Page 21 of Hello Handsome
Fletcher’s eyebrows tugged together as he studied it.
“Is it bad?” I asked him. “Should we call an ambulance?”
Fletcher started tugging off the attachments, making me flinch. “Your heart looks good, Dad.”
My eyebrows rose. “It does?” Why was there this tight knot there, then?
He nodded, continuing to pack things up. “Your bloodwork looked good too. You’re healthy as a horse.”
“Then what the hell happened?” I asked, pressing myself up. My shirt was still splayed open, so I started buttoning it back up.
“I think you had a panic attack. Have you had one before?” I was checking for a hint of a joke on his face, but found nothing but concern as he sat across from me on the bed. The same bedroom set Maya’s dad had crafted for us as a wedding gift.
“A panic attack? No, I haven’t.” I’d been sad, depressed, worried, but never felt like I couldn’t get blood to my body or oxygen to my brain.
“Did something change?”
The question hung between us as reality hit me.
Something had changed.
I had a date with Aggie, and I was already late.
13
AGGIE
I hadn’t spentthis much time on my hair since prom.
And this time, when my stepdad’s judgment came up in my mind… I continued caring for myself. I continued taking small sections of hair and wrapping them around the curling iron.
I was determined to pour more into me after years of abandoning myself to take care of everyone else’s needs.
I did my makeup using a new eye shadow and a tinted lip gloss I’d gotten from the grocery store. I wore a pair of jeans and a nice shirt Isabella left behind on her last trip (with her permission, of course.)
When I finished getting ready, I looked at myself in the mirror. Usually, my eyes would go to my flaws first, like the bulge of my stomach visible through high-waisted jeans or the jowls beginning to form at my cheeks. But tonight? I had a hard time finding them.
I felt more like myself than I had in a long time.
I grinned at myself, practicing how I’d greet Gray when he arrived. I still didn’t know where we were going, but we could go to Woody’s Diner again for all I cared. I just wanted him to know me as Aggie. Not Aggie from the diner or Aggie, Isa and Enzo’s mom. Justme.
The alarm on my phone went off, letting me know Gray should be arriving any minute. So I sprayed on a bit of perfume and went to the front window to see if he was here. He seemed like the kind of guy who always showed up on time.
But when I checked the dirt driveway cutting through the grass between mine and my neighbor’s yards, his truck wasn’t parked behind mine.
A nervous twinge flicked through my stomach, but I pushed it down.
After all, the last time I’d waited on a man to come here, Porter was supposed to be getting diapers. My mind went back to that night, because it felt like yesterday.
Enzo wrapped in a blanket because he’d gotten a stomach bug at day care and ran through all his extra diapers faster than we thought once we were home. We’d thought we could make it till the morning, but babies were rarely predictable.
Isabella slept in her room, her stuffed animal playing a lullaby while I held Enzo in my lap as he snoozed, praying we wouldn’t have a reenactment of Pompeii before Porter got back. The Game Show Network played low on the TV, and I tried distracting myself by taking guesses at the answers.
But at the end of the episode, Porter still wasn’t back.
We shared a cell phone because we couldn’t afford two, and he’d taken it with him in case he got an emergency call for work. He was apprenticing a plumber and was supposed to make good money for us one day.
Since Enzo was sleeping and I didn’t want to wake him, I stayed seated, hoping Porter had gotten caught up somehow. Maybe he got called into a job.
