Page 53 of Single Dad Problems
"What's the rest of it?"
I put down the spatula.
"It's over. It has to be." I told her about going to find them at rehearsal, and what I heard instead. Who's crowding her. Who's hogging her. Who saw her first. "A lifetime of friendship, Tess, and they're snapping at each other behind a snowdrift like I'm the last good donut in the teachers' lounge. They told me it was handled. Both of them, separately, looked me in the eye and said it was handled. It's not. I'm the crack running through the best thing those men have, and I won't be that. I'd rather lose all three of them than be the reason they lose each other."
"Honey. You deserve-"
"Don't."
"I will absolutely 'don't.' You deserve to be fought over a little, you giant idiot. You've spent years deserving things and refusing all of them on principle."
"That's not the worst part." And because apparently, I was telling her everything today, I told her the worst part. The prop hallway. The cologne. His hand on my waist and his face coming at mine, and my hands on his stupid straining pecs, and the shove, and what I said, and how quiet his voice went after.
I have seen Tessa angry. I once watched her make a grown man cry at a DMV. I had never seen this. She went completely still, and her voice came out flat and terrifying.
"He put his hands on you."
"Tessa-"
"He put his hands on you in our school and then he threatened your job." She was already reaching for her phone. "We're documenting everything. Today. Dates, times, every gross comment, all of it. And then we are going to-"
And that was when my stomach staged its coup.
It came out of nowhere, same as the prop hallway, except there was no plywood castle to grip, just the counter and a tower of pancakes whose smell went, in one second, from cozy and comforting to crime against humanity. I made it to the sink. I didn't throw up exactly, but I definitely did an undignified swallow and when I straightened, Tessa was watching me with an expression I didn't like at all.
"That's the second time," I said, running the tap. "It happened after Darren too. It's stress. My body's staging a little walkout. It'll pass."
Tessa said nothing.
"It's stress, Tessa."
"Callie." Careful now, which scared me more than the fury had. "When was your last period?"
The kitchen went very quiet. In the dining room Oliver announced a corner piece and Vaughn said "way to go little dude," and the tap ran over my hand, and I stood there doing math.
Bad math. Math where I kept losing my place and starting over, which is how I do all math, but this equation had a specifically dizzying quality like vertigo, because the retreat was the retreat and then we got back and there was the house and the car and the restaurant and somewhere in all of that there should have been a… there should have been at least one-
"I'm irregular," I said. "I've always been irregular. My cycle runs on county fair scheduling."
"Callie."
"And I've been stressed! Stress delays it. That's science."
"Callie."
"I can't be," I whispered, and my hand had already migrated to my stomach without permission, a betrayal from yet another part of my body. "Tess. I have a son and a mortgage and a principal who wants me fired or worse, and the three- the three possible- oh my god, there are three possible."
"Okay." Tessa came around the counter and took both my wet hands, and her eyes were shining with something that wasn't only worry. "Breathe, twin. We don't know anything. It's a maybe, and maybes can wait until after pancakes. But I'm telling you something now, because I was going to wait and I'm done waiting." A breath. "I'm pregnant. Sixteen weeks. That's how I knew the puke face. I've been making that face since August."
I stared at her. The kitchen did another slow spin.
"You're-"
"Yeah."
"And I might be-"
"Maybe."
