The Bloom Girls

by Amy Pine

  When they reached the door to the bar, an awkward silence filled the space between them.

  “Thanks for not dying,” she blurted and immediately regretted her equally awkward departing words.

  Ethan laughed. “Thanks for making sure I wasn’t dead. I’m looking forward to our date.”

  She snorted—and regretted that too. “It’s not a date.” He was simply paying her back for doing exactly as he’d just said—making sure he wasn’t dead. She hadn’t come to Europe to date. These next two months were meant to satisfy her wanderlust, to build her portfolio so that she could get a steady, stable job once she got home, maybe apprenticing at an established portrait studio in the hope of one day opening her own. But dating? No, no, no, no, no. That was not on any of her lists or in any of her travel guides, and it certainly wasn’t something you did while traveling overseas for eight short weeks.

  So why did she sort of want it to be a date?

  “I asked you out,” Ethan said, pulling her out of her thoughts. “You said yes. If you show up, it’s a date.”

  She repositioned her bag on her shoulder and cleared her throat. “I don’t remember saying yes. So I guess we’ll have to wait and see if this date—that isn’t a date—actually happens. Goodbye, Ethan.”

  She spun on her heel and bit her lip as she sped around the corner and toward the hostel door.

  Once inside, she blew out a breath and waited several beats for her heart to stop racing and to make sure the goofy smile spreading across her face hadn’t taken up permanent residence.

  Then she headed up the stairs to find some dry clothes for what was not a date with a very handsome, reckless driver of an American bartender in Ireland.

  * * *

  Ethan came through on the free pint and even brought around a couple of appetizers for Gabi and the fellow tourists she’d met from her bus ride into town, but that was the extent of her interaction with the guy who nearly killed himself and then flirted with her on a rain-slicked street in Galway. Apparently when the hostel was filled to capacity, so was the pub—and then some. Plus there was a live Irish folk band, which was amazing but made it impossible for the two of them to do anything more than steal glances across the bar.

  She tried to ignore the little flip in her belly whenever they made eye contact. She would only be in Galway for a few days. And while her attraction to Ethan was undeniable, what was the point? Gabi hadn’t come to Ireland for romance. She came to drink Guinness, to bike along the Dingle Peninsula, and to kiss only the Blarney Stone. Crushing on a guy for a few days would be nothing more than that—a crush. She’d had them before and she would have them again. This wasn’t anything new—even though she hadn’t been able to take her eyes off him since she stepped foot into the pub.

  Ethan grinned at her as he slid three pints across the bar to waiting patrons, and there it was again—the flip and flutter that she hadn’t asked for but that continued to plague her just the same.

  She laughed even as her cheeks filled with heat. Yet despite the riot of activity in her stomach, her eyelids were growing increasingly heavy.

  She stayed as long as her exhaustion would let her, which was almost until midnight. But the need for sleep finally won out. She caught Ethan’s eye as she stood from her table, waved and mouthed Thank you.

  He was filling a pint and mouthed back what looked like What?

  So she formed the words again. Thank. You. For the pint. But I have to go.

  Again, he replied with a silent What?

  People near her were starting to stare at a conversation that was clearly going nowhere, so she rolled her eyes and gave him a vigorous wave and made her way to the door. He at least had to understand that.

  She’d see him again before she left. He was certainly easy enough to find. But the adrenaline of their earlier meeting had finally lost the fight with jet lag.

  Must. Sleep. Now.

  Once outside, the cool night air revived her enough to remind her that she’d never gotten her photo of the city street. She might have lost the glow of the setting sun, but the lights that shone down from under the roof now lit the stone building that housed the hostel and bar. She liked this shot even better.

  Gabi backed into the street, which was quiet. Not a car or weaving scooter in sight. She set the shutter speed and aperture to account for a low-light photo and lifted the camera to her eye. She pressed the button and waited for the satisfying clicking sound that meant she’d finally captured a reminder of her first day on what she hoped would be an amazing two-month journey.

