by Lissa Bryan
She heard his feet clomp on the unpainted wood steps behind her. “Holy shit,” he said.
The homeowners had a huge stockpile of food. Most of it was stored in Mason jars, but there were also rows of cans on the shelf. They must have treated the basement as their pantry.
“I’m going to need a bigger wagon,” Justin said and rubbed his hands together in glee. “We’ve got to take all of this stuff. It’s too good to pass up.”
“We can restack the stuff in the wagon. There’s room if we move some things around.”
“But how do we keep the jars from knocking together and breaking?”
“I’ll make cardboard dividers for the boxes.” She licked her lips as she stared at the canned tomatoes. They looked delicious in comparison to the stuff they’d been eating from tin cans. There were green beans, tomatoes, corn, beets—those could stay on the shelf as far as Carly was concerned—and a variety of fruits.
“Oh, my God, peaches!” Justin moaned. He picked up the jar and hugged it. “We’re taking every single one of these.”
“What’s this?” Carly picked up a jar containing something light beige in color. “It looks like hamburger.”
“It may be. Meats can be canned just like vegetables if you have a pressure cooker. We’ll have to look for one to make sure all of this was canned properly before we eat it.”
Justin took a jar of peaches upstairs with them while they searched the kitchen cabinets. “Thank God,” he said when he found the pressure cooker. He sat right down at the kitchen table and opened the jar of peaches.
“You’ll spoil your dinner.” Carly watched with amusement as he eagerly shoveled them into his mouth.
“This is my dinner,” Justin said around a mouthful of peach.
Carly tried the water and found it still worked. Justin paused in his peach inhalation to speculate that it was possibly due to the windmill outside, drawing water up from the well.
“I’m going to take a shower,” Carly announced with delight. She dug in her pack, grabbed some clean clothes, and trotted into the bathroom with the lamp. There was a bottle of honeysuckle-scented body wash and a very expensive salon-brand shampoo. The water was chilly, but Carly was used to that. She sang as she washed her hair.
Then a pair of warm male hands slid around her waist.
Carly jumped and laughed softly. “You scared me!” It was a first; she’d never shared a shower with anyone. The water suddenly didn’t seem so chilly with Justin’s warm body behind her.
Justin kissed her shoulder and licked off some of the water droplets. “I heard you singing. You, naked and wet, was a thought more appealing than peaches.” She tasted them on his lips when she turned her head to kiss him.
“Tilt your head back,” he said, and when she did, he gently rinsed her hair. Carly moaned in delight as his strong fingers massaged her scalp. Every muscle in her body seemed to melt. “Done?”
“Yes.” She’d normally use conditioner but she didn’t want to waste the time.
“Good.” He turned off the water and picked her up. Carly squealed and threw her arms around his shoulders. He walked to the bedroom, both of them dripping all over the floor, and laid her on the bed.
“We’re going to make the bed all wet,” she murmured between kisses. He kissed his way down the column of her throat, and she forgot what was she was saying.
“We’ll sleep on the other side,” Justin mumbled. He seemed to find the water droplets on her skin fascinating because he kissed and licked up every one of them until Carly was writhing and begging.
His delicious weight settled over her, and Carly put a hand to his chest. “Condom.” She was surprised he had forgotten, but hid a smile. Maybe she was just so sexy, she had driven all rational thought from his mind, and the thought made her giggle.
Justin groaned, rolled out of bed, and darted for the living room, where he’d left his pack. Carly saw clothes fly by the door as he started flinging things out in his haste to find condoms. She pressed a hand to her mouth so he wouldn’t hear her laugh. He bolted back into the room and made a flying leap onto the bed, landing on his elbows and knees, braced above her. The laughter vanished as she gazed up into his eyes, fiery with passion, intense with love.
He put it on and when he joined her, they both gave a soft groan, like a sigh of relief. It was fast. Neither could hold back for very long, and they both quickly came to a shuddering peak.
He gave her a small, rueful grin. “Our first quickie?”
She stretched luxuriantly, her body well sated despite the speed. “You can make it up to me later.”
“It’s a da—” Justin froze. He didn’t even breathe.
“What’s wrong?”
“It broke.”
“What broke?” Carly sat up, knowing the answer before the question had left her lips. She hoped he was referring to something—anything—other than what she thought.
“The condom. It broke.” Justin’s face was as white and waxy as it had been after he was shot. “Oh, fuck. Fuck!”
“Justin, calm down.” His panic was more alarming than the possible consequences.
“I can’t calm down! It’s—”
“Justin,” Carly said, her voice low and firm.
He stopped and took a deep breath. He dropped his head into his hands, his fingers buried in his tousled hair. “God, Carly, I am so sorry.”
“There’s no reason to be sorry,” she said. She didn’t know why he was so frantic. Odds were she wouldn’t get pregnant from one accident. Some couples had to try for years. She needed to calm him down so he could think rationally about it, and then he would see there was no need to panic yet.
“Yes, there is. I should have waited until we had backup contraception.”
“It’s not like you had to coax me into it.” She pointed out the obvious. “I was more than willing, so it’s as much my fault as yours.” She put her arms around his shoulders, and he swore.
