19. Piper
CHAPTER 19
Piper
July
T he Harvest Bash is a month away. Which means that I’m one week late for my period. And I am one hundred percent too scared to take a pregnancy test.
My water heater has been fixed for about a week, but I haven’t gone home full-time. I’m still sleeping in the same room as one of the guys each night. We have… quite a bit of sex.
I don’t think that any of them have noticed yet that I’m not… out of commission. They’ve made it clear that none of them mind having sex when it’s that time of the month for me, but I’m definitely a little weirded out by it, so they’ve respectfully agreed not to go there when it’s time.
However. I highly doubt any of them know enough about my body to know that I’m a week late. I, though, absolutely know. And I think I’m going to go crazy.
The guys are all out for the day. Each one of them has something to do with their business. The video of Dalton doing his whole horse-whisperer routine did, in fact, go pretty viral, so I’m anticipating a very good turnout at the Harvest Bash. Enough, certainly, to drum up the type of investors and market that the guys are looking for. We’re going out to dinner in town tonight, a rare thing since Tate is super judgy about the food, but it will be nice to celebrate.
There’s a lot to celebrate, especially when it comes to the marketing. I’m proud of the guys, and proud of myself.
My own farm has been doing well, too. I’ve actually had a custom order for the cherries that I’m in the process of canning right now, and my whole day is working on them. The guys brought all my canning stuff from my house to theirs, despite my insistence that it’s a messy process that I shouldn’t be gumming up their kitchen with.
Tate just laughed and said he would be researching outdoor cooking all day. And he bought me a new set of jars. Which means my whole day is just pitting fruit and thinking.
Part of what I’ve always loved about canning is that it’s kind of a meditative process for me. I know that some of my college friends really love actual meditating. They can sit for hours in a yoga class, totally zoning out, and let their minds wander.
I don’t know what’s broken in me, but I’ve never been able to do that. Unless I’m following a recipe, or some kind of guide. Canning does that. My grandmother taught me how. She tried to teach both Blaire and me, but Blaire took it as a personal insult that she had to sit and pay attention to Grandmother while she did this. I, however, wanted Grandmother to get rid of the angry wrinkle in her lips, so I sat right next to her and learned everything that I could.
It takes me roughly two hours to get through twenty pounds of cherries. I used to do all the pits with a straw, punching holes in the fruit to squeeze the center stone out, but getting an actual cherry pitting tool has made the process ten times easier.
It’s mindless. Grab the fruit. Get rid of the pit. Sort it. Over and over, until suddenly, twenty-pound boxes become empty, and I’m ready for the next step.
I love how scientific canning is. It’s one of those things that can really go horrifically wrong. But if you stick to the script, everything is going to come out fine.
In contrast to my very, very messy life, canning cherries seems like a breeze.
I have the first batch of jars sitting in the water, coming to a rolling boil, when Blaire calls. Wiping the heavy syrup that I used to can the fruit in from my hands, I pick up.
“Hi, B.”
“Piper. I thought you’d never call. What the fuck have you been doing?” Blaire demands.
I stiffen. “Wow. Coming in a little hot?”
“Uh, yeah. It gets like that when my only sister doesn’t contact me for days.”
I sigh, cradling the phone against my shoulder. “Blaire. That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think? I called you on Sunday.”
“Last Sunday, Piper. That was easily a week and a half ago.”
Hmm. She’s right, but I’ve been so preoccupied with wondering if I’ll get my period or not that I did, in fact, forget how much time has passed.
I sigh. “Sorry. I just was really caught up.”
“In doing the marketing for the guys?”
I bite my lip. “Mostly.”
“Piper,” Blaire chides. “What else have you been doing?”
“Um…”
“Oh, my god. You’ve been having sex!”
Darn it. How does she know this? I put the lid on the canning pot and walk away. “Yes, okay? I’ve been having sex.”
“With the guys?”
“Yes, Blaire!” She gives a little triumphant whoop, and I shake my head. “Hush!”
“Why? The only people who are going to hear are my guys, and they don’t care.”
“Blaire. Seriously. I…” I pause. I don’t know how to tell her I might be pregnant. Because then I have to admit that I’m too scared to go to the store and get a pregnancy test. And then I have to tell her why I’m too scared, and I don’t know the answer to that yet.
“Piper. Hello? Are you there?”
“I’m here,” I say.
“So did they knock you up yet or what?”
“It’s not that easy, you know,” I say defensively.
Blaire chuckles. “Statistically no, it’s not that easy, but somehow it is, actually, still weirdly easy to get pregnant.”
“I…” My mouth goes dry.
Her voice changes. “Piper. Are you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you take a test?”
“No,” I moan.
“Are you late?”
I suck in a breath. “Yes.”
“PIPER!”
I hold the phone away from my ear before bringing it back. “Hush, Blaire!”
“What the hell! Why aren’t you out there peeing on every stick you can find?”
I pick at my nails. “First of all, gross. Second, it’s not?—”
“Don’t you start with me,” she cuts me off. “It very much literally is that easy. They make it easy on purpose. Some of the tests explicitly advertise how easy they are.”
“Stop,” I say. Loudly.
Blaire makes that little humming noise that makes me shiver, because it means she’s disappointed in me. “Piper. Seriously. You’ve wanted this for so long. What’s holding you back?”
And there it is.
“I’m not sure,” I say slowly.
“Spitball something with me. Give me your best idea.”
I shake my head. “Okay, Detective Blaire. I just…”
I sigh. There’s silence for a minute. I can only hear the sound of Blaire breathing on the phone, and the bubble of the pot on the stove.
