"Are you okay now?" I look around to see if maybe she needs something. "Do you want me to get you water?" I ask. The beating of my heart picks up again just as I walk over to the kitchen and open her fridge. "Did you want maybe some Gatorade?"
"Ugh," she says, putting her head back on the back of the couch.
"Are you going to be sick?" I ask her and then look at her. "Why don't you have a bucket around in case you throw up? Do you want some soup?" I ask, sitting next to her now and taking my phone out of my pocket. "Maybe just the broth. I can call Luke and see if he can make you something."
"I don't think soup is going to make this better," she says softly, looking down at her lap, and I notice something white in her hand with a blue tip.
"Oh, God," I say, and she looks over at me. "You didn't go on Google again, did you?" I shake my head. "The last time you did that, you thought you had bedbugs. You were throwing your mattress out the window."
"It looked like bedbugs," she says through clenched teeth.
"It was mosquito bites,” I remind her. "We went hiking."
"Bennett." She says my name and then holds up a white stick in her hand.
"What is that?" I take it from her, not sure what I'm looking at until I see the word pregnant. My mouth opens as I look at her. "Is this…?" My hands shake as I hold the stick. So many emotions are going through me, but the main one is my heart feels so full.
"I can tell you what it's not." She blinks away the tears. "It's not a thermometer."
My heart fills my throat as I look down at the letters again. "Pregnant," I say the words again. The tears fill my eyes. "I can't." The lump in my throat makes it hard to say anything. But I can't stop the smile that fills my face. From ear to ear. "We're having a baby." I lean in to her. "We're having a baby." I kiss her ever so lightly. She moves her hand up, palming my cheek.
"I don't know about the we part," she says, "but I am definitely with child."
Chapter 5
Presley
"Pregnant." He says the word, and I can see the tears filling his eyes. Which in turn makes my stomach flutter, which then makes me blame the baby. "I can't." He gets choked up, and the smile on his face is from ear to ear. "We're having a baby." My heart is pounding so hard I think it's literally going to come out of my chest. "We're having a baby." He leans in and kisses my lips softly. The nerves die down just a bit. My hand moves up on its own as I cup his cheek.
"I don't know about the we part," I say, pushing away from him and getting up. "But I am definitely with child."
"How do you know for sure?" he asks as I stand here in front of him. The shades are all closed as if I'm mourning a death.
"Well, this morning I went into work and I was fine, and then this groom came in and he smelled as if he was sixteen and just got a hold of his father's aftershave." I close my eyes and grimace at the thought. "Made me lose my breakfast." He just stares at me, and his look is just filled with so much feeling that my chest fills with something that I don't want to think about because as soon as it fills, I get this overwhelming sense of sadness. "Then I googled about the cream cheese being bad, and well, it said pregnancy, so I laughed because..."
"Because we always use protection." He sits on the couch with the pregnancy test in his hands.
"Right, but then I went on my period app." I start to pace in front of him, and all he does is sit on the couch all cool, calm, and collected. "And it was like four days ago."
"You should have called me." He gets up now. "I would have…"
"Helped me how? Pee on the stick?" I point at the stick.
"I don't know. Hold your hand," he says. "Support you."
"Besides, I was in the state of denial for a good hour after." I shake my head. My head is spinning a million miles a minute. I think I'm about to hyperventilate, but I block it all off. "It's fine." I look at him. "I'm pregnant, and I go from here."
He walks over to me now, putting the stick in his pocket. His hands come up to hold my face. "Gorgeous," he says softly, "relax."
"I am relaxed," I reply, even though I'm the opposite of relaxed. I'm to the point that I'm freaking the fuck out, but even more so because I thought he would be freaking out with me. "You’re a lot more relaxed than I thought you would be."
"What does that mean?" he asks, and I just look at him.
"It means that we went from exchanging orgasms to now me being pregnant," I say, and I have to move away from his touch because if I don't, I'm afraid that he's going to see exactly what I'm feeling and I'm never going to let that happen. I just can't.
"We shared a lot more than orgasms, gorgeous." His lips find mine, and the beating in my chest slows down. "And we are going to be sharing a lot more from now on."
"I don't even know what else there is to share with you." I laugh. "I mean, you've already taken my virginity, and now you've planted a baby in me." He throws his head back and laughs, and I can't help but lean in and kiss his neck. "I have to tell my sisters."
"Okay," he says. "What time are they coming over?"
I push him away from me. "You are not going to be here when they come here."
"Why not?" he asks, shocked as he puts his hands on his hips.
"Because," I say, walking over to the kitchen to grab an apple juice, which I never drink, "I'm going to tell them."
"Okay," he says. "But I'm telling your brother."
I laugh. "You really think that is a good idea?"
He shrugs his shoulders. "It's not a surprise that I'm into you."
"Oh, you are in me all right." I grab the glass and wink at him. "You left a couple of things in me as we speak."
I grab the phone on the counter that I went into the car and got after the initial shock. "Oh, you have a phone," he says. "Funny, I kept calling.”
“I was in shock.” I roll my eyes. “I had five tests staring back at me telling me that I’m a plus-one.”
I pull up the text thread.
Me: Hey, so this is an SOS Emergency sister meeting.
I put the phone down, and my hands shake. "This should be fun."
Clarabella: Oh, now she answers after hours.
Shelby: This better not be to discuss Taylor Swift.
Me: Trust me when I say this is an emergency.
Clarabella: Prove it.
Shelby: Why would you ask her to prove it?
Me: Code Purple.
Shelby: Shit, on my way.
Clarabella: I'm there in four minutes.
I put the phone down. "Okay, you have to go," I urge, walking to him and grabbing his hand.
"It's going to take them longer than five seconds to get here." He laughs, and when I look at him, my vagina tenses a little bit. I didn't notice that he's wearing his dress pants, and the sleeves of his button-down shirt are rolled up to his elbows. His silver Rolex on his wrist makes him sexy as hell.