Forever With You

by J. Lynn

  Calla’s cheeks brightened to a pretty pink. It was only then that I noticed the scar on her cheek. When she had been at Shepherd, she wore heavy makeup to conceal it. It didn’t look like she was wearing any today.

  “I think we’re heading back Tuesday night, too.” Teresa fiddled with the edge of her menu. “Cam wants to head up to New York City tomorrow.”

  “I’ve never been.” Avery picked at her menu. Sitting straight across from me, she looked much smaller than I remembered. “So, I’m very excited to see it.”

  “I’ve only been once. It was fun,” I said, resting my hands on my lap. “But a little overwhelming.”

  Teresa leaned back against the cushion. “The first time there, I ended up having an anxiety attack later that night when I started thinking about all the buildings.”

  “Really?” Avery’s eyes widened.

  “The buildings can give you a crowded feel.” Teresa shuddered. “Especially when you’re not used to it, and it couldn’t have just been me being weird, so you’ll be fine.”

  “You better be fine,” warned Calla, grinning. “I’m surprised Cam didn’t escort you here himself.”

  Avery’s cheeks flushed red as her hair as the waitress appeared, taking our drink orders along with the food.

  “Why would Cam escort you here?” The skin between Roxy’s brows knitted. “He sounds like Reece.”

  Calla’s shoulders straightened as excitement splashed across her face. “You don’t know?”

  “Oh!” Teresa squealed, causing me to jump a little. She clapped her hands. “I love this part.”

  Confusion marked Roxy’s face, and I was glad I wasn’t the only person who had no idea what was going on. “No. I don’t,” she said. “What’s going on? It’s not the wedding, right? We all know about the wedding.”

  “I knew you guys were engaged, but I didn’t get a chance to say congrats for that,” I chimed in. “When’s the big day?”

  Avery’s eyes brightened. “We were going to do a spring wedding, but we’re pushing for the middle of the summer now. We decided to change the date.”

  “Why?” Roxy asked, her brows knitting together.

  Our drinks arrived, and Avery took a long gulp of her water before she spoke. “I’m . . . I’m kind of pregnant.”

  My eyes widened. Oh my God, Avery was—­ Wait, kind of pregnant?

  “You’re pregnant?” Roxy’s voice was pitched high.

  Teresa giggled as she bounced next to me like a rubber ball. “And she’s not kind of pregnant. She’s almost four months pregnant.”

  “Congrats!” I smiled, shocked, but genuinely happy for them. Whenever Cam and Avery were around each other, it was so obvious how much in love they were. Hell, even before they were together. I remembered the night I was at his apartment for the UFC fight he’d ordered. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her, and I hadn’t been surprised when he left his own place when she’d made an exit.

  “Oh my God! Congratulations!” Roxy’s glasses slipped down her nose. “Wait. At Jax’s cookout, when you said you had the flu? You were pregnant then!”

  Avery nodded as happiness filled her gaze. “We weren’t sure then. Well, the over-­the-­counter test said yes, but I was waiting for the official doctor’s words, because who knows? Maybe the results were positive due to user error.”

  “How does one take a pregnancy test wrong?” Teresa laughed, her eyes glittering.

  “Don’t you just pee on a stick?” Calla looked at Avery. “It seems pretty simple.”

  “It’s easy, but when you’re not expecting to get pregnant, you take like a hundred tests, and still don’t believe the results.” Avery bit down on her lip as she ran her finger along the rim of her cup, her engagement ring twinkling under the lights. “And you still kind of don’t believe the doctor, but then it’s hard to not believe. The being tired on and off—­the puking and being grossed out by smells that didn’t bother you—­oh, and your boobs . . .” She made a face. “They hurt. Everything starts to make sense. . . .”

  “The tortoises are going to be so jealous.” Teresa giggled as she pressed her hands together under her chin. They were talking about Raphael and Michelangelo, Cam and Avery’s pet tortoises. They were the only ­people I knew in real life who had pet tortoises. “They’re not going to be your babies any longer.” Her smile spread. “Maybe I can babysit them more often.”

