Awake (Reflections Book 3)

by A. L. Woods

  And it was a mystery, my own, anyway. I’d been on the pill for ten years. I just had my period two weeks ago, albeit a light one, but there was still enough blood to justify a tampon. I’d done the heating pad and Advil routine. How the fuck was this possible?

  “What happened?” I heard Dougie ask Penelope on the other side of the door.

  “I don’t know. She’s been in there for a while,” Pen replied with a huff. I could almost see her chewing on the corner of her lip through the bathroom door, concern drawing her brows together. “I think she’s sick.”

  “Sean’s in the truck with Chris. I’ll go get him,” he offered. I imagined him scraping a hand over his face. I heard the floorboard creak as he stepped back, the motion making my blood run cold.

  “Do not get Sean!” I yelled. “I’m fine. It’s just the sushi.” There had to be a logical explanation for this. Maybe the test was a dud. I knew that happened sometimes, right?

  My friends fell quiet, and I knew they were doing that annoying thing of theirs where they exchanged looks and read each other’s minds. After another minute of silence, Dougie said, “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure. Go,” I urged. “You said you’d take Chris to the park after the Sox game was over.” I forced a laugh, but inwardly, I found none of this particularly funny. I didn’t think the kid would be able to tell if he didn’t make it to the park or not, but in my newfound allegiance to a one-year-old, it was the principle.

  “All right,” Dougie said, his tone taking on something akin to disbelief. “We’re taking off.”

  His footfalls drifted away from the powder room door, and I heard Penelope call back at him. “Don’t forget Christopher’s hat, it’ll keep the sun out of his eyes.”

  “Okay, Penny.” His voice faded.

  “Did you put on his sunscreen?” she called, earning no response. “Dougie?” Paranoia had her taking off after him. I used my small window of opportunity to flush the toilet, pull up my pants, and once more eyeball the dangerous pathogen contained inside of the pregnancy test.

  After washing my hands, I picked up the iPhone Sean got me for my birthday last September that I’d ditched on the edge of the bathroom counter. The phone was an over-glorified indulgence I hadn’t particularly felt was necessary, but he refused to take it back. I think he just liked the idea that he could FaceTime me when he needed reassurance that I hadn’t up and left again spontaneously—not that he ever came right out and said that.

  The background niggling worry was my fault; I couldn’t blame him.

  Not that I planned on ever doing that again, but this test was certainly kicking my fight-or-flight instincts into overdrive. Snapping a photo of both the legend on the box and the pregnancy test, I locked the phone and slid it into my back pocket. Then, with shaking hands, I wrapped the pregnancy test in the toilet paper and dropped it into the wastebasket—the weight dropping it to the bottom with a soft ‘thump’—and concealed it with the other trash.

  I would deal with the results later. There had to be a reason for this that wasn’t, you know…the P word. After doing the soap-and-water routine, I folded the thin cardboard box the pregnancy test had come in and tucked it into my other pocket. I’d take this piece of evidence home with me. Scurrying into Penelope and Dougie’s kitchen, I made it back to my bag, which I’d deposited earlier on one of the wishbone-style chairs, shoving the box inside it just as Penelope appeared in the kitchen threshold.

  “Dougie has to stop underestimating how harmful the sun’s rays are,” she said, her sigh eating up the silence.

  My throat worked the lump that threatened to strangle me. “You’re being paranoid,” I offered on a croak.

  Penelope scowled at me, then wandered over to their kitchen table, currently covered in tufts of organza, chiffon, and silk in different shades of red sprawled next to a bunch of wedding magazines. “You just wait and see what happens if you ever decide to have a kid. It changes you,” she said, settling gracefully in a chair, peering at her laptop where she had assembled a mood board for their impending nuptials.

  My shoulders jerked. Could she tell? No, that was crazy.

  My stomach dropped to my feet like I was on a high-speed rollercoaster. Gagging, I slapped a hand to my mouth, willing my reflexes to relax. Penelope’s expression softened, her lips turning downward. “Jeez, that sashimi really got you, huh?”

