Page 11 of Time Out

That sucked.

Chapter 4

Maggie

My stomach tied itself into a thousand knots, and I couldn’t peel my gaze off the growing pile of plastic sticks on the coffee table in front of me.

It was rare I wished I could go back to the simple life I’d known growing up the first eighteen years of my life, but today was definitely one of them. As if I’d ever be welcomed. If there was a slight chance of it before, it evaporated into mist now.

“What am I going to do?”

Belle, my sweet friend who’d welcomed me into her apartment after she found me sleeping in my car almost a year ago, smiled in a way that said everything would be okay.

Because she’d make it so.

If only I had her confidence.

“We’ll tell him. He seems like a good enough guy, and you know where he lives.”

She knew all about him. Between Lance’s obsession with the running back and my admission I’d slept with him after that night in October, Belle knew more about the man than anyone outside his own mother, probably. And I’d spent the last seven Sundays out of the apartment at game times so I didn’t have to see his face on the screen or hear Lance talk about him. Not that that mattered—I’d certainly done my fair share of stalking.

Belle was right, like usual. He definitely seemed like a decent guy. He’d at least given me a night of fantasies I wasn’t sure I’d ever recover from. Who in the world could compete with his stamina? It’d taken me four days to walk without a limp again.

I fiddled with the threads of my worn T-shirt. “Maybe I don’t have to. He doesn’t have to know. I could—”

“Could you?”

No. I was already shaking my head. I couldn’t.

“It’s okay.”

Belle always smelled like lemons and sunshine, and she did now as she climbed off her perch on the couch, joined me on the floor where I was still staring at the scattering of pregnancy tests she’d run to the drugstore to purchase for me. She wrapped her arm across my shoulders and pulled me to her until my head hit her shoulder.

“It’ll be okay. We’ll give you some time to figure things out. It’s okay to take a few days or whatever if you need it. And then you guys can figure out the rest.”

I was twenty-two years old, pregnant, knocked up by a stranger, and had spent the last year living in my friend’s guest room after being evicted from my last house due to my horrifically crappy roommates. Belle and I had met when I worked at a karaoke bar. She’d actually heard me sing when no one in the crowd wanted to go up, and then afterward, I was fired for dropping an entire case of glasses all over the floor. I’d been living out of my car, when she chased after me to talk about my singing. She insisted on helping me, and after I turned her down with singing help, she’d refused to leave me alone until I stayed the night at her house. That one night, when I was exhausted and couldn’t fight her turned into months of staying with her and the best friendship I’d ever had. Since the night I couldn’t stop thinking about, I finally found an apartment of my own, as dingy and unsafe as it was. I was trying to find a better apartment, and I’d resigned myself to trying to find a roommate. Now that I was pregnant? What stranger wanted to take that on?

I picked up one of the pregnancy sticks and tilted it back and forth, but it was the same digital readout of the word I’d dreaded seeing for the last two weeks since I realized my period was late. It wasn’t until I almost puked out of nowhere this morning that reality became clearer.

I was twenty-two without a full-time career or a college education and moved to Nashville to make it big as a country singer and so far, I’d bounced around living arrangements, had at least a dozen jobs, and not once had I been able to do anything more than step on stage at karaoke bars.

“I can’t believe this is happening. I mean… how?”

Belle snorted and gave me a shove. “When a man…”

“Shut up. I know how.” And boy, did I vividly remember. “We were careful.”

“Every time?”

“All five of them.”

“I still think you’re fibbing about that.”

“The couch.” I held up a finger and Belle laughed.

“Shut up, you brat. I’ve heard. Trust me, but a man that good shouldn’t be real. Puts the rest of them to shame.”

Exactly. How would I ever move on from that night? More than once, before I thought I was pregnant, I’d considered stopping by his place for a repeat. Or heading to Lou’s to leave my number for him. They’d seemed close.

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