  Click.

  She lowered the camera and sucked in a sharp breath. Because Ethan was standing five feet away, just out of frame.

  She dropped the camera into her bag.

  “Don’t you know it’s dangerous to stand in the middle of the street?” His voice was deeper than she’d remembered from earlier in the evening.

  She laughed, and this time more than butterflies danced in her belly. Her pulse quickened, and her throat tightened. Only hours ago this person had been a stranger she may or may not have inadvertently killed. Thank goodness it was the latter. But now he was making her lose control of functions like simply taking a steady breath.

  She reminded herself it was just a crush, but the rest of her body didn’t feel like listening to her brain.

  Gabi cleared her throat. “I do know this. I almost got taken out by an American who doesn’t know how to drive on the left-hand side of the street. But since said American is nowhere near a motor vehicle at the moment, I feel pretty safe.”

  Safe from getting run over by a moped, but alarm bells went off in her head the closer Ethan got.

  Humor. Deflection. She got that from her mom. She guessed it was how her mother survived teen pregnancy, marriage, and divorce before turning twenty-five. As much as she loved both her parents, they were a lesson in love not worth repeating.

  That was why Gabi had crushed plenty but never loved. That was why she craved stability. That was why this trip was her one and only foray into whimsy.

  Kissing this stranger could definitely be defined as whimsical. But what if Gabi felt something more?

  Ethan took a step toward her, the limp still there but no sign of pain on his face, only a nervous smile that she would guess mirrored her own.

  “I asked you to wait, and you still left,” he said. “So I’m probably an idiot for chasing after you, but—”

  “I thought you were saying what.” She crossed and uncrossed her arms, suddenly scared about why he wanted her to wait. “Because I was saying Thank you for the beer and food and—you chased after me?”

  He shrugged. “I’m a bit slower than usual on account of a slight fender bender I had earlier this evening. Took me a little longer.”

  Her heart hammered at his approach, and her mouth grew dry. She swallowed and took a steadying breath.

  He chased her.

  He hadn’t wanted her to leave.

  What if what he wanted was what she wanted? What then?

  “You never told me how you hurt your leg. Before today, I mean.” Even though she was stalling, she took a step forward, closing the gap between them so that if either moved an inch more, they’d be touching.

  Gabi wanted the two of them to be touching, but her brain begged her to play it safe. To chalk this feeling up to the delirium of jet lag because where minutes ago all she wanted was to flop face-first onto her hostel mattress, now all she could think about was how close her lips were to his and how the electricity thrumming through her defied all logic.

  “My knee,” he said.

  “What?” she blurted.

  He raised a brow. “You asked about my leg, and I was clarifying that it was my knee.”

  “Yes! Sorry. Guess I zoned out there for a second,” she said. “Tell me everything.”

  “Gabi…I didn’t chase after you to tell you my sob story.” He licked his bottom lip, and she swallowed.

  “Why—why did you?” she stam
mered, her eyes now fixed on both of his lips, her stomach growing tight.

  “Because you’re wildly attracted to me, and I figured you wanted to steal one last glance. It’s okay.” He crossed his arms. “I’ll give you a moment to really let the picture of me slinging beverages solidify in your mind’s eye.”

  She groaned. “Ever think you might be a little overconfident? Or ever think I might not be in Ireland or Europe or whatever to meet someone I’m wildly attracted to? Not that I am—attracted—I mean.” Smooth, Gabi. So smooth.

  “Ever think I might be hiding behind said confidence because I’m actually nervous as hell to tell you the real reason?”

  “Ethan?” she asked, knowing that if she followed where he wanted to lead, her perfectly planned trip for perfectly planned reasons would be perfectly tossed on its head.

  “Yeah?”

  She couldn’t not ask. “Why did you ask me to wait?”

  He blew out a steadying breath. “Because I was afraid if I didn’t, I might not see you again. And I really, really want to see you again, Gabi.”

  Heat spread from her cheeks to the very tips of her toes.

