Page 90 of Serving the Maestro

Minimizing the calendar, I leaned back in the seat and stared at the ceiling. I was a month late on my period. It wasn’t unusual. I skipped periods from time to time, and when I was stressed, it happened more often.

My life had been a little more off-kilter lately, and that wasn’t even taking Roger and his asshole self into account.

I told myself it was probably nothing.

And I kept on telling myself that as I locked up Trent’s place and took the rental car to the grocery store.

* * *

It took far too much self-control to pick up a couple of things on my list and not just grab a pregnancy test and disappear into the public restrooms in the front of the store.

By the time I was back at Trent’s, I was gritting my teeth and wondering why in the hell I’d bought ice cream and milk and other shit I had to put away. I left anything that wasn’t perishable on the counter in their cloth sacks, anxious to take the box into the bathroom with me and see what it said.

It would be negative.

Of course, it would be.

Dr. Nguyen had been pretty open about my chances of conceiving naturally, right?

But it was better to check and make sure.

Since I knew the results, it shouldn’t be a big deal to go pee on a damn stick.

And yet it took five minutes to talk myself into doing it.

* * *

Chest tight, I stared at the stick and the little blue plus sign.

My head was spinning.

Had I done it wrong?

These things were pretty idiot-proof, right?

I grabbed the instructions, reread them, and thought back to what I’d done.

Open box. Open foil pouch. Take off the cap. Pee on stick.

How did I mess that up?

I’d done all those steps, so that was a correct positive. It had to be.

With my phone clutched in my free hand, I eyed the test. What should I do? Call Trent?

I shoved that idea aside almost instantly.

There wasn’t even any way to know when I’d gotten pregnant.

Bile rushed up to my throat at the thought of Roger. Yeah, he’d worn a rubber, but those weren’t 100% foolproof.

Spinning away from the test, I tore open the bathroom door and started pacing the hall. I couldn’t tell Trent. Not yet. And for all I knew, that was a false positive. Those did happen, right? I didn’t know how often, and I wasn’t going to WebMD myself into a panic attack.

But it wouldn’t be a bad idea to double-check.

* * *

My phone chirped an alert almost ninety minutes later, and I picked up the third pregnancy test.

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