I must have been making a face because Hannah’s mouth twisted in a sympathetic grimace. “Families are complicated. I wouldn’t tell my parents, either,” she said in the understatement of the year.
“Well, no shit, you wouldn’t,” Essie said. “They illegally married you off to your uncle when you were still a kid. Assholes,” she muttered under her breath. “I’d tell my mom right away. My dad…I guess I’d text him eventually. If I knew where he was.”
I blinked down at my soft, but still relatively flat belly. There was an innocent bundle of cells in there. “So many ways to fuck up a kid. Maybe I should worry less about who I tell and focus more on being the kind of parent who gets told.”
James nudged my shoulder with hers. “That’s why you’re going to be a great mom, Chloe.”
“Maybe.” I blew out a shuddery breath.If it’s real. If it stays. “I hope so.”
We fell quiet as the server reappeared with our food. Waffles for me because it seemed like the brunch equivalent of a Saltine cracker, avocado toast for James, French toast for Janie and Essie, and an omelet for Hannah. The sudden array of smells hit my stomach immediately after my nose, and not in a good way.
“Can I get a ginger ale?” I asked the server as she set down the last plate.
“Sure, hon. Coming right up.” She spun away again, heading back to the kitchen.
“Morning sickness?” Janie asked sympathetically.
I nodded queasily. “More like all-fucking-day sickness. I’ll be fine. Just keep talking. The distraction helps.” I took a tiny sip of water and an even tinier bite of waffle. I was starting to learn that an empty stomach only made the nausea worse.
“Tell us everything,” Essie said, digging into her stuffed French toast. I tried not to gag as cream cheese filling oozed out. “Who’s the dad? How long have you known?”
“The dad is…” My voice trailed off as I thought better of it. “Actually, I’m going to keep that to myself for now. I’ll tell you after I tell him, okay? I don’t think he should be the last to know he’s going to be a dad.”
“Fair,” James said. “So how did you find out you were pregnant? How long have you known?”
“A couple days. I…um…” Shit. Steven. She hated Steven, as much as James was capable of hating anyone. I couldn’t just say,oh, hey, remember that guy who purposefully startled your horse so you would fall off and then threatened to sue the ranch? Funny story, he came over in the middle of the night so I wouldn’t have to take the test alone.
Which might beg the question: why?
A reasonable question, because I hadn’t told them about any of it. I hadn’t told them about Stevie the Pig and our roadside rescue, or that he had bought me coffee, or that he was working for my dad, or the 3 a.m. text conversations. I definitely hadn’t told any of them that he’d caughtliteral vomitin his bare hands to protect the shoes they had embroidered for me.
I hadn’t told them that of all the people who could have been there, I wasn’t mad that it was him. Maybe I was evengladit was him.
Another wave of nausea hit, but I was pretty sure this one at least had more to do with my guilty conscience than growing a baby inside me.
“Here’s that ginger ale.” The server placed it in front of me and then backed up a step. “Anything else I can get you, ladies?”
“No,” we chorused.
I stuck my nose into the glass and breathed in the spicy-sweet smell. The bubbles tickled my nose, and I coughed, but my nausea dissipated somewhat.
I looked up at my friends, who were still waiting for an answer. “The nausea sort of gave it away.” That was true. “It had been about two months since my last period, which was still within the normal range for me, but I took a test anyway, fully expecting it to be negative. It wasn’t.” Also true. “And here we are.”
They didn’t need to know the Steven parts. We weren’t dating. We weren’t even really friends. We had just…accidentally stumbled into each other’s lives for a moment, that was all. Now we would stumble right out again. Heck, I hadn’t even responded to either of his last two texts—the first one being “You need anything?” and the second being “Hey”—and that was three days ago.
I should text him. Just so he knew I was okay, and I wasn’t his problem. I wasn’tanyone’sproblem, but really and fucking truly, I wasn’t his. I should tell him that.
And then we’d never speak to each other again.
That was the truth.
So why did it feel like another lie?
16
STEVEN
Aspen Springs went all outfor Halloween. With two weeks to go, there wasn’t a single undecorated shop or home on Main Street. I rolled through town at a crawl, taking it in. Witches with green-striped stockings careened into lampposts. Fat orange pumpkins, dusted with last night’s snow flurries, lined the porch steps. Skeletons were big this year. Two were taller than the gold-rush-era buildings, but most of them were human-sized and placed in ridiculous positions. Rocking on a porch swing, checking the mail, getting chased by a skeleton dog.
