Page 301 of What We Brave
The front door opens. Keys hit the entryway table — dropped, not set down. Clogs dropping on the hardwood. The twelve-hour-shift I-can't-stand-one-more-minute-in-shoes kick off.
Laine walks into the kitchen and I clock it before she opens her mouth. Her shoulders are up near her ears. Her face is doing the nurse thing — carefully blank. Controlled.
She hasn't used that face on us in months.
My hand stops moving on the cutting board. The oil rag goes still. Something's wrong. Something happened at the hospital, or on the drive home, or — I don't know. But that face isn't nothing. That face is a wall, and Laine doesn't put walls up in this kitchen anymore. Not with us.
She pulls a crumpled Walgreens bag out of her scrub pocket and tosses it onto the island between Reid's thigh and the mixing bowl.
Reid stops chewing. I set my rag down.
He reaches into the bag and pulls out a small cardboard box. Reads the front. Turns it over. Reads the back. Turns it sideways and reads the fine print.
"Early Result." Every decibel of bounce gone from his voice. "Two pack."
I'm looking at the box in his hands and my brain just — doesn't connect it. Early result. Two pack. Some kind of medical thing. Vitamin test. Blood sugar. I don't know. My head is still in the grain of the walnut and the oil on my hands and whatever's wrong with Laine's face.
Then it lands.
My stomach drops straight through the floor.
I look at Laine.
"My boobs hurt." She crosses her arms over her chest, gripping her own elbows. "I threw up in the staff locker room at two o'clock. And I'm four days late."
My hands find the edge of the sink behind me. I grip it.
Steady.
"But." Reid swallows his mouthful of dry cereal. Sounds like gravel going down. "You're on the pill. You have the alarm. It plays the Imperial March. Every day at six."
"I had strep four weeks ago." Her jaw is tight. "Amoxicillin."
"Right. The antibiotics." Reid slides off the counter. Feet hit the floor and he's already pacing — three steps to the stove, pivot, three steps to the fridge. "But we talked about that. You told us the pill might not be reliable. We switched to condoms. We had a whole grown-up conversation about it. Blake bought the big box."
"From Costco," I say. "We had a plan."
"We had a very responsible plan," Reid agrees. "So how?—"
"The washing machine," Laine says. Arms still crossed. "The morning we were all running late. The workshop."
Reid stops pacing. Opens his mouth. Closes it.
I stare at the floor.
We know why. All three of us know why. Because it's her skin and her mouth and the sound she makes and somewhere between the first touch and the part where my brain is supposed to saystop, grab the box— it doesn't. It just doesn't. Fourteen months of finally letting myself have this and my self-control is shit when it comes to them. Spent years keeping everyone at arm's length and now I can't keep my hands off her long enough to walk to the goddamn nightstand.
"So the plan was solid," Reid says quietly. "We just — deviated."
"It only takes once, Reid." Laine's voice is thin. Not angry. Scared.
That lands in my chest. Laine doesn't sound scared. Laine sounds annoyed, or sarcastic, or clinical, or like she's about to tell you exactly what you did wrong. Scared is new. Scared freaks me the fuck out at the same time as it unglues my feet from the floor.
I let go of the sink. Cross the kitchen to her. Stop close enough that she has to tilt her head back.
"Hey." I put my hands on her shoulders. "We're okay."
"We don't know what it says yet."
