Page 75 of Three Pucks and a Baby

After I swept us inside the film room, I let go of Vivian’s hand to turn on the lights. As the fluorescent lights poured on, Vivian walked slightly ahead of us. I cut my eyes over to Bennett who shrugged.

As silence hung heavy around us, I jerked a hand through my hair. “Come on, Viv. Don’t leave us in suspense. What is it you need to talk to us about?”

After pushing a strand of auburn hair behind her ear, Vivian swallowed hard. “There’s no easy way to say this.”

Anxiety rippled through me. For some reason, her comment about dizziness popped into my head. I strode over to her.“Oh God, are you sick? Like cancer sick?” I blurted.

“What the hell, Gray?” Theo demanded.

I held my hands up. “She said she’d been dizzy and what she had to say to us wasn’t going to be easy. That shit was exactly what my mom said when she told me about her cancer.”

Vivian’s green eyes bulged. I knew she remembered me telling her about my mother’s cancer scare two years ago, and how thankfully, she was in remission now. Rubbing my arm reassuringly, she replied, “Oh, Gray, no, it’s nothing like that, I swear.”

As I exhaled a relieved breath, Bennett asked, “Then what is it?”

“This is a horrible segue from the mention of cancer,” Vivian lamented.

“Just spit it out, Viv,” Theo ordered. Although his tone was gruff, concern was etched across his face.

“I’m pregnant.”

Whatever relief I’d felt about Vivian’s clean bill of health was short-lived with those two simple words. Everything around me screeched to a stop like a needle across a record player. I blinked furiously at Vivian while my hearing became muted like I was underwater.

Vivian was…pregnant.

Vivian was going to have a baby.

And then it hit me.

Someone had gotten her pregnant.

Someone was going to be a father.

Since the three of us were most likely the last ones to have sex with her, one ofuswas going to be a father.

Holy fucking shit!

It wasn’t just me in a shocked stupor because Theo growled, “What the fuck?”

Bennett’s brows furrowed. “You’re seriously pregnant?”

Vivian nodded. “Very serious.”

Crossing his arms over his chest, Theo challenged, “Like multiple pregnancy tests serious or–”

“It’s been confirmed by a doctor,” Vivian replied.

“Motherfucker,” Theo replied.

Vivian’s shaky hands reached into her purse. Although I imagined what she was going to pull out, I still staggered back in horror at the sight of a grainy ultrasound picture. Photographic evidence made it all too real.

“I’m just six weeks weeks,” she said. In the heavy silence that followed, she giggled nervously. “The doctor says I’mmeasuring slightly ahead because the baby is going to be tall. After looking at my vertically challenged self, she said, ‘It must take after its father’.”

Right. Because its father is tall.

Of course, that fact didn’t eliminate any of us. While Bennett was the shorty of our trio, he was still 6 feet. It could just as easily be his.

Or Theo’s.

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