  Sure, let’s continue to blame the sashimi.

  Things would change if that test was right. I didn’t want things to change. I liked things how they were. My life was better than I could have ever imagined. Sean had opened a second Connie’s location and was looking at opening another in Boston next year. I’d signed another book deal with my publisher. We both had too much going on, and too many things to still explore. No, I couldn’t have a baby. Besides, I would be a horrible mother. I wasn’t bred for this; I didn’t know the first thing about being anyone’s mother. Mine had been shit; I hadn’t even spoken to her in a year and a half—I had no wisdom to impart a child. Plus, Sean and I had never really had the baby talk… but I knew how he felt, even if he’d never mentioned it.

  The thought made my body wobble, a blanket of sweat pebbling on my forehead. When did it get so hot in here? I stared at a golden lock of Pen’s hair caught in the breeze coming from the vent, but it did nothing to chill my nerves.

  That test was wrong. It just had to be. The pill was ninety-one percent effective, and while I wouldn’t question my fiancé’s sperm count or virility, the universe wouldn’t play such a cruel and sick joke on me.

  I couldn’t be a mom, but if I was pregnant…fuck. Paul was going to kill me if anything interfered with making my deadline on my second book. I’d already gotten half my advance and used it as a down payment on a brand-new Jeep Cherokee at Sean’s insistence, even though I rarely left the house on my own. He wanted to make sure that I could make it through town safely when the snow came in the event I needed to go out. His paranoia was on par with Pen’s. It was hard to remember which one of us was the writer with the wild imagination.

  Eyeballing Penelope’s apron sink, I tried to determine if I was going to make it to the bathroom or needed to expunge my lunch in Pen’s shiny kitchen sink. God, why had we gone for sushi? Soy sauce would burn upon being regurgitated. More importantly, what possessed me to take that stupid test now?

  Right, because I expected it to be negative. I was so confident; I didn’t even bother to consider a possibility existed where it would be positive. I’d plodded into the bathroom with a certainty coursing through my veins that the test would come out negative, and I could go back to not worrying about such trivial things. That I could pass off how odd I’d been feeling lately to writing-related stress. A small niggling and incessant voice in the back of my mind told me to take the test now because the sensations in my body as of late were things I’d never experienced before. An ache in my breasts that hadn’t dissipated after my period, a queasy stomach, and an unexplainable brain fog that left me struggling to remember where I left my car keys or using my calculator app to make a phone call. I had recalled that Penelope mentioned that when she was pregnant, it felt as though she was observing herself from outside her body, and that was how I’d felt lately, as if I was watching myself in a film, but not always actively taking part.

  I almost didn’t want to give my thoughts too much energy in fear it might come to be true. There was still a good chance that I was just fatigued and stretched too thin, but…pregnant? No.

  And if I was, the very notion left my skin pallid, ignited a tremble in my legs, and made my palms perspire. “Maybe you should sit down,” Penelope suggested.

  That might help. I drew in a sharp breath through my nose, blowing it out through my parted lips. Dropping my weight into the chair next to Penelope’s, I gave her a tacit nod that she took as her green light to launch into what I knew was going to be a very passionate speech about the spread of fabric materials in front of her. She turned her laptop in my
direction, pointing out a table arrangement and the decorated chairs. Her wedding was still a few months away, but she wanted all the details finalized so she could concentrate on getting back into shape, although in my opinion, she looked great.

  Great, but different. Her body had changed. She’d always been sylph-like, delicate comparable to a piece of porcelain, which had always struck me as ironic because no one could throw down in a mosh pit like Pen previously could. Now, defined curves existed where they hadn’t before. Her breasts were fuller, her hips wider. Would my body change, too? I tried to imagine myself pregnant, but I drew a blank. I was too young to remember Pauline pregnant with Holly Jane.

  Beyond my ma’s refusal to adapt to motherhood, I couldn’t remember the physical changes she experienced. Maybe she had hidden it well, or her body just snapped back into shape. Maybe genetics would mean I was the same?

