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Over the next several weeks, we continued to work on the house while I searched for the right property for the bed and breakfast. On more than one occasion, I had met with the real estate agent and taken a look at a place, almost all of them far out of town and not what I was looking for. Either they were too small or too modern or just way too far away.
Eventually, after seeing another property that didn’t work, we were back at the office, and the agent mentioned that perhaps we should look for something that was less move-in ready. Something that might need a bit of work. Considering I had been working on my grandparents’ old house for a bit more than three months while having a full-time job and no professional help, and it was almost finished, I told her that while I would prefer it to be ready, maybe I could take on another project. She said she would keep looking. It was all she could do.
Leaving the office, it hit me what I had just said. I had been working on that house for over three months. I couldn’t believe it. So much time had passed, and I barely even noticed it. There was only one problem.
As I sat in my car, thinking over the past few months of being in Murdock, I realized in all that time, I’d never had my period.
I hadn’t even thought about it, I had been so wrapped up in everything. From the stress of the house being worked on to searching for another place for the bed and breakfast, to falling into the relationship with Ryan, the thought hadn’t crossed my mind. I took a deep breath. I couldn’t freak out. I just needed to take a pregnancy test and put the thought out of my mind. Surely, the stress and chaos of the past few months had just made my body react weirdly, right? That was a thing that happened.
Stress can also cause weight gain. That was a thing too. It was only a couple of pounds, but I had noticed it. Specifically, my boobs felt bigger and more tender. I had noticed it but figured I was just swelling. Now I wasn’t so sure. I drove to the pharmacy down the street and ducked inside. Thankfully, it was one of the few chain stores in Murdock, and I purchased a bag full of pregnancy tests and dipped into the bathroom.
I tried not to panic when the first one came back positive.
Then the second.
Then the third and fourth and fifth.
Panic started to sink in anyway. What was I going to do? This was not in the plans, not even in the least bit. Ryan and I were in a relationship, it would be naïve to think anything else, but we had never really addressed it, and never talked about the future. It was one of the best parts of the relationship, and something that I reveled in. There was no ‘locked in’ feeling, no stress about making sure that we called at certain times or expectation that all our time would be together. If I wanted to go do something, I just did. If he wanted a night to drink with his buddies, he would.
Not that we spent much time apart. We were nearly always together. And went to bed together every night. Which I realized now was part of the problem. We were insatiable for each other, and we weren’t always careful.
Ryan had expressed his challenges with past relationships to me. Trust was a big issue to him, and our situation was ideal for him because of it. A past girlfriend had gone behind his back to intentionally try to get pregnant while he was in the service. He spoke about that with anger. Now I was going to take our great place and change it.
I had to think about it. I needed some time to figure out how I was going to handle this. Deciding not to tell Ryan that night was a no-brainer. I wanted to know how I was going to approach it. But when he got home, he told me he had to go out of town the next day. When I asked why, he simply said he had business to take care of.
I didn’t pry. That was part of the relationship as we were. We didn’t ask questions that made the other one explain themselves. As long as he told me he was coming back to me, I just accepted that he had things to do.
Anyway, it was good for me. It was the perfect opportunity for me to get a little space and figure out what to do. We had been alternating houses recently as I had bought enough functional furniture to make the house livable. Every other night had been spent in the master suite of my house, and now that it was almost finished, I could spend a little time fully moving into it and finishing furnishing it while I took my time thinking.