“We can fix this. We can fix this.” He stood and strode out of the room, and she saw him scoop up a pair of sweatpants from the floor and practically jump into them before heading out of the back door. What on earth is he doing? Carly went into the bathroom to clean up and came back to find him standing in the bedroom with a packet of birth control pills in his hand.
“A little late for that, don’t you think?” she said. She kept her voice calm and steady, though a bit of his anxiety was beginning to affect her. After all, Justin knew more about this medical stuff than she did. What if he knows something I don’t? What if—
“Taking several of these is the equivalent of the morning-after pill.” He had the factsheet that came with the pills and peered at it intently. He found the information he wanted and held a finger beneath it. He closed one eye and moved it closer then further away. With an exasperated growl, he handed it to her. “Please, read that part to me.”
He began to pop the pills out of their little plastic bubbles before she had finished reading. “With this brand, three should do it.” He glanced from the packet back to her face. “When is your period due, honey?”
She blushed a little. “About two weeks. I’m not always regular, though.”
Justin closed his eyes and swore softly.
“What?”
He shook his head and gave a small, humorless laugh. “This couldn’t have happened at a worse time.”
“If I take the pills . . .”
“They’re seventy-five percent effective.”
Carly felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. “Oh, God.” She looked at the pills in his palm and grimaced. “Justin, I get as sick as a dog taking one of those, let alone multiple pills.”
“Which would you rather have: nausea or pregnancy?” His words were clipped and terse.
He was right. How could they bring a baby into this world of uncertainty? But a vision of a little boy with Justin’s dark eyes flitted through her mind, and the wave of longing she felt was so intense it surprised her.
She looked up to meet Justin’s eyes, which were silently begging her to take the pills. He knew the risk, the danger, the uncertainty. Still, her heart ached a little, even as she nodded.
She held out her hand, and he dropped the pills into her palm.
“Carly?”
“Mmph.”
“Carly?”
She groaned. “What?”
“Get up, honey. It’s time to go.”
Carly sat up slowly. Her hair hung in her face but she didn’t have the energy to push it away. She was miserable. Justin had fried some eggs for breakfast and the whole house reeked of it. She couldn’t even take a deep breath to try to calm her stomach. Everything stank. The bed stank of the fabric softener used on the sheets. Her clothes smelled awful. When Sam bounded up to her for his morning petting, she gagged from his stench of dog and the sharp scent of outside air that clung to his fur.
“Can you eat anything?” Justin asked.
Carly shook her head.
“It might help. Some crackers, perhaps? I found an unopened box in the cabinet.”
She shook her head again.
“Oatmeal?”
“Justin, please. Just stop with the food talk, please?”
He was worried. She could see it in his eyes. Carly couldn’t look at him too long, or it made her all teary. Yesterday, when they were packing the jars into boxes, she had dropped and broken one of them and burst into sobs, as if her heart were breaking. She was embarrassed about it even as she wept, which made it worse.
They’d stayed for three days; after the second dose of pills, Carly started vomiting and couldn’t keep anything down, even water. She’d slept as much as possible and stayed in the bedroom, rather than inflict her miserable, grumpy, weepy presence on Justin, but he came in to be with her. The scent of peaches on his breath made her gag.
The poor man tried. Justin tried coaxing her to eat bland, mild foods to soothe her queasy stomach, and when that didn’t work, he tried to get her to drink one of the meal replacement shakes. She’d never noticed how horrible they smelled.
Emotionally, she blamed Justin for her predicament. Though her mind knew it wasn’t his fault, her emotions didn’t care what her brain thought. And so poor Justin bore the brunt of her outbursts. Carly had to give the man credit; he had incredible patience. He never once retorted with a sharp word or rolled his eyes when she burst into tears.
She’d helped him re-pack the wagon, using every inch of space as efficiently as possible. “It’s like Tetris,” Justin had said, and then he laughed when she asked what Tetris was. “Generation gap.” He’d chuckled, and then she’d cried because she thought he was bothered by how much younger she was.
“Just ignore me,” Carly said between sobs when he stopped and pulled her into a hug. “I’m being stupid, I know.”
“You can’t help it. All of those hormones are messing with you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No need to be sorry, Carly.” He put a finger under her chin and lifted her face. “I still love you, you know?”
That made her cry again. I don’t deserve such a sweet man. The practical side of her said if he still loved her after seeing her at her worst, she was a lucky woman. She pressed a hand over her stomach. “How long . . . How long before we know?”
“A week.” Justin shoved another box into the wagon. “We’ll get a test and see if . . .”
“Justin, what if I am?” Carly’s voice was a hoarse whisper.
“Then we’ll deal with it.” He was staring off into space, his jaw set. She could tell he was trying to remain calm for her sake, but his posture was tense, and she could see the white-knuckled clench of his fist.
“What do you mean? Deal with it how?” It wasn’t like they had a lot of options.
He sighed and sat down on the end of the wagon bed. “Carly, listen, if it happens, we’ll have some decisions to make. You will have some decisions to make—it’s your body. And I’ll be here no matter what you decide. But let’s not borrow trouble, all right? Don’t worry now. We don’t know yet, and there’s no sense in fretting over the unknown.”
