“I’ll need that test and some pineapple juice STAT!” she blurted—a touch more forcefully than she’d expected.
Why was she talking like a soap opera doctor?
She held out her hand, waiting for Jordan to pass her the test, when the man pulled the travel-sized hand sanitizer she’d purchased from the drugstore from his pocket and squirted a glop into her palm.
“You’ve been handling a lot of pee covered plastic.”
There’s a sentence she’d never expected to fall from her husband’s lips.
She rubbed her hands together. The man wasn’t wrong. Peeing on twelve pregnancy test sticks did take a level of finesse she hadn’t quite mastered.
He shared another look with the dog. “I called your gynecologist’s office. They can get us in for an appointment later this morning.”
And…another sentence she hadn’t expected to hear from him.
“How’d you get the number for my gynecologist?”
“It’s in your phone contacts under gynecologist,” he answered with a bemused grin.
Why wasn’t he freaking out? In situations like these—and in every chick flick she’d ever laughed, sighed, and swooned over—the guy always freaked out!
“We’ve got an appointment with Hector and Bobby at the CityBeat building,” she answered, brushing past the gyno appointment comment.
Today, they were scheduled to meet with CityBeat’s founders and their good friends, Hector Garcia and Bobby Chen, to chart a grand path for their More Than Just a Number blog and brand. The CityBeat marketing team and PR crew would also be in attendance to help set the course for the next twelve months, regarding the direction of their wildly popular blog.
They needed to capitalize on their success and strike while the iron was hot.
“The meeting is this afternoon. We can make both appointments work,” he replied, all crisis negotiator cool.
She shifted her hips. Right about now, a padded toilet seat cover sounded like heaven.
“Do you think we need to go see my doctor?”
He crouched down to her level. “I think it would give us a definitive answer. Twelve tests seem pretty conclusive, but a professional opinion is always a good thing to get.”
Maybe he had a point. But she wasn’t ready to be definitive about anything yet.
She held out her sanitized hand. “I’ll take number thirteen, please.”
He met her gaze, and she tried to read him. Once upon a time, her husband had completely lost it over having to interact with baby goats and an alpaca named Fred. And while he’d conquered his fear of goats, they’d both agreed alpacas, with their ability to spew green gunk from their bellies like mammal cannons, could be real assholes when they wanted. Still, knowing how her husband behaved when something freaked him out, she couldn’t tell how he felt about their pregnancy purgatory. He’d gone all CrossFit trainer cool. A trait she’d admired in him. But what did he think of all this?
And how could this have happened?
Just as the thought crossed her mind, she filed it under duh.
She wasn’t an idiot.
She knew exactly how this happened.
Any kid who’s sat through sex ed knows how it happened.
But she was on the pill. Granted, the two weeks before their wedding, life had gotten pretty crazy with their less than stellar performance at a wilderness boot camp and then a giant fight that had Jordan bunking at his dad’s place. She’d wondered if they would make it to the altar. It was like living in some bizarre space-time continuum where the days were both excruciatingly long while also racing by in the blink of an eye.
She’d missed a few birth control pills here and there. More like here and there and there and there again. Surely, a little pill snafu couldn’t mean the complete loss of protection, could it?
She swallowed past the lump in her throat, her mouth growing dry. Perhaps it was the dependence on tropical juice she’d acquired, ingesting so much pineapple over the last few weeks. She’d detested the fruit her entire life until they landed in Fiji, and she became a pineapple power-eater.
A pineapple power-eater?
Holy pineapple pregnancy craving!
But that could be a fluke.
They’d been in a tropical paradise. When in Rome, one ate pasta. When in Fiji, one ate pineapple. Or, was it just her, ordering bowl after bowl of pineapple salsa to go along with her grilled steak, pineapple, and avocado salad, and then, for dessert, a slice—or four—of pineapple upside-down cake?
There was no denying she’d ingested a hell of a lot of pineapple over the last two weeks.
“It’s November, right?”
He nodded. “Yeah, today’s the first Monday in November.”
She’d known that they were meeting with Hector and Bobby the day after they returned from their honeymoon. But she hadn’t fully grasped the date had fallen in November because, while October passed with their wedding celebration and their honeymoon, one significant event never occurred.
Good old Aunt Flo hadn’t stopped by for a visit.
Yep, she’d missed her last period.
Still, she was a little irregular, like back when she was sixteen. Maybe her cycle was recalibrating.
That had to be it! Her whole body was recalibrating. It probably happened to all women in their late twenties. She’d google it—possibly write an entire blog post about it. She could collaborate with experts in the field to construct an in-depth examination of the subject.
The Great Recalibration of the Female Body!
A jolt of euphoria surged through her, which was quickly tamped down by the blaring bullshit alarm going off inside her brain.
“Are you sure you want to take another test, babe? They’ll probably have you do one at the doctor’s office.”
She’d swiped thirteen boxes into the basket. She might as well make use of all of them.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” she answered, that mix of fear and excitement back, percolating in her chest.
Jordan tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Coming right up, messy bun girl,” he answered, then reached for the pregnancy test when her phone, laying on the counter next to it, pinged.
Jordan grabbed the test with one hand and her cell with the other, then sucked in a tight breath.
“It’s your mom.”
Georgie groaned. That was what she needed at this very moment—not!
Dear Universe, you’ve got one heck of a sense of humor!
She slumped forward as her left foot started to go numb from all the toilet sitting.
“I better answer it. If I don’t, she’ll keep calling. She knows we got back late last night.”
He handed her the phone and the box, and she swiped to accept the call before it headed to voicemail.
“Pumpkin, where are you? Is that your cheek?”
Lorraine Vanderdinkle’s voice rang out. But it wasn’t just her mother’s honeyed, moneyed voice coming from her phone. Nope, the woman’s Botox smooth face stared at her from the other side of the screen.
Sweet baby, Jesus! This was not the time for a video call with her mother—while she sat on the toilet, clutching a pregnancy test.
She held the phone in front of her face and plastered on a grin. “I’m right here, Mom. I didn’t realize we were doing a video chat.”