom—though I really hope I’m there when you do—but if you so much as get a dizzy spell, she’s gonna know.” Her sister tapped her index finger against her pursed lips, then let out a sigh. “Do I get to ask who the father is? It’s not that guy from the dating app, is it?”
Alissa gasped. “The one who asked if he could feel me up before I got in my car? Ew. No!”
Becca shrugged. “Creepy, but you gotta give the guy points for consent. Oh! What about that substitute yoga instructor we had last month…What was his name? He kept coming over to ‘help you with your form’?” She put finger quotes around the words. “You two were vibing for sure.”
“His name was Anton. And…vibing?” Alissa said.
“What?” Becca jutted out her chin. “I can pull off vibing. And you’re getting off topic. Please tell me you and Anton took your vibing off the yoga mat and into the bed. Let an old married woman live vicariously through you.”
Alissa snorted. “You’re five years younger than me. And you’ve been married for what, one more year than that? Please. You and Jeff are babies. And no. I did not sleep with Anton who, by the way, probably wasn’t a day over twenty-five, but I did buy that essential oil diffuser he mentioned in class, and now I can make my house smell like lemongrass anytime I want.”
“You’re stalling,” Becca said, accusation in her tone. “And so what if he was twenty-five. All the more reason to own the fact you vibed with him.” She raised her brows.
While she waited for Alissa to answer, Becca took the defiled trash bin from Alissa’s hands, reattached the lid, and set it outside the door.
Her sister was right. She hadn’t exactly thought this visit through other than getting medical confirmation that she was, in fact, pregnant. She desperately wanted to tell Becca everything, but it didn’t feel right telling her first.
“I can’t tell you,” Alissa said. “At least, not yet. I just want to be sure that I’m—you know—and then I need to let him know.”
Becca raised a brow. “Did you pee on a stick?”
Alissa nodded.
“Then you know. All this will do is maybe let us see the heartbeat, but it might be too early for that anyway. It depends on when you conceived. Do you know when you conceived?”
Alissa nodded and bit her lip.
“And you’re not going to tell me that either? Even as your doctor?” Becca added.
Alissa squeezed her eyes shut. “Bex, please. I’m not ready to answer questions yet. I just need to be sure.” She opened her eyes.
Becca sighed.
“I can do your initial blood work, give you an exam, and make sure everything’s working the way it should be working before we get to the fun stuff.” She sat down at the stool in front of Alissa. “But are you sure you want to do fun stuff without him—whoever he is?”
Alissa hesitated before nodding again. “Sure. Yeah. Let’s do this.” Her pulse quickened and for a second she thought she might actually faint, but the sensation passed as quickly as it came. What didn’t pass was the wave of guilt washing over her. Because the father wasn’t a random guy from an app or hot yoga instructor fifteen years her junior. And while Alissa’s—situation—was, in fact, the by-product of a one-night stand, her partner in said one-night stand would be at her house in a matter of hours.
Something fluttered in Alissa’s belly, and she threw her hand over her mouth.
“Oh God! Are you going to throw up?” Becca asked.
Alissa shook her head. It wasn’t that type of flutter. It felt more like—anticipation. Hope even, which made no sense. She was—excited? About a baby. At forty when her firstborn was a college graduate. Something in her brain did not compute. Still, when she lowered her hand to her belly, she bit her lip and felt as if she was on the verge of a smile.
Until she thought of the father, who didn’t know. What if…what if he wanted to be a part of this? She scoffed, and her sister raised a brow.
“Are you having a conversation in your head that I’m not a part of?” Becca asked.
Alissa crossed her arms, a feeble attempt at defiance when one—her sister could read her like no one else could, and two—how defiant could one look while pantsless and in stirrups?
Becca cleared her throat. “Honey, you sound about as ready as the twins do when I tell them it’s time to go to the dentist for a cleaning. If you weren’t in a very compromising position right now, I’d expect you to hightail it into the waiting room and hide beneath a stack of chairs.” She gave Alissa a pitying laugh. “Of course in Grayson and Mckenzie’s scenario, it would be stuffed animals piled on top of them in the corner of their closet.”