  “I’m pretty sure Ollie will come up with some kind of weird playpen where the baby and tortoises can roam together but not touch one another,” Avery said, and I laughed, because if anyone could come up with something like that, it would be Ollie, the slacker genius.

  Avery continued on, but my mind danced away from what she was saying. She and Cam were having a baby. Wow. I had no idea what she must be feeling, still being in college and all, but I knew they’d make it work. Going through morning sickness and all of that while in school had to . . .

  Then it occurred to me, hitting me with the force of a racing truck full of pregnancy tests.

  As I stared at Avery’s freckled face, my smile faded inch by inch. My stomach dipped and twisted. Ice slammed into my chest. The faces of the girls blurred out. My mind left the table.

  Teresa frowned as she leaned forward. “Are you okay, Steph?”

  My heart started to pound and blood rushed my head as I started to mentally backtrack over the past days and weeks. If my calculations were correct, I was missing something very important, like life and death kind of important.

  Oh my God . . .

  “Steph.” Calla reached over, placing her hand on mine. “You all right?”

  I blinked, sucking in air as the faces of the girls came back into view. “Yeah. Yes. I’m totally okay.”

  “Are you sure?” Concern settled into Roxy’s features. “You look really pale.”

  Avery tucked a strand of hair back behind her ear. “Maybe you’re coming down with something?”

  Beside her, Teresa nodded. “There’s a really bad virus going around. Half of the school seems to have it. I hope that’s not it.”

  “Probably just a little bug.” Roxy leaned back, looking like she wanted to pull the collar of her shirt over her mouth and nose.

  “I think it might be,” I said hoarsely, but those words felt like a lie, a really big one, because the mental calculations I’d just done in a rush meant something completely different than coming down with a bug or a virus.

  The girls started chatting again, their voices an excited hum as the food arrived, but I didn’t hear what they were saying. As I glanced up, my eyes met Avery’s and my stomach twisted once more. I quickly dropped my gaze to my untouched plate of food and started counting again. I counted four more times, and each time I came up with the same thing.

  My period was two and a half weeks late.

  Chapter 11

  The rest of breakfast with the girls was a blur. My food had been mostly untouched and I couldn’t follow the conversation. Roxy knew me well enough to be concerned. When we left, she walked to my car, asking if I was okay. I barely managed a mumbled reply before driving off.

  It couldn’t be.

  There had to be another reason why I was having symptoms so similar to Avery’s, and my period being late had to be a coincidence. It had been at least six months between the last time I had sex and the night I spent with Nick. Plus, he had used a condom. And double plus, I was on the pill.

  But . . . oh my God . . . I knew there were a ­couple of times when I hadn’t taken pills because my head was all over the place. Since I wasn’t having sex—­didn’t have any plans to have sex until I met Nick—­I hadn’t been stressed out about missing them.

  Like one really could just plan sex.

  Oh God.

  My heart raced sickeningly fast. What if—­ I cut that thought off. I couldn’t even let it finish. The ide
a horrified me. Not because I didn’t want kids. I did want kids, you know, like years from now, when I was settled in my career and married. Yeah, the married part would be nice.

  Fuck. Having a boyfriend would be nice.

  This was not how I planned my life. Not that I had a detailed plan, but I figured after graduating from college, I would spend a ­couple of years in my current job, putting my time in, and be one of those über sophisticated chicks who actually traveled when they had a vacation. West Coast. Europe. Asia. I wanted to see the whole world. Eventually I would meet a guy. We would date, get engaged, and have a massive wedding, and maybe by the time I reached my thirties, I’d think about having a baby.

  Not now.

  Not before I was settled in my career, traveled the world, got married, and my massively, ridiculous wedding.

  Oh my God, this couldn’t be happening. There was a good chance I was going to puke all over myself.

