Page 33 of Will You (Not) Marry Me

So it had worked out. Hadn’t it? Yes. Definitely. Everything had worked out, and now she was back in New York and had managed to start booking photography jobs left, right and center. Some were a little more prestigious than others, sure, but they had all paid well and she was making contacts with every new opportunity. One of the models she’d worked with referred her to an inner-city gallery that was starting up that wanted to maybe work with her. And a lighting technician had given her the number of an advertising agency that was always looking for fresh blood.

Eva had thrown herself into her work like never before, relishing the opportunity to do what she loved, wear what she wanted, and speak how she wanted to speak. More importantly, keeping busy stopped her from overthinking. It stopped the what-ifs and the maybes in their tracks. The work had stopped up the little hole that was slowly gnawing away at her chest, making itself bigger by the day. But as long as she kept working, she barely noticed its presence.

Things worked out the way you wanted, she told herself. That was the mantra that she kept repeating, over and over, a constant loop in the back of her mind. Her long-held plans were going ahead.

But the traitorous thought that sometimes plans shift and change kept sneaking in. Eva found herself wondering what would have happened if she’d stayed in Eschenberg, if she’d told Finn to call his family back, to say there had been a misunderstanding, that the wedding would be going ahead, that she’d be more than happy to spend the future with him.

Once those thoughts started wheedling their way in, she would just feel… empty. Not sad, exactly, just as if a piece was missing from her days.

Then, to top it off, for the last week she’d been sick as a dog, and her facade that she’d been constructing that she was completely, totally fine had begun to crumble.

Today, especially, was not a good day. Eva had been hunkered down in the bathroom pretty much since she’d woken up. There was no real point in leaving when she’d spent half the night vomiting. For now, she’d made herself a nest in the bathtub with blankets and a pillow, playing on her phone, the only thing her attention span could latch onto.

All the travel had messed her up. She couldn’t sleep. Everything hurt, and her whole digestive system was in the middle of a riot, refusing to let her eat anything without instantly wanting to throw it straight back up. Eva had only been eating saltines and toast for the last couple of days. She’d managed a spoonful of peanut butter and that was about the extent of her diet at the moment. She missed food. Food was a wonderful thing.

She definitely didn’t miss anything else. No. Absolutely not. There was nothing else to miss.

But once that little thought wiggled its way into her brain—that maybe she was missing Finn—Eva sighed and pulled a blanket over her head. She’d been able to distract herself by keeping busy since leaving Eschenberg, but feeling sick and useless in the bathroom was leaving her too much time to think. Her head was going to explode.

Then there was a knock on the bathroom door, and Eva nearly jumped out of her skin before Abbie poked her head in and her heart could settle down a bit.

“Did I scare you?” Abbie asked with a grimace, half whispering as if that would make things better.

“Yeah, it’s all right. Lost in my own head.”

“We’ve established that that’s not very good for you.”

“I know, right?”

Abbie sat on the edge of the bathtub, plopping a pharmacy bag at her feet. She had been doing her best to nurse Eva back to health with a whole host of concoctions.

“What are you going to force me to drink today?” asked Eva, resigned to her fate. It was probably going to have zero effect, but it would make Abbie feel better, at least.

“Nothing nasty to drink today, I promise. I went to see my auntie, thinking maybe we could get you something more traditional, get some good old herbs and whatnot.”

“Can’t I just have some painkillers and orange juice like a normal person?”

“Not when that hasn’t been helping either, has it?”

“True. And what did your auntie say? Did she brew up something?” Eva was aware of Abbie’s aunt’s ability to fix almost any illness as if by magic. She would dutifully take whatever she was given.

“Well…” said Abbie, almost sounding guilty, which was the first thing to spark Eva’s suspicions.

“What?”

“I told her your symptoms, and she didn’t give me anything from her pantry. She said I should go get you one of these…”

“One of what?”

With an apologetic smile, Abbie reached into the bag and pulled out a box of pregnancy tests, holding it up awkwardly like some sort of participation trophy.

Eva didn’t know what she’d been expecting Abbie to pull out of that bag, but it hadn’t been that. Then she put a hand to her mouth, somehow feeling even sicker than before, as certain things started to fall into place.

“Oh.” She moaned, sinking back into her bathtub nest.

“Yeah,” said Abbie, grimacing again. “How long has it been since, you know, your little friend came to visit?”

In the whirlwind of the last few weeks, Eva hadn’t given it a second thought. But now that she was wracking her brains about it, she hadn’t had a period since… She groaned.

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