I gave my head a quick shake. “Sorry. I made more cupcakes this week than I ever have. I think it’s just caught up with me.”
“I’m glad you’re hiring someone to help. Your business is only going to get better, and you can’t work yourself like this.” She set her wine glass on the counter and gave me a hug. “Let me take care of dinner. You don’t have to help. You go relax with the guys.”
“I think I’ll go hang with Maya. See what sorts of science experiments she’s working on.”
“She’ll love that,” April said.
I was able to make it through dinner, but all the while in the back of my mind, I couldn’t stop thinking about April joking about being pregnant. As soon as I left, I drove to a twenty-four-hour grocery store that luckily didn’t close for Thanksgiving. Fortunately, it was in a part of town that I didn’t normally shop in so no one would recognize me. Not that I was famous, but I didn’t want anyone knowing what I was up to.
I bought two pregnancy tests from two different brands. Then I drove home and headed straight to my bathroom to take them. I wasn’t sure I’d ever done anything as nerve-wracking as taking a pregnancy test. The wait was the longest five minutes of my life. To distract me, I put on my pajamas and made a cup of hot chocolate. Was hot chocolate okay during pregnancy?
Finally, I returned to the bathroom, and with a deep breath to shore up my strength, I looked at the tests.
Pregnant.
My gut clenched. But maybe there was something wrong with the test. I looked at the second test.
Pregnant.
“Oh God.” I sank down onto the closed toilet seat. What did I do now? I could barely manage my life as it was, how would I include raising a child?
I closed my eyes as I realized I’d need to tell Cyrus. What would he think? God, he had enough on his plate now as well. I felt completely discombobulated and the only thing I could do was go to bed.
The next morning, I was up early and down at the bakery getting ready for Black Friday customers. I was putting out a batch of cupcakes before I remembered having taken the tests. Once again, the realization that I was carrying a child poleaxed me. But I didn’t have a lot of time to perseverate on it as customers started coming in. I was grateful for the distraction. And the business, because I knew babies were expensive to raise and I’d need to sell a lot of cupcakes.
While working kept my mind busy, when I closed up that afternoon, all I could think about was the baby. How would I tell Cyrus? It seemed like something I should tell him in person, but he was gone. Who knew when he’d be back, if ever? What would he say when he found out? He was a good man, so he
’d likely offer to help support us. He might even offer to marry me, but as much as I knew I loved him, I didn’t want him like that. I wanted a man to want to be with me for me, not for a baby.
Of course, being pregnant and having a child would make finding another man difficult. I went to my computer and deleted my dating profile. It wasn’t that hard as, while I’d met a few nice men online, none I was particularly interested in dating. I blamed that on Cyrus. He was too nice and too sexy for his own good.
Instead, I headed over a baby website to begin learning all that was involved in having a child. I knew some of it as I’d been with April when she found out she was pregnant and navigating her pregnancy and having Maya. But it was different watching from the outside and now being the person who was pregnant.
Exhausted from the day, I went to bed making a mental note to make a doctor’s appointment next week.
On Saturday, I went through the motions of the day, getting up early, baking, selling cupcakes, and then closing up, and going back to my apartment. Through the day, when I had down time, I continued to run through the litany of questions and concerns I had through my head, but by the end of the day, I knew I needed to call Cyrus.
So after having my dinner, I hit the redial on the call he’d made to me.
“Hello?” A woman answered the phone. She sounded older and I determined she had to be his mother. Why was she answering his phone?
“Hi, is Cyrus there? I thought this was his number.”
“This is our landline,” she said. “But he’s not here right now. You could try his cell phone but he’s at dinner with his fiancé so, maybe you could call later so as not to interrupt him.”
Fiancé? My heart sank. My lips trembled as the tears started to fall. It made sense that he’d get back with his ex. He was home now. I knew she’d been helping with his mother. And he’d loved her enough to propose to her once. Apparently, they’d reconciled. Boy, that was fast. Or maybe it had been happening during his trips home. Had he been sleeping with us both? I dismissed that idea. Cy wasn’t the type. Was he?
“Thank you,” I somehow managed to say.
“I can take a message if you want.”
“No. Thank you.” I hung up before she could say anything more. I made it to bed before I let myself weep. The depth of my devastation was proof that a part of me still hoped that maybe he loved me too. That he’d miss me and come back to Bismarck. That he’d be a family with me and this baby. But his mother burst that bubble. He’d moved on. He probably didn’t even look back.
Now what did I do? If I told him now, would that ruin his relationship with his ex…his fiancé? He had the right to know, but I didn’t want to ruin his life, either. And I didn’t want to take his time and attention away from his mother.
Damn that witch’s costume.
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