  “This doesn’t make any sense,” she said.

  He shook his head and moved closer.

  Gabi held her breath.

  Ethan dipped his head toward hers. “I think kissing you might be the only thing that makes sense to me right now.”

  She nodded. “I think you’re right.”

  He skimmed his fingers across her hairline. She’d ditched the ponytail tonight, and for a second she wondered what the damp air might be doing to her do. While she’d inherited her dad’s straight hair instead of her mother’s wild curls, there was only so much humidity a girl’s hair could take. But the moment his fingers came to rest on the back of her neck, she forgot that she had hair at all.

  She could feel where every one of his fingers touched her skin. And when his lips swept across hers, it was like she’d just gone over the edge of a roller coaster’s steepest drop. She wrapped her arms around his neck and smiled against him as she stood in the middle of a street in Ireland and kissed a guy she never would have met had he not almost run her off the road.

  Chapter Two

  Two Months Later

  Alissa Adler bolted upright in bed, disoriented when she saw that the clock read 3:00 a.m. At first she thought maybe her body clock had tuned in with her daughter Gabi’s arrival; like maybe after eight weeks of her not-so-little girl being gone, it knew Gabi had entered a nearby time zone. But Gabi was still ten hours away from landing, so why the hell had she woken up?

  She didn’t have to pee—shocking. And she’d taken the day off work for Gabi’s homecoming, so it wasn’t like she was late for the train.

  Then it hit her, a wave of nausea like she’d never experienced before. Okay, she’d experienced this—symptom—before, but not like this. Not waking herself from a perfectly good night’s sleep. She barely made it to the toilet in time to seriously lose her lunch. Or in this case, she guessed it was whatever was left of last night’s dinner.

  She hugged the bowl like it was a life vest, and at this point she was pretty sure it was.

  Her food poisoning theory had gone out the window when her symptoms persisted past two days. She’d thought maybe it was a virus, but there’d been no fever. Finally, now, she put two and two together. Her periods had been sporadic for months. Though at thirty-nine she still considered herself too young for the change, there really wasn’t any other explanation.

  She lay with her head on the bowl until she was sure nothing else was coming up, then flushed, pulled herself to her feet, washed her face and brushed her teeth before trudging back to her bed.

  This had been going on for two weeks already. None of her friends had started menopause yet, and she didn’t remember her mother complaining of nausea when she’d gone through it; then again, everyone’s hormones worked in different ways.

  She cleaned herself up, grabbed the ever-present hair tie from her wrist, and tamed her auburn curls the best she could into something resembling a nest on top of her head.

  “Time to check in with Dr. Google,” she said, flipping on the light to her room. She squinted at both her nightstands, piled high with books—everything from her favorite pastry cookbooks to memoirs like Marcus Samuelsson’s Yes, Chef. If she could take a year to travel, eating and learning her way across the globe…

  She’d thought maybe—when she turned forty. But forty was less than six months away, and she hadn’t planned anything other than making sure her fledgling bakery, Take the Cake, had its best first year.

  She hopped onto her king-sized mattress, spread herself out like a starfish, and unlocked her phone. She opened her web search app and typed in: Nausea, missed periods, and almost forty years old.

  She scanned the top search results.

  Menopause or Pregnant: Learn the Signs

  Signs and Symptoms of Pregnancy at or after 40

  Menopausal? No, we’re pregnant!

  “Oh my God.” She swallowed a different sort of nausea. “No, no, no, no, no.”

  She threw a cardigan over her tank-and-yoga-pants ensemble, not bothering with the bra, and finger-combed the rogue curls that still framed her face. In seconds she was in the car headed to the twenty-four-hour grocery store.

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this.” She strolled down the aisle boasting shelves with everything from contraceptive products to adult diapers. She’d thought she was heading in the direction of the latter—not to the aisle that held diapers for a much different age group.

  “You’re jumping the gun, Liss,” she said aloud to herself when she finally found what she was looking for. The home pregnancy tests.