“Are they mean to you? Is something wrong? Because I’ll fucking end every single one of them,” she growls.
“No, Blaire. Nothing like that,” I say. “It’s just… I want this.”
“I know.”
“No, Blaire. Like I really, really want it.” I look over at the jars. “You know why I love Mary Marco so much?”
“Because Grandma didn’t get cable TV, and it’s the only thing that was on when we should have been watching cartoons on a Saturday morning?”
I roll my eyes. “No. Because she never does anything that isn’t perfect. Even when she’s not trying, she’s perfect, Blaire.”
Blaire is very, very quiet.
“I know that you decided to take the hand we were given in life and just… give it the middle finger. You took all the pain, and it made you harder. I didn’t,” I mumble. “I took it, and I made it beautiful.”
“You make me sound like an asshole,” Blaire gripes.
“You’re not. We both dealt with it in our own way. But I don’t want to be in a place where I can’t make something perfect. Where I can’t make it beautiful.”
“Piper,” Blaire says. “Pain isn’t beautiful.”
I shut my eyes.
“You can’t control the world around you so much that you won’t get hurt. And you certainly can’t control it if you have a kid.”
“I know that,” I reply.
“Do you? It’s important to me that you know that when you have a baby, that baby is its own person.”
“You’re lecturing me on kids now?” I snap.
Blaire sighs. “No. But I am saying that even if you do everything perfect—you design the perfect nursery, the perfect playdates—if everything looks good on the outside, it might be totally different on the inside.”
“I know,” I tell her.
“Do you?”
I really do.
Blaire might be brash and outspoken. She might get on my nerves. But something I love about her is how often she’s right.
“I don’t want to screw this up.”
“The baby?”
“All of it,” I murmur.
“Piper. Do you love them?”
I know she can’t see me nodding. But I am.
The silence, apparently, is all that Blaire needs. “Oh, Piper.”
“I know.”
“You need to find out if you’re pregnant.”
“Why?”
“Because then you’ll at least know.”
I hiss out a breath. “But if I don’t know, then I can’t…”
I can’t be out of control.
It snaps into place. Right now, I don’t know if I’m pregnant. Yes, I’ve wanted this for so long, it hurts. But it also means that things are going to change. No matter what, the relationship with the guys has changed.
I do love them. I know that. But if we have a baby together, it’s going to be nothing but change, from here on out. Adding another person to our mix, one that relies on us for everything… It’s not going to be the same.
I want it. And at the same time, it utterly terrifies me.
I take a breath. “What would Mary Marco do?”
Blaire sighs. “Listen, babe. That woman got caught falsifying her company records. I don’t think she’s going to be your best bet for advice in this situation.”
I snort. “Shows how much you know. She built a billion-dollar empire from nothing.”
“Piper. I make my living off of exposing the crimes of rich people. You’re not going to get me to like Mary Marco.”
I sniff. “Fine.”
“Go buy the pregnancy test.”
I bite my lip.
“Piper. If you don’t, I swear I’m going to call Nora and make her drive all the way from Foster Ranch to bring you one.”
“Okay,” I say. “I just put a whole bunch of cherries into the pot to can, but once they come out, I’ll go.”
“You can drive to another town if you’re worried about the gossip.”
I snort. “That’s the least of my worries right now.”
“It’s going to be okay, Piper,” Blaire says.
I shut my eyes. “I hope so.”
“Even if it’s not perfect, it’s going to be okay.”
I don’t answer that.
Blaire sighs. “Listen. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good, Piper. You have guys who absolutely love you and have since you were kids. You might be bringing a baby into the world. You at least need to know what you’re dealing with, so if you need to make the perfect nursery, you can get a head start.”
That gets a smile out of me. “I guess.”
“Okay. I love you. Call me the second that the stick is peed on.”
“Gross, Blaire. I love you too.”
Hanging up the phone, I grab it and tap out a quick message to the guys.
Me: Hey, I’m going to meet you in town tonight. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Can’t wait for dinner.
There.
I put the phone down and turn to focus on the cherries. There’s about thirty minutes on the clock until they’re done, and after that, I can take them out and walk away. The rest of the ones I haven’t put into a syrup to put into jars yet go into the fridge, where they’ll keep for a day or two.
With that task accomplished, I make a plan for the rest of the day.
It’s early. There are other things that I can do.
I also decide that it’s time for me to swap out some of the clothes that are here. I’ll take the cherries out, then pack up my stuff that I want to rotate, and head into town. I’ll grab the pregnancy test, and… I don’t know. Peeing on it in the bathroom at the grocery store seems weird.
Maybe I’ll come back to my house before that, to get ready, and I’ll take the test and then see the guys in town.
That sounds right. I need a little space, once I take the test, to figure out what’s going on. Blaire’s right. I don’t need to focus on how to make it perfect between us.
There’s a lot going on. Managing a relationship with one person is hard. With three? Even three good friends, three people that I’ve known forever? It’s really, really hard.
I don’t want to constantly be trying to make it perfect, though. Not if it’s going to hurt them or get in the way of how I feel about them. I need to take the pregnancy test. I need to know what I’m dealing with.
Blaire is, in fact, annoyingly good at saying the right thing when it comes to stuff like this.
I know I shouldn’t be keeping my whole potential pregnancy from the guys, either. It’s something that I need to hold on to, though. Just for now.
I need to know first. I need to know so that I can either tell them, or just celebrate the fact that we’re here. We’re together. And we’re building a future for all of our work.
The pregnancy test is going to change things. I need to accept that. But either way, I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to tell the guys that I want this to be… more.
And I’m going to tell them tonight.