Page 21 of Hot Response
I glanced down at the stick on the counter and felt a wave of nausea that only confirmed what the little digital window on the test said.
Pregnant.
I was pregnant.
I wasn’t sure how far along I was. My period had always been sporadic and had a mind of its own, but if I had to guess, this little bundle of upcoming joy had been cooking for a while. My hand covered my still somewhat flat-ish belly. I’d gained some weight, but I had figured it was because I was moving around less with the bakery closed. A knock on the bathroom door made me jump.
“Baby, are you okay in there?” Ron’s deep voice sounded from the other side.
“Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
“Okay. I don’t want to rush you, but we don’t want to be late.” I smiled at the gentleness in his voice.
“Too late for that,” I mumbled under my breath.
“What did you say?” Ronnie asked from the other side of the door.
I should have been freaking out. Scared to death of just how much my life was about to change.Our life.
“Nothing!” I added, trying to calm the tone of my voice.Our life.
Would Ronnie want more than we had?
We’d started fast. Our relationship had gone from zero to a hundred in the blink of an eye. We made everything we did about one another. Ron and I had been completely inseparable while he helped me rebuild my bakery on his days off. That’s what we were late to. The grand re-opening.
A grand re-opening I wasn’t sure how I felt about now that I stared at a positive pregnancy test. It was crazy. Suddenly, something I had been looking forward to so much didn’t seem as important. I stared at myself in the mirror while I listened to his heavy footsteps move away from the bathroom door and fade out into the distance. My reflection was frozen in place before my eyes dropped down my body.
I’d always been curvy, not that it had ever bothered me.Never trust a skinny baker.That’s what my motto had been. My hand dropped to my abdomen as I looked at the slight swell. It was going to grow. I was growing with a life Ron and I had created.
I should have been freaking out, scared to death.
Shouldn’t I have?
A baby was a big deal! Huge!
A baby with Ronnie.The thought flitted through my head as I unlocked the door but couldn’t get myself to walk out. The moment I did, it would become even more real somehow. There was no way I could keep this a secret. One look at me, and Ron would know something was up.
But the question was, how would he react?
I sat down on the closed toilet seat instead. I rested my elbows on my knees and leaned forward.
A baby with Ronnie.
A weird yet warm and calm feeling rushed through me. He’d be a great dad. It was fast. We had only been together for four months. The best four months of my life, but still. Four months, and we were going to be parents.
So many things could still go wrong.Will he freak out and leave me all alone to deal with things? Make me a single mom?
No! This was Ron we were talking about. Ron, who couldn’t bear the thought of us even sleeping a night apart from one another. I couldn’t see him walking away. Not because of this. But that soft uncertainwhat iffloated in my head and stayed there like some kind of gray storm cloud.
I shut my eyes while uncertainty made me dizzy. Breathing through my nose, I exhaled slowly. I had a million things to do, and sitting on the toilet while trying to figure out which way was up wasn’t one of them.
“Baby,” I heard him call before I opened my eyes.
Then there he was.
I had opened the door while my head was filled with all sorts of wild scenarios of how he would react.
“What’s going on? You feeling okay?” He kneeled down in front of me and took my hands into his, massaging them probably without him noticing. “Nervous about today?” he asked. I licked my dry lips. Everything Ron ever did was to somehow make my day better. My lip wobbled, and his eyes widened with fear.
