Her Billionaires_ Boxed Set(116)
“How much more?”
“Fifty seconds.”
Laura let herself remember Mike’s hands, those gentle, enormous fingers that laced so effortlessly, so eagerly, with hers when they walked together. Dylan’s eyelashes. The scent of both when they—
“How much longer?” Laura asked, her foot bouncing a mile a minute as she sat down at the kitchen table, legs crossed, her fingers drumming on the top.
“Thirty seconds,” Josie answered. “Twenty less than the last time you asked.”
“Shut up.” To her surprise, the smart ass went quiet. Damn well she better. This was no time for jokes. Josie’s fingernails caught Laura’s eye. Each was a rotation of a positive and negative pregnancy test. She inhaled sharply.
“Jesus, Josie, your fingernails! Have some compassion!” Did she seriously go out and have the hot dogs changed to this?
“I thought they were cute.” Josie shot Laura a sideways glance and rolled her eyes. “Someone’s lost her sense of humor completely. Besides, the hot dogs made you puke, so I just changed them.”
“Yeah, well, I must have puked up my sense of humor along with my lunch. If it means so much to you, go find it in the toilet.”
Ding! The oven timer beeped and Josie met her eyes, both of them scared shitless, Laura moreso. It was her life in the balance, after all, and while her best friend could be the most empathic person on the planet, she couldn’t give birth for her.
Laura covered her eyes. “You look. I can’t.”
“Okay.” Silence.
“Josie?” Laura could feel the sandpaper in her voice, could hear her unacknowledged truth, knew exactly what Josie was about to say but needed her to say it. To make it real. Her stomach roiled and that full-body flush—not the good kind— flooded her senses again. She willed herself to take deep breaths. Three of them, to be exact, before Josie finally said:
“It’s positive.”
“It—what?” She snatched the stick away from Josie and forced herself to look. Pregnant. Belly swelling, hands growing, her face and skin felt like a sheet of someone else’s cells. Something was growing in her. And it wasn’t an infection or a crush or an idea or anything else she’d fostered or cultured or spawned.
It was spawn.
She knew that was one of the options. Hell, there were only two. Either she was pregnant, or she wasn’t. No third choice here. No threesome to deal with. This was binary, baby.
And, apparently, it was baby all the way.
“Oh, holy mother of god fucking shit damn whodathunkit?” Sprinting for the bathroom, she hit the toilet at just the right moment, projectile vomiting straight in the bowl, the water splashing up in ricochet as if to slap her out of her panic.
“I’ll make some peppermint tea,” she heard Josie shout, her voice weak and uncertain. “No—ginger. Ginger is good for morning sickness.”
Ah, God. This was real.
She was pregnant. Pregnant! Her best friend was talking about morning sickness strategies. That meant this would happen again! Being sick day in and day out for weeks meant that this wasn’t going away. Wasn’t transient.
Some might even say it was kind of permanent.
Heaving into the bowl, the contents of her stomach scrambled to evacuate, to flee the situation, to get as far away from Knocked Up Girl as possible.
If she could, she would, too. Except she couldn’t.
Because she was the mommy.
Puke. Hurl. Blargh.
Pregnant. She was pregnant. Mommy. Someone would call her Mommy soon. At twenty-nine, she felt old enough. Inside, she felt seventeen sometimes, though. Could she really do this? How would the whole single mother thing work? Planner-brain kicked in. Look over maternity leave plan. Learn about onsite child care center. Call home and let them know she was—
Pregnant by two men? Oh, that would go over soooo well with her devout Catholic mom. And if Dad were still alive, he’d have loved to have played with his grandchild. So many details, and she—
Blargh.
Hot and sweaty, her face inches from discolored toilet water, her stomach wouldn’t settle down.
Tap tap tap. “Laura? You need anything?”
“A time machine,” she answered weakly. “I have something to undo.”
A soft laugh. “I’ll leave some fresh water for you to drink right here. I hate to say this, but I have to get to work.” Pause. “Call me later?”
“Sure.” Pressing her cheek against the underside of the toilet bowl brought conflicting relief. Who prayed to the porcelain gods without having gotten drunk the night before? Pregnancy debased her already.
“I’ll come back after my shift and bring some ginger beer and stuff to help your stomach.” Click click click went Josie’s shoes, then the soft sound of the front door closing. Alone. When did life get so complicated? The cold toilet felt like a mother’s loving touch, which made Laura laugh at how this was all unfolding.