Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Gracen hugged her tighter. “I know you are, but it’s okay to say you could be happier, too.”
Delaney would work on that.
But in the meantime …
“There might be another reason why these things are on my mind today,” Delaney said.
Gracen’s brow lifted with curiosity to the way Delaney’s tone lowered enough that it wouldn’t travel to anyone else downstairs. “Oh?”
Delaney chewed on her bottom lip, trying to make the words on the tip of her tongue form, but nerves kept her quiet and still. Arms folded across her chest, she allowed herself those few seconds she needed to get over it.
“A while back, Bexley made a comment to me—I’d know the second I got pregnant because I never miss my period.”
“Delaney,” came the rushed whisper from the other side of the doorway.
Delaney squeezed her eyes shut, and hunched her shoulders up closer to her ears. “Nope, don’t do that—my period is four days late, I’d give it at least a full week before I took a test—a few days is nothing. I’m not panicking over that.”
“You look a little panicked,” Gracen returned.
Yeah, probably.
Delaney hunched her one shoulder upward, making it easier to feel like she was hiding part of her face when she told Gracen, “Except you had a test upstairs that I found over lunch. Not because I was snooping, either,” she added fast when Gracen’s side-eye slid her way.
“I had some blood when I peed, and needed a pad or tampon,” Delaney explained. “Cramps started around noon, too. But it feels just like my period. So, that’s probably—”
“Did you take a test? You found them,” Gracen pointed out. “I had what, one left of a box of three?”
Delaney’s brow pinched, the only physical show of the way Gracen’s question made her heart fall in her chest. She glanced toward Gracen, but her eyes fell to the barely noticeable bump under her friend’s loose shirt and cardigan. “How many days late were you when you took yours? I never asked before—I didn’t know if it was cool to ask about the whole pissing on a stick thing.”
Gracen laughed, but the sound died fast. “Like five days, maybe?”
The two used the same Flo tracker app to monitor their cycles. In fact, Gracen had been the one to show Delaney how to input her periods back when they were teens. The app opened up a whole new world she hadn’t known existed inside her own body—with just two or three regular periods, that app provided months of estimated data showing her future periods, days when pregnancy was more likely due to ovulation, and more. It gave her a different kind of control over her body—well, at least when it came to tracking what should happen.
“I bet your line wasn’t hard to see and kind of spotty on your first test, right?” Delaney asked.
Whatever excitement remained in Gracen’s expression died instantly. Delaney wished she had felt just as crushed but the confusion from the point she understood what was happening to when she saw the blood in her panties upstairs … she’d just not processed it yet.
“I logged the period on Flo, and the positive test,” Delaney added when Gracen’s apologetic expression bounced from her to Mimi still sipping tea under a dryer that had shut itself off. “It gave me a couple of articles about why it might be late—it’s probably like a chemical pregnancy?”
A simple internet search had made it obvious to Delaney how common those apparently were—shockingly so, considering most women who experienced them didn’t realize that’s what it was and instead thought it was an irregular period.
A fertilized egg that, for whatever reason, didn’t implant itself along the uterus lining.
“Not really sure why I took birth control for the last, like, eight years,” Delaney stressed, “for it to fuck up the one time I didn’t use condoms. That’s the universe trying to fuck with me. God, maybe.”
Her dark humor earned Delaney a soft grin from Gracen.
“Or you took it for all the other times it worked and helped those four days a month where you can get out of bed,” Gracen said.
“Okay, fair. I feel like shit,” she told her friend.
“Stew is really good for that.”
Delaney laughed, and her gaze fell to the tiled floor of the salon beyond the doorway. “I definitely need some.”
“Are you going to tell Lucas?”
“My period is four days late,” Delaney countered. “I don’t even know that’s what it is, and—”
“If there’s a line, and you can see a line on the pregnancy test, it’s positive. That’s what the instructions say,” Gracen replied with a no-nonsense tone that reminded Delaney of a mother. At least, she had that down pat.
“I know what the instructions say, Gracen.”
She tried to be snappy.
It kind of fell flat.
Delaney had, in fact, read the crumbled instruction booklet Gracen had left stuffed inside the open box that had been sitting in the bottom drawer of her bathroom vanity. Right where she might also keep pads and tampons. They had also been in the back of the drawer. Not a great variety, though.