  What the fuck was I thinking? I wasn’t pregnant. Maybe if I said it enough times, the law of attraction or whatever would make it so. That was how that new age bullshit worked. Believe it and you can will it into existence.

  While Penelope prattled on, holding up the organza like Yorick’s skull from Hamlet, I slid my phone free from my back pocket, unable to provide her with my undivided attention while the burden of the results plagued my mind.

  A brick sank into my gut as I confronted the text message I’d felt come in ten minutes ago from Sean.

  Dougie said you’re not feeling well?

  Dougie, that fucker. He couldn’t keep that detail to himself? At least he waited to tell my fiancé until after they left. Gritting my teeth, I unlocked the phone with the four-digit code, zero-seven-zero-nine—the month and year Sean and I got back together. The pin code served as another reminder that a kid would ruin things.

  Our relationship was better than I could have ever imagined it would be when I walked into the Heritage Park house that day. We had spent the last year bettering ourselves and working on our relationship, building our life as we now knew it together. We were on the same page about a majority of things, save for my belief that maple syrup deserved to be in its own food group. We both concentrated on our careers, exchanging anecdotes in the evening. He came home smelling like fried dough, caked in flour and sugar, sporting a satisfied smile on his face that could only be attributed to his contentment. I watched him cook nightly from my spot at the island, ’cause even though he had been on his feet all day, he didn’t trust me at the stove. For good reason, but I won’t get into that. I was the first taste tester for all his new menu ideas, and he reviewed my writing for the day, taking the role of my first alpha reader. He melded his strong, naked body against mine a couple of nights a week and dropped a kiss on my lips with no regard for my morning breath when he left before sunrise in the morning to get to the restaurant. And even now, he drew me next to him most nights, his arm circled tight around my waist, the tip of his nose grazing my jawline—breathing me in, as though to confirm that this was real and not a dream.

  We had fallen into a steady, comfortable flow in life that I didn’t want to risk compromising. A baby guaranteed to interfere with all of that.

  Shit, I had a beer last night. Would that give the…what was it—an embryo?—fetal alcohol poisoning? Was that how this worked? And the cigarettes…I narrowed my gaze toward the bottom of my handbag, where I knew a crumpled packet rested.

  I would have to give those up, too. I think sushi was a no-go, too. Wait, why did I care? I wasn’t pregnant.

  The phone vibrated in my hand, another message appearing in the dropdown.

  Hemingway?

  I dismissed the second message from Sean at the same time Penelope probed me with a question while fingering the delicate fabrics in front of her. “Now, do you think the organza would look better fastened around the chairs, or the chiffon?” I offered her a noncommittal response as she held up the material to the pot lights. I opened the photo library on my phone instead.

  “Do you have an opinion?” Penelope asked, but I ignored her, thumbing my way over to the photo with the test results. I fought my anxiety and the way my breathing quickened in my chest. Did one line mean pregnant or two? Using my thumb and forefinger, I attempted to zoom in closer to the photo on my phone. Fuck, my hands had been shaking too hard when I’d taken the photo and I couldn’t tell with the way the image blurred.

  “I’m thinking that rather than you and Sean escorting Christopher with the rings, we’ll hire a party princess,” Penelope said.

  “That’ll be cool,” I agreed, sliding the screen right to look at the photo with the legend again. Two lines meant pregnant. Why couldn’t I remember that long enough before my brain blipped?

  “And we’re going to walk down the aisle to the Imperial March.”

  I swiped left, back to the photo of the of the test. “I love that idea.” The second line was faint. Maybe that meant I was only kind of pregnant.

  Kind of pregnant, Raquel? You can’t be “kind of” pregnant, moron.

  “You know what? I’ve changed my mind about the lilac dress. You’re going to wear a taffeta pumpkin-orange ballgown because I know how much you love orange.”

  “Okay, that’s fine.” Why were these tests so poorly designed? I shouldn’t have bought the on-sale test. They were probably on clearance because they had passed their expiration date. Could pregnancy tests expire? I think they could. Was it legal to sell defective tests? Did I have a lawsuit on my hands? I’d have to confirm with Maria. Instilling this kind of fear in consumers had to be an offense worth suing over.

