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“If you all need me, just call. I’ll do the inventory orders from home.”
Offering her a wave, I slip out of the side door, and walk toward my car. Flipping the locks, I climb inside and gather my phone from my bag.
Dialing Claire’s number, I already know that she’ll say a lot of things I may not like, but maybe that’s what I need. A little dose of reality, whether it's pleasant or not.
“Hey there Sexy Firefighter humper,” she answers with a laugh.
“Nice,” normally I would laugh at her crass, non-bashful behavior but today I’m not feeling too chipper. At the mention ofthefirefighter, it only manages to make me feel raw all over again.
She must hear the shift in my voice, or maybe it's the shudder in my breath as I fight to stop the tears that are once again threatening to fall. Hormonal shifts suck, they truly do. It's like a switch, once it starts you better just hold on for the ride because the bitch is coming in hot and there is nothing you can do.
“What’s going on?”
“I’m pregnant,” I cry. “And I found out more than a week ago and then Tyler got into an accident on a call and had to have surgery. It was a mess, a scary crazy mess and he’s been staying with me to heal, and then today he found the test in my bathroom vanity and showed up at the shop mad that I hadn’t told him.”
“Wait, you didn’t tell him?”
“No,” I cry again only louder. “I was scared, he was hurt, and I intended to. Then each day that passed it got harder because—,” I pause and hang my head.
“You were scared.” Claire finishes it for me.
“Yes,” I whisper. “And for good reason because he mentioned something about us going so fast and that it's overwhelming.”
Claire stays silent, which is so unlike her. She is always so full of wisdom, or at least her version of it.
“Now I don’t know what to do.” Feeling like the car and everything else for that matter is closing in tightly around me.
“Aren’t the girls on summer vacation?” Her random question about my sisters surprises me.
“Yes, why?”
“Do you remember my parents' little cabin in Tennessee?”
They used to vacation there when we were younger, and a few times I’d gone with them. It's tucked back from anything busy, hidden in the side of the mountain, small but quaint. “Yeah.”
“What do you say we take off and spend a few days there, you can bring the girls?”
“I can’t.”
“You can and you will. I’ll send you the address and the key code, in case you get there before me.”
“Claire,” I protested.
“Don’t Claire me,we can’t get drunk, or at least you can’t but we can veg and eat a lot of shit we’ll regret later. We’ll cry and yell and it’ll all be okay because at the end of the day there is a cute little peanut that I’ll be able to spoil no matter what.”
“The girls don’t know,” no one knows.
“Well, a trip to the mountains sounds like the perfect way to tell them.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-NINE
Tyler
“Tyler,” my mother stands up as I enter the front door to greet me. “This is a lovely surprise.”
When she looks over my shoulder as if she is expecting someone to enter behind me I already know she’s searching for Amara. But instead of bringing any attention to it, I pretend not to notice.
“Where’s dad?”