“Yeah, right. Your closets are so Marie-Kondo-ed that I doubt there’s anywhere to hide.”
But Becca was right. It suddenly felt fifty shades of wrong to be taking this step without the father, even if Alissa had no idea what came next for either of them.
“How many tests did you take?” Becca added when Alissa neither confirmed nor denied her growing urge to flee.
Alissa winced. “How many brands are there?”
“Look, if you want to pee in a cup, I can verify your hormone levels, which will tell you what you already know from having peed on far too many sticks.” Becca sighed. “If we do this…” She held up a wand that looked like an old school game-show host’s microphone. “We might see something, and we might not. It could be too early for that. And while I’m not asking for a name, I just find that when there is a baby daddy in the picture, sometimes they like this part.”
“Way to exponentially multiply my guilt,” Alissa mumbled. She wanted visual confirmation of what she already knew to be true, but not now. Not without telling the father and at least giving him the option of being a part of this rather than assuming he wouldn’t want to be.
“You win,” Alissa finally said, holding out a hand as if to stop her sister from going any further. “Take that thing back to The Price Is Right.”
“Are you sure?” Becca’s eyebrows furrowed. “Or did I just guilt you into this?”
Alissa nodded. “No, you guilted me. But only because you’re right. Why are you always right? It’s why you’re the favorite.”
Her sister rolled her eyes. “Can I go home and finish my run now?” Then her expression softened. “As long as you’re okay. Are you—okay, Liss?”
She sighed. “I’m fine. Except for the extreme morning sickness and you using the term geriatric pregnancy. But you’re right. I can’t do this. Not until I tell the guy who accidentally fertilized me.”
“And you’re sure you don’t want to tell me?” her sister asked. “You know, me? The person to whom you tell everything?”<
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Alissa shook her head. “But if you’re taking guilt lessons from Mom, they’re working. Just give me twenty-four hours. And either you’ll see me back here just like this—all by myself. Or he’ll be here too.”
The only problem was that she didn’t know what would relieve her more, him saying yes or him saying no.
Chapter Three
Gabi stared out the window of her Uber driver’s SUV. She’d driven the 294 tollway dozens, if not hundreds, of times; but everything looked different today.
“Are you sure you don’t want to stop by my place first?” Ethan asked. “Put off reality for a little while longer?”
She turned to her fellow passenger. His impossible blue eyes still knocked the wind out of her, especially when he looked at her like that—like he knew exactly what she was thinking: that she still couldn’t believe they had to travel across an ocean to find each other when they only lived a twenty-minute drive apart.
But maybe he was right. Maybe they weren’t ready for the real world yet.
“Is this crazy?” she asked instead of answering his question. “This isn’t Ireland or Spain or Poland or any of the other places we met up.”
They’d spent three days together in Galway after that first night, not worrying—or discussing—anything other than the here and now.
“One rule we should both agree to…” she’d said when they’d left for their first excursion. “To keep either of us from getting attached when we know it can’t go any further than here…”
“What’s that?”
“None of that beginning-to-date stuff that feels like we’re interviewing to be each other’s spouses. Let’s not worry about where we’re from or how we ended up here or anything else like that. Let’s just enjoy the time we have while we have it.”
She held out her hand to shake, but when Ethan grabbed it, he tugged her toward him so they were chest-to-chest.
“No interviews,” he said. “As long as that means more of this.” And then he kissed her until her toes curled and her lips were swollen. The taste of him lingered on her tongue as they boarded a bus to the west coast to see MV Plassy, a merchant ship used in the 1950s that now lay rusted on the rocks of Galway’s beach. It was a photographer’s dream come true, and Gabi had a full memory card to prove it. Ditto for the Cliffs of Moher. It was as if he knew her so well that he’d staked out all the sites she’d wanted to see—and photograph—without her saying a word. But that was impossible, right? For the two of them to click so well—to fit together so seamlessly—that by the time she was hopping on a bus to Dublin, the thought of saying goodbye left an inexplicable ache in her gut.