  “We also decided this will be an alcohol-free event.”

  Actually, I shouldn’t have bought this at all. This anxiety was borderline crippling.

  I grimaced as I zoomed in closer, trying to get a better look. Fuck, that was a second line.

  “Are you even listening to me?” Penelope slammed her palm down on the table. “What is so interesting on your phone that you can’t give me your undivided attention?”

  “What?” I asked, looking up from the small screen, my eyes meeting hers.

  Penelope moved so fast I didn’t have time to act. One minute, she was in her seat. The next, she reached forward, snatching my phone from my hand. I lurched toward her, but she drew back, the chair she was sitting in dragging across the floor.

  “What could be more important than helping your best friend finalize her wedding details?” she demanded, squinting at the zoomed-in photo. She pinched her fingers inward on the screen, shrinking the image.

  The kitchen got so quiet; I was certain I could hear the distinctive crack of a baseball bat hitting a ball at the diamond four blocks over. “Kell.” Penelope’s eyes practically bugged out, her mouth popping open. “Is this...yours?”

  I didn’t speak, but my silence was all the confirmation she needed. “Oh my God.” She scraped her chair back further and stood. “Kell, this is amazing.”

  Amazing? This was a fucking nightmare!

  Blanching, I buried my face in my palms, groaning. I couldn’t be pregnant. I just couldn’t.

  “What am I going to do?” I whined. “I can’t be pregnant.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t be pregnant?” she asked, sounding incredulous. “This is a positive test.”

  Folding my arms on top of each other on the kitchen table, I leaned forward, burying my face. “This is a disaster.”

  “Disaster?” Penelope laughed. “Christopher is going to have a playmate!”

  Great. I was potentially giving birth so that the adorable menace of our group would have someone to entertain him.

  “Why are you hiding your face?” she asked, settling back into her chair and sliding closer to me to drape an arm over my shoulders. She smoothed my hair out with her free hand. “This is wonderful news!”

  “Pen, I can’t be a mom. I just can’t.”

  “I think it’s too late for the can’ts, that ship has sailed.”

  I lifted my head enough to shoot her a look of hell, no
t missing the implication. I’d teased her once that she wanted to appear virginal when she broke the news to her parents about being pregnant.

  How the mighty had fallen. “Maybe it’s wrong,” I suggested, acknowledging the fleeting brush of hope that bloomed in my chest. These things were wrong all the time; nothing was infallible.

  Not even birth control, apparently.

  “Doubtful,” she said with easy amusement, tilting her head while observing my phone, pinching her fingers against the screen.

  “You’re taking this very well, considering how I reacted to your pregnancy, you know,” I said, my voice muffled. The air was hot in the cavern I’d created with my arms.

  “I love babies,” she said with a dreamy sigh. “Even after giving birth, to watch a human that’s fifty percent you, fifty percent your partner, experience the world through fresh eyes…there’s really nothing like it. I’m excited for you.”

  “Thanks.” Although I felt anything but grateful. Actually, I was going to be sick.

  “Have you told Sean?” she asked.

  I shook my head, making an indiscernible sound.

  Penelope drew in her breath. “Wait, is that what you were doing in the bathroom?”

  My nod was faint, but it was enough for her to stand up again. “Okay, where is it?”

  I turned my head to look at her, my face feeling flushed. “What do you mean, ‘where is it?’”

  “The test. What did you do with it?” she demanded with glee, bouncing on her toes as if she was warming up to take part in the Boston Marathon.

  I cocked my head toward the bathroom. “Trash bin.”

  Pen darted out of the kitchen, her footfalls loud against the floors. It dawned on me then—rather belatedly—what she was about to do. “Don’t fish it out of the trash, Pen, that’s gross!”

  But Pen didn’t care about that inconsequential detail. She dug it out of the trash and returned, presenting it to me on her kitchen floor, where we hovered above it with curious eyes.