  Now I sat in the parking lot of a drugstore, my knuckles aching from how tightly I was clutching the steering wheel. I stared at the entrance, unable to force myself to get out of the car. I needed to. I needed to go in and buy a pregnancy test, because a pregnancy test would prove that I wasn’t pregnant and I was just overreacting. Stress could make your period late. A ton of things could make your period late, not just a fertilized egg.

  Oh my God—­a fertilized egg.

  I did not have a fertilized egg in me.

  Woman-­ing up, I snatched my purse off the passenger seat and stalked into the drugstore with a single-­minded focus. Bypassing the makeup aisles, I headed straight for the section most women didn’t like to linger in—­past the tampons and the pads and a ton of other things I never understood why we needed so many different brands for and stopped in front of a slew of boxes.

  My eyes widened.

  Holy no babies, why were there so many pregnancy tests? I was frozen as I scanned them. E.p.t. Clear Blue. Ovulation Test—­what the heck? E.p.t. Early. Why were there so many? My hands shook as I picked one up and flipped it over. My vision blurred as I read the back. I couldn’t believe I was buying a pregnancy test.

  I’d never had to buy one before.

  This could not be happening.

  Placing the box back, I blindly picked up another and turned it over. The hairs on the back of my neck rose and my stomach dropped to my toes. I glanced around but didn’t see anyone staring at me. I was totally freaking out.

  I grabbed another box, started to leave and then whipped around, picking up another box. Just in case . . . I experienced user error.

  My face was burning like I’d been under a heat lamp as I carried my purchases to the front and a slim woman with deep grooves in her face, around her eyes and mouth, waited.

  Her brows rose when I dumped my armload on the counter and she glanced up at me, a wry grin on lips covered with faded, purple lipstick. Picking up one box, she offered a throaty chuckle. “You can never be too sure about some things, huh?”

  I wanted to hide under the bin of candy behind me.

  “Nothin’ to be embarrassed about, honey.” She scanned one pregnancy test and then plopped it in a bag. “Most ­people buy several boxes the first time.”

  Was it that obvious this was my first time? Wait a second. Was I seriously having my first time? As the boxes went in the bag and I was given my total, I realized somewhat numbly that whether I was prepared for it or not, this was really happening.

  I could be pregnant.

  As soon as I got back to my apartment, I placed the potentially life-­changing bag on the counter and walked into my kitchen. I kept all medicines, along with my birth control pills, in a cabinet. Anyplace else, I would end up forgetting about them.

  Taking a deep breath, I opened the purple plastic container, smoothing my fingers over the rows of small pills. I counted back and then counted back again. Squeezing my eyes shut, I cursed. The dates I missed . . .

  They were important dates.

  Snapping the container closer, I placed it back and then dropped my elbows onto the counter. I scrubbed my hands down my face. My thoughts whirled in a continuous circle until one main one wiggled free. If I . . . If I was what I feared, did taking birth control pills after . . . after conception effect the baby?

  I didn’t know.

  Frankly, I knew very little about the whole ins and outs of pregnancy. I was an only child. No one I knew at my age, with the exception of Avery, had been pregnant. It wasn’t like women were born with this knowledge, and I seriously doubted many moms decided to hand down that kind of information until it was necessary.

  Maybe I miscounted the pills.

  Lifting my head, I picked up the purple container and counted again. Breathing felt a little iffy as I finally made myself stop. No matter how many times I counted, the end result wasn’t going to change.

  But even if my missed pills occurred during epically bad timing, Nick had used a condom. He had. . . .

  Actually, I had felt extraordinarily . . . wet after we had sex. So much so that I thought it had to do with not getting any in a while. Could the condom have broken and that was what I felt? That had never happened to me before, so there was a chance I wouldn’t have recognized it for what it was.

  “Oh God,” I whispered, my voice sounding incredibly loud in the silent apartment. Reaching up, I tugged on my hair, letting it fall down over my shoulders. “Oh. God.”

