Page 93 of Best Man
“Wediduse condoms, but—” Paulina stopped and shamefully hung her head. “Promise you won’t judge me if I tell you?”
“Of course not, Paulie. Tell me what happened.”
“We ran out of condoms the second night,” Paulina confessed. “But I’m still on the pill! There’s no way it could be that.”
Without another word, Piper rose to her feet. “I’ll be right back,” she said quietly. She swiftly left the bathroom and returned a moment later with a foil tube in hand. “I think you’d better take this,” she said, handing the pregnancy test over.
Oh God,Paulina thought, taking her sweet time to tear open the foil packaging. She didn’t want to know. In a way, she didn’tevenneedto see the results of the pregnancy test. All that damned test could do was confirm what she already knew in her heart. Because she alreadyknewwhat the result was going to be.Why? Everything had been going so, so right. And that was the problem, wasn’t it? She’d known, deep down, that things were simply going too well. Life wasneverthis easy. Life always threw you a curveball, especially when things were going smoothly. This was hers.
It all seemed so obvious now—that funny feeling in her belly that she couldn’t shake? Growing stronger with every day? Why, that was a little life growing inside her. That was Sasha’s baby.
Paulina sat on the toilet and stuck the test between her thighs. Piper stood in the doorway and waited—privacy was never a concern between sisters who’d grown up in a cramped little yurt together. Paulina flushed, set the test on a few squares of toilet paper, and stared at it.
“Now we wait,” Piper said.
One line for not pregnant, two for pregnant. The wait felt like an eternity. Her future hung in the balance, dictated by a piece of plastic. Her stomach grew queasy again, but this time for a different reason entirely.
“I feel sick to my stomach,” she murmured.
“It’s going to be okay, Paulie,” her sister reassured her.
Paulina left the bathroom and began to pace the bedroom instead.
“It’s starting to show up, I think,” Piper said a minute or so later.
“What’s it say?” Paulina asked.
“Hold on. I can’t tell just yet.”
Paulina nervously paced about the room, a hand defensively held over her tummy. Some part of her brain keenly scanned the room for threats and hazards. She stopped to pick her clothes from last night off the floor so she wouldn’t trip over them and smash into the wardrobe—that’d be bad for the baby,she thought instinctively.
She realized then the way she viewed the world was already changing. Was this what the next nine months would be like?
“Ummm. Paulie?” Piper called from the bathroom at last. “I think you better come see this.”
Paulina reluctantly went into the bathroom. The stick was where she’d left it on the vanity. She swooped by and glanced at it, staying only long enough to see what she needed to see. Without a word, she went back into her bedroom and crawled into bed.
“Welp. My life’s over.”
Piper joined her in bed a moment later. “No, it’s absolutely not over. This is just the beginning.”
But Paulina wouldn’t listen; she was wallowing. “So that’s it, huh,” she muttered with a despondent sigh.
“That’s what?” her sister asked.
“The other shoe.”
“What other shoe?”
“I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. The whole time, throughout this whole ordeal with Sasha, I kept waiting for something bad to happen. Maybe he’d play me and break my heart, like you warned me. When that didn’t happen, and he asked me to be his girlfriend, I thought maybe he’d change his mind once he got back to Texas. I kinda thought he’d ghost me once he got back home, you know? And he could bang all the club sluts he wanted. But no. That didn’t happen. He’s been a dream boyfriend.”
“You say that as if it’s abadthing,” Piper interjected.
Paulina continued her rant. “Then he came to Montana to tell Mom and Dad about us, and ask for their blessing. I thought maybe they’d say I couldn’t move because they needed me too badly on the farm—but nope! They were all for me getting out and seeing the world—Mom especially. Then I thought, maybe you or Jax would have a problem with us dating. Nope, nope, nope. Everything’s fine, everything’s great. But it was alltooeasy, wasn’t it? But ah. NowI see. Oh, yes.NowI understand.”
“C’mon, you’re talking crazy. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing …!”
Paulina laughed bitterly. “Listen to you—youknowit’s bad. Hell, weren’t youjusttalking about how disappointed you were getting pregnant too fast? And that’s for a baby you’retryingto have, Pip! A baby you’re having with the man you married, your very best friend. Imagine how I feel right now. I feel like I had something good going, but now things are completely derailed, before they even got started.”