  First Response Triple Check. Clearblue Digital. First Choice Early Result. And there were countless others.

  What was with all the choices? When she and Matthew had gotten pregnant with Gabi the summer before their senior year of high school, there were maybe two small pegs of tests amid the myriad condoms. They were the poster couple for the 2 percent who used the condom and still wound up with a baby only hours after Alissa finished her last senior final. Needless to say, she had not walked through graduation. Apparently, at thirty-nine and perhaps not so premenopausal, there was a chance she’d again fallen into that small percentage bracket.

  “Just these.” She dumped the armful of tests onto the conveyor belt at the register. “And also this.” She grabbed a Reese’s White from the candy shelf and tossed it onto the pile. Her throat tightened and her eyes burned. “I don’t even like white chocolate. Or peanut butter. But if I don’t eat this in the next three minutes I might—” She swallowed back a sob as the college-aged checkout girl stared at her wide-eyed. “I might—” Alissa tried again, but she knew if she kept talking she’d burst into tears. So she unwrapped the candy, shoved one of the peanut butter cups into her mouth, and gingerly set the wrapper, bar-code up, back onto the belt.

  “Are you okay, ma’am?” the girl asked, raising a pierced brow toward her violet pixie cut.

  Alissa nodded, then swallowed, readying the second peanut butter cup for consumption. “I’m fine. But do I look like someone who wants to be called ma’am right now? I’m young enough for miss, still, thank you very much.”

  The girl flinched.

  Alissa shoved the candy into her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she said around the mouthful of food. “Clearly I’m having a moment, so I will just pay for my candy and my—my tests—and go.”

  The girl nodded, clearing her throat. “Sixty-six twelve is your total unless you have any coupons.”

  She answered the girl by smiling and sliding her debit card into the chip reader. The receipt couldn’t print fast enough, for both Alissa and the poor checker.

  “Have a good—” the cashier started as she handed Alissa her bag of sticks to pee on.

  “Thank you!” Alissa called out before the girl could finish. Then she grabbed her loot and made a beeline f
or the door.

  In her car’s center console cup holder, she found a half-full bottle of water from the day before. She chugged it in one breath, then did her best to stay at or under the speed limit for the short ride home. Moderation flew out the window, though, when she reached her own front porch.

  In minutes, boxes lay strewn on Alissa’s bed while developing pregnancy tests lined her bathroom counter.

  She set her phone timer for five minutes and paced her bedroom floor. The last time she’d waited for a positive or negative, she’d sat on the edge of her bed in her childhood home, her high school sweetheart Matthew behind her, his arms wrapped around her waist just under her shirt, his thumb tracing circles around her belly button.

  “We’ll figure this out,” he’d said. “Whatever the result, we’ll figure it out. I love you, Liss. Nothing’s gonna change that.”

  She rested her palm on her stomach now.

  It had changed everything.

  And now, after one stupid lapse in judgment, here she was again. But this time she was alone. No partner to tell her everything would be okay. No one to claim that love would conquer all, which was fine because this time around she knew it wouldn’t.

  She couldn’t be pregnant now. She already had a baby—a twenty-two-year-old baby who hadn’t been home in two months, not to mention those four years before that when she was in college. Now was the time for the two of them to reconnect as adults, as two women making their way in the world. Now wasn’t supposed to be about morning sickness and swollen ankles and…She was getting ahead of herself. The tests could still be negative.

  Alissa stopped pacing and leaned her forehead against the wall, lightly banging it against the periwinkle-blue paint.

  “Am I ever gonna have a brother or a sister?” Gabi used to ask in her early elementary years when all her schoolmates would talk about their siblings.

  “Maybe someday,” was all Alissa had said, because Mommy and Daddy only stayed married for a few years didn’t seem appropriate. Nor did Mommy would have to have sex for that to happen, sweetie, and she’s just too exhausted by the end of the day to even watch a movie where other people have sex, let alone stay awake to do it herself.