“But if I am, will the pills I took hurt it?” Michelle had told her it was dangerous for a pregnant woman to take even something as ordinary as aspirin. Her thoughts were a conflicting jumble. The idea of being pregnant scared her, but if she was, she didn’t want to harm the baby she carried.
Justin shook his head. “Please, Carly. Just don’t worry about it right now, okay? Let’s worry about getting as far south as we can before we have to hole up for the winter. We can’t change anything right now.”
How was she supposed to put it out of her mind? It was impossible not to worry about it. The thought occupied her mind as they set off on their bikes. She was still queasy, but a little better as the day wore on. Maybe the hormones were finally fading out of her system.
Carly forced herself to eat a small lunch when they stopped, a handful of saltine crackers smeared with peanut butter. Justin made them one by one and handed them to her until she could take no more. He was such a sweet man. She never would have imagined him like this when she was peering at him from her apartment window, back when he was the Biker Guy, and his size and tattoos frightened her.
But the nausea never fully left her. Four days later, Carly leapt off her bike and ran over to the ditch, where her breakfast abandoned ship.
Justin was behind her with a bottle of water. She rinsed her mouth and took a cautious sip. Back up it came, and she ended up retching helplessly, the dry heaves worse than vomiting.
“Should I still be so sick?” she asked him. Justin shook his head. His jaw was tight.
“Maybe I just have the stomach flu. Or maybe I ate something bad from one of those jars.” She knew she was grasping at straws, but she wasn’t ready to accept the other possibility.
“Maybe,” he said, but she could tell he didn’t believe it.
Over the next few days, Carly’s anxiety grew. It wasn’t good. It wasn’t good at all. She was the queasiest in the mornings, but it lingered all day. She slowly started accepting what she feared was almost inevitable.
She thought of a nature documentary on birds she’d once watched. The birds flew in huge flocks; a complicated, roiling cloud that tumbled through the air. The narrator said it was protection from predators as it made it almost impossible for a predator to target one bird. That’s how her mind seemed; a whirling riot of thoughts and she couldn’t grasp onto any one.
I think I am. What will we do? And always after this thought, she would see the image in her mind of the little boy with Justin’s eyes or a little girl with dark hair and her father’s smile.
She knew what the pregnancy test would show even before they looked at the lines on the test stick.
Pregnant.
She was pregnant.
Carly had to sit down. Her head swam.
Pregnant. Oh, God.
Justin was also still staring at the stick. He looked up at her with naked fear in his eyes. “Carly.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “What are we going to do?”
“That’s the decision you’ll have to make.” His face was carefully blank.
“What? It’s not like I can pop down to the local abortion clinic.”
Justin winced at the word. “There are alternatives.”
“That pill,” she said. “It was all over the news. I remember.” Numbness made her words sound distant even to her own ears.
He nodded over at the pharmacy where they’d gotten the test.
“I—I . . .” Carly couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think. She gazed at him helplessly.
Justin pulled her into his arms. “Shh. Shh.”
A sob tore its way from her throat, despite her best efforts to hold it back. “What do you want to do?”
“It’s not my decision.” She looked up and saw his face was still blank; a look he assumed when he didn’t want her to know what he was thinking.
“Yes, it
is,” Carly said insistently. “It’s both of us, Justin. Your opinion is just as important as mine. I need you to talk to me now because I don’t know what to do. I’m scared. And I’m confused. And I just don’t know what to do.”
He kissed the top of her head and walked back into the pharmacy. He came back out, holding a paper packet of pills. She opened it. The pills were there, as well as the instructions. She looked up at him. “Is this your answer?”
“No. It’s one of the options.”
Carly closed the packet and put it into her back pocket. “Justin, I need you to help me with this.”
He groaned and thrust his hands into his hair. “Carly, what do you want me to say? What I feel or what I think is the practical thing to do? You and I have already discussed what bringing a child into this world would be like.”
She nodded. So many dangers, so much uncertainty. A world where life was once again nasty, brutish, and short; a lawless, uncivilized world where the strong preyed upon the weak.
“We won’t be able to get proper medical care for you or for the baby. You could . . . you both could die. And I’m terrified of the possibility.” For a moment, his emotionless façade dropped, and she saw raw fear in his eyes. He dropped his hands and put them on her shoulders. “Despite all of that, it’s your decision. If you want to have this baby, I’ll do everything in my power to keep the both of you safe. To get you what you need.”
She licked her lips. “I want to know—I want to know what you’re feeling. I already know the practical side. Tell me what your heart says.”
In his eyes she saw the same sadness and longing she felt. “Emotionally, I want to have this baby. I’m thrilled. I’ve never thought I’d make much of a father, but you would be the world’s best mother. I couldn’t ask for a better person to share the upbringing of a child. And I’m picturing a beautiful little girl who looks just like you, or a little boy who has my eyes, and, I hope to God, your nose.”
Carly gave him a watery smile, touched that he shared her vision of the dark-eyed little boy and that he also felt the pang of longing. It made her feel better to know Justin felt the same way; if their circumstances had been different, they would both be able to greet this new life with joy and love.
