Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
ALLISON
Allison rifled through the back stock of Bloom in the flower cooler, searching for the source of the smell.
“Do you think it’s a dead mouse or something?” June asked her, peeking under some boxes. “I still don’t smell anything. Though once you get to a certain age, your nose isn’t quite as good as it used to be.” She laughed, her silvery bob swinging over her shoulder as she looked under the cooler.
“You seriously don’t smell it?” Allison said, pushing through boxes of flowers for the wedding they had this weekend.
“Honestly, I don’t, but I believe that you do,” June said with a motherly pat on her arm, walking out of the cooler. “Maybe it’s somewhere in the workroom?” She shrugged.
“I feel like I’m losing my mind.” Luckily, it was a slow day at Bloom. “You can head home. Sorry I kept you late,” Allison said with an indulgent smile.
“If it’s not better tomorrow, we’ll call somebody.”
Allison nodded and waved her out. The scent of flowers had been stronger than normal when she’d come in this morning. Maybe she was getting a migraine. Sometimes smells got stronger before a bad one hit.
She’d been at Bloom since early in the morning, prepping table arrangement ideas for the pitch for the Fairwick County Wine Festival.
But whenever she’d walk back to the back room, she would get a whiff of something rotten. All the flowers looked fine. No mice or food that she could see. Nothing on the snack table looked bad. She’d emptied the trash and sprayed it with air freshener over eight hours ago.
Maybe my nose has been permanently damaged by being in contact with too many flowers for so many years. She hefted a box of roses to de-thorn for the weekend’s weddings.
The bell on the front door clanged, and Allison rolled her eyes in exhaustion but put on a smile, sighing. “Hi, welcome to Bloom.”
Wells stood in the doorway, looking worried. “You didn’t answer your phone.”
“Oh.” She patted her hips. “I must have set it down somewhere. Do you smell that?” she said, as the stench wafted toward her again.
“The…flowers?” Wells asked as if it was a trick question, walking back through the tables in Bloom.
“No, something smells, like, rotten.”
Wells sniffed. “Everything smells great. The flowers. You. Me, especially,” he said with a smirk.
That’s always true, she thought, though she’d never give him the satisfaction of saying it out loud.
“No, sniff really hard,” she said, squinting to see if she could figure it out.
Wells took in a big breath and shook his head in confusion.
“We can’t have a flower shop that smells rotten.” She rifled through boxes on the back of the prep counters to find the source of the smell.
“Had something similar at the diner. A tomato fell behind the fridge and”—Wells shuddered—“it looked like a murder scene.”
“Hmm, fell behind…” She pulled back a table that they used as a catch-all in the prep room—lunchboxes, snacks, papers, office supplies. “If it’s a dead mouse, you have to pick it up because you’re here,” she said pointedly over her shoulder.
“Happy to be of service to the Bloom empire,” he replied.
“Aha!” Allison reached an arm from around the bottom, barely able to grab a plastic Ziploc baggie of something brown. She yanked it up, and a moldy, liquefied banana peel was sealed in the bag.
She held it up, both feeling victorious and trying not to gag. “I am not crazy.”
“Eww,” Wells said, grimacing. “But wait, you smell that? I got nothing.”
Allison had to hold it out from her because the stench was so bad. “You don’t? Did the entire town get a head cold and I wasn’t informed?” she said, holding her nose as she opened the back door and tossed it into the dumpster.
Wells narrowed his eyes. “Is it common for you to have the abilities of a bloodhound?”
“No,” Allison said, gathering up the next bucket of roses, then stopped, shock radiating through her.
She whirled around to face him.
“What if I’m...”
Wells’s eyes darted to hers. “You don’t know?”
It hadn’t been good for her mental health for her to take tests day after day after day when she’d first started trying by herself with a sperm bank. If she let herself live her life for a couple of weeks, she could feel normal.
“I haven’t taken a test. I thought I’d wait to see if I got my period and try not to get my hopes up every day.”
“Should we go buy a pregnancy test?” he asked.
The “we” in that sentence echoed inside her for some reason.
“The benefit of having an enormous bag”—she held up her purse—“is you can stack lots of things in it.”
She pulled out an extra pregnancy test from a box that she’d thrown in months ago, not thinking about it since. But now it burned in her hand as she held it.
The urgency she felt to take it felt desperate.
“Upstairs?” he said, his breathing as quick as hers.
“Upstairs,” she echoed, and they both hurried up to the bathroom.
Two minutes later, Wells paced in the studio, his shoes making scuffing sounds on the old wooden planks. Allison drummed her fingers on her arm, her heart thundering a mile a minute, looking everywhere but at the stick on the bathroom counter.
“Is it time yet?”
“No, I set my phone for the timer,” she said, tapping her toe. “Your ears will hear when my ears hear.”
This could be it. I could be pregnant. We could be pregnant.
We might have a baby.
Or not.
Everything might be completely different from this day on in my life.
…Or not.
“Hey,” he said suddenly, grabbing her hand that was drumming on her arm. “Whatever happens, it’s all fine.” The overly calm, earnest look in his eyes made her realize how nervous she must look. “We can always try again next month.”
But his words were cut off by the beep of the timer.
They both rushed to see the stick.
They stared at it in an explosive moment of silence.
“It says pregnant,” Allison whispered.
They both stared in shock as Allison tried to make herself understand what she was looking at.
Her heart thudded against her ribs, and she felt like she was having an out-of-body experience. “That stick says that I’m pregnant.”
Wells laughed and wrapped her in a tight hug, the pressure and joy of it shaking her into reality.
“We’re pregnant. You’re pregnant,” he said, his hand holding her head and pressing it into his chest as if she was precious.
We’re pregnant.
She let herself breathe in this moment. The one she would have had alone.
It still would have been so happy, but this was unexpectedly better. To not feel so alone on a journey that was hard enough by yourself.
In a life that had always felt too lonely, she was glad to have someone to share this special part of it with.
Tears sprang from her eyes as she laughed, feeling overwhelmed, happy, excited, terrified.
“We did it,” she murmured.
Wells squeezed her tighter. She nuzzled in, wrapping her arms around him.
Something unwound in her, finally relaxed. Finally joyous at getting exactly what she wanted.
“I’m so happy,” Wells said, smoothing his hand over her hair. She never wanted him to stop. “We made the beginning of a baby,” he said, pulling back and wiping the tears from her cheeks. “Happy tears?”
She nodded.
“Me too,” he said, wiping his eye with a knuckle.
She leaned up to brush his other cheek with her thumb. “You’re going to be a dad,” she whispered.
His lips trembled as his eyes filled again, and the raw happiness and longing in them cut straight to her heart.
She’d done that. She’d made him so happy.
He kissed her suddenly, his hand coming to her jaw in the way that she loved. Possessive, firm, leaving no room for questions about how wanted she was. Their kiss was salty with happy tears, and she savored the taste of the tears mixed with the taste of him.
The last time she’d kiss him. She breathed him in, kissing him once more, licking along his lip for her last taste.
“You’re going to be,” he whispered in a ragged breath over her lips, and snuck a kiss as he stared down at her with wet eyes, “a mom. And I fear the best one there’s ever been, leaving me in the dust, and I will have no choice but to buy our child’s affections.”
She laughed against his lips and snