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Iput my book down and sigh. I’m worried about Summer. She said she’s fine, but she’s been really quiet all night since we finished work and came back to my place and then an hour ago, she asked if I would be ok if she had a bath and an early night. That was at like eight thirty. It’s definitely not like her.
I decide to go up and see if she’s still awake and see if she wants a cup of tea or anything and see if I can get out of her what’s wrong. I think if she felt physically ill like a headache or some sort of flu coming on, she would just say that, so I think it’s more that she’s upset about something. I hate not knowing what it is. How can I help her if I don’t know what the problem is?
I head up the stairs and I decide to go and use the bathroom before I go in to see Summer. The door is open so she must be finished with her bath. I push it further open and step in and then I see Summer sitting on the side of the bath. She’s wrapped in a towel, and she has another towel on her head. She’s holding something in her hand, something she tries to hide behind her back when I come in.
“Sorry,” I say. “I thought you were in the bedroom.”
“It’s ok, I’m almost done,” she says, smiling at me like I haven’t just found her sitting on the side of the bath looking all forlorn and hiding something from me.
“Summer,” I say as she stands up. “Is that what I think it is?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she says.
I reach out and cup her cheek in my hand and gently stroke it with my thumb.
“Summer, I saw the pregnancy test. Are you pregnant?” I ask gently.
She sighs and sort of sags against my hand.
“I don’t know,” she says with a sheepish smile. “I haven’t had the courage to do the test yet.”
“Do it now,” I say. “And we’ll find out together.”
She nods her head and I step out of the bathroom so she can pee on the stick in peace.
“Let me know when you’re done,” I say, pulling the door closed behind me.
I’m not sure how I feel about this. I guess I had kind of given up on the idea of having kids once Chloe and I got divorced, but that’s not to say I wouldn’t want to be a dad. In fact, I would love that. I’d love a mini version of me and Summer running about the place. Barely thirty seconds has gone by, and she calls me back into the bathroom. I go back in and sit down beside her on the side of the bath again.
“We just have to wait for three minutes now,” she says. “It’s going to feel like three hours while we just sit here waiting.”
“Is this why you’ve been quiet tonight and why you wanted to go to bed so early?” I ask.
Summer nods.
“Yeah. I was going to wait until tomorrow at work to do the test, but I kept thinking about it in my purse and soon it was all I could think about, and I knew I had to do it. I’m sorry, I should have told you, but I figured I might as well find out if there was anything to tell you first,” she says. “I guess I thought it seemed pointless to us both stressing out about the possibility of me being pregnant and I decided it made sense for only one of us to have to do that.”
She pauses. “I’m sorry,” she says again.
“You don’t have to apologize,” I tell her. “But you didn’t have to do this alone either.”
She smiles at me, a slightly wavering smile, but a smile nonetheless and I feel a bit better for knowing that I’ve made her feel a bit better. I put my arm around her shoulders and give her a quick squeeze. I release her but I keep my arm around her.
“So, what makes you think you’re pregnant?” I ask. “I mean you’re on birth control, right?”
“Yes,” Summer says. “But I forgot to take one and my period is like a week late, so I thought it best to check. It’s probably nothing – I’ve never really been regular with my periods even when I’m on birth control.”
“It’s definitely best to check,” I agree. “It’s easier to deal with when you know one way or the other.”
“By deal with, do you mean…” she trails off and I realize what she thinks I meant.
“God no,” I say quickly. “I meant emotionally deal with it. Like…”
I stop talking when a beeping sound comes from Summer’s cell phone where it sits on the closed toilet lid.
“That’s my alarm to say three minutes have gone by since I peed on the stick,” she says.
For a second she makes no move to pick the test up from the side of the sink, but after a while, she takes a deep breath and leans forward and grabs the test. She looks at it and the relief on her face is unmissable. She smiles and then she’s laughing.
