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I put an arm around her and look at her. “Will you do that with me?”
Her breathing is soft and quiet. Her back is still tensed.
But then she breathes, “Yes...” into my shoulder and pulls up to peer into my eyes, and I know.
Everything is going to be all right.
Chapter 17
Wynona
I go to bed feeling warm and safe next to Emerson and wake up feeling ice-cold and sick on the opposite side of the bed.
Sweat slicks my face. There are no sheets on me. My stomach is contracting, long fingernails of pain scraping me from the inside.
I totter to the bathroom just in time.
Not again...
Oh, yes, again.
As I empty my stomach and stay there, on my knees, on the cool tile floor, my mind does some vain flutterings. Trying to figure it out all.
Could it be food poisoning?
Possibly, only I’ve had a stomach notoriously impervious to it all my life. Even in Cancun, when every member of my family and even a few of the staff got it and were fighting over the few bathrooms, I was fine.
Unless...
I check my phone hurriedly for the app that reminds me.
No. Fucking. Way.
But there it is, on a phone screen that doesn’t care what I want. Three days. My period was supposed to start three days ago.
Josie’s isn’t so regular. Sierra’s wasn’t until she got her IUD a few years back. But mine? Same start day. Every time.
I’ve never missed a period until now.
Which means...
I throw on a bathrobe and scuttle out of the room, back to my own room.
I can explain to Emerson later. “Just felt sick, ugh”. If it is only that.
“Please, God, let it be that,” I mutter, half under my breath.
Reaching my room, I swipe myself in, then collapse onto the bed. The world is spinning. My stomach is acting like I never threw up and it needs to up the ante to clue me in.
I do the only thing I can do.
“This had better be good,” Josie grumbles when she answers the door. “I was having this really good dream... living in this castle with so many plants, prayer plants and monsteras, birds of paradise and pileas—”
“I think I might be pregnant,” I blurt out.
“Oh,” she says, gaping at me. “Okay. That’s fair.”
“That’s fair?” I sputter. “Josie, did you hear me?”
“I don’t know what to say,” she admits with a grimace. “Why do you think that?”
“My period, I’m never late,” I moan. “And I can’t stop throwing up.”
“Jesus,” Josie says. “Did you take a pregnancy test?”
“Not yet,” I say.
“Well, you’d better.”
“No shit, Sherlock.”
“Whoa, I’m just trying to help here.”
I sigh. “I know, Jos. I’m sorry. I’m just freaking out here.”
“I don’t blame you. Have you told Emerson?”
“Are you kidding? Things have actually been going super well. This is the last thing either of us needs.”
“Need or not,” Josie says, “you have to find out. ASAP. And then...”
“Do not say ‘and then’,” I groan. “I’m in no state to even begin to think about that.”
“Sorry,” Josie says.
“It’s okay,” I say.
Silence, while my thoughts ram against the sides of my head. How can this be happening? What am I going to do?
“So,” Josie says. “Do you want to talk? I can be here for you if you need.”
Oh, right.
It’s a measure of how freaking out I am that I didn’t realize it’s the middle of the night, and my poor sister wants some sleep.
“I’m good,” I say. “I’ll go see if the hotel’s pharmacy is open. Take that pregnancy test.”
“Feel free to have me come along, or let me know when you get the results,” Josie says with a sigh. “I probably won’t be having that plant castle dream again anyway.”
I snort. “Fingers crossed for you.”
“Nah,” Josie says. “Fingers crossed for you. Good luck—and good night!”
The next few minutes are painful. My head is pierced with the beginnings of a headache, my stomach is rumbling with WWIII, and every one of my muscles feels like it’s groaning as I pull on some decent clothes to get to the pharmacy.
I may be distraught and possibly pregnant, but I’m not going to wander in there dressed like a complete invalid.
The pharmacy is, thank God, open. The frizzy-haired woman there looks at me as if I did stroll in wearing the hotel’s soft white bathrobe. Then again, she probably doesn’t get many customers at two AM or whatever time it is.
It takes me way longer than necessary to find the thing. Mainly because I’m stubborn and embarrassed and the assortment of items appears to be completely random. There’s one brand of charcoal toothpaste right beside banana-flavored condoms, while a kids’ toothpaste on the opposite side of the room is next to a ‘Get Well Soon’ card with a fat, sympathetic-looking duck on it. When I finally find the way-too-cheery pink pregnancy kit box, wedged between Aero bars and granny panty underwear, I grab it and head for the cash register.