  Unable to stand still or sit, I walked to where I left my purse and dug out my phone. My fingers hovered over the screen. Who was I going to call? I didn’t feel comfortable ringing my friends from back home, and there was no way in hell I was calling my mom about this, not when I had no idea what was going on.

  Clutching the phone to my chest, I went to the couch and sat. I almost called Roxy, but I knew she would be hanging out with everyone most of the day. I thought about calling Yasmine or Denise, but I’d missed my Skype calls with them both the past week, and how could I just spring that on them? And what could I say to them? That I bought a million pregnancy tests after freaking out over what Avery had said? Granted, I had reasons to be freaking out, but still, I knew how that appeared.

  I set the phone down on the cushion beside me and closed my eyes. This was not how I expected my lazy Sunday to go. I knew I needed to get this over and done with.

  I didn’t move from the couch.

  The rest of Sunday afternoon dragged by as I worked up the nerve to even open the first box. It appeared to be a normal run-­of-­the-­mill pregnancy test with a plus meaning pregnant and a minus meaning hallelujah. Definitely no user error there. I started reading the instructions and a choked laugh escaped me.

  Do not insert the test stick in your vagina.

  Was that seriously an instruction that needed to be given to someone?

  Carefully opening the package, I pulled out the stick and walked into my bathroom. I removed the purple cap as my stomach roiled.

  My heart pounded like I was running uphill as I did my thing. The only thought in my head was how I awkward this was. Really. When I was done, I snapped the cap back on and gently placed it on the counter of my sink.

  Then I ran from my bathroom, like legit sprinted out of the bathroom.

  Pacing the length of my living room, I knew I only needed to wait for two minutes, but two minutes turned into five and five minutes turned into ten. I wasn’t ready. Running my hands through my hair, I shook my head. I wasn’t ready to see this.

  But what if there was a little, happy negative sign?

  But what if there was a really scary plus sign?

  I eyed the remaining unused boxes on the counter and kept wearing a path in the hardwood floors. I’d always been so damn careful in the past. I’d never feared the chance of becoming pregnant, and now that there was a possibility I could be, I didn’t know what to do.

  Never in my
life did I feel so . . . so helpless.

  Actually, that wasn’t true. When I was fifteen and there were two men in pristine, dignified uniforms knocking on our front doors. When I stood on the stairs and the blood had drained from my mother’s face when she saw them, I had felt helpless then.

  I loathed that feeling, hated the memories it dredged to the surface. Seconds when our whole entire life changed, never to be the same. Air leaked out of me. Coming to a stop in front of the TV, I realized I could be in the very same position, standing on that very razor-­sharp edge of monumental change

  Or I could just be freaking out.

  A good forty minutes had passed since I placed the test on my sink. I needed to go look at it. Get this over with, like I knew I had to. I wasn’t a coward. I could face this, no matter what. Biting down on my lower lip, I charged down the hall and into the bathroom. My reflection in the mirror told me I looked as out of control as I felt. My hair was now all over the place and my eyes were wide, pupils dilated.

  I looked like some psycho in a hockey mask was after me.

  Shoulders stiffening, I slowly dragged my gaze away from my reflection to the white and purple tipped pregnancy test.

  I saw the result.

  I couldn’t un-­see the result.

  Plain as day, there was a very visible symbol that could only mean one thing. Only. One. Thing.

  Maybe I let it sit too long. Or maybe I shouldn’t have put a cap on it. I needed to take another one. I had two more.

  Hurrying into the kitchen, I picked up the other box. It was more high-­tech. Not only did it give you a yes or no, but if it was a yes, it gave an estimated length of pregnancy. I didn’t have to go to the bathroom, though. Rushing to the cabinet, I grabbed a glass and filled it up, and when I finished with that one, I drank another, and then another, and then I waited.

  I wasn’t thinking, hadn’t done anything other than force water down my throat. Less than an hour later I took the second test into the bathroom, did my thing, and then placed it next to the first one.

  I didn’t leave the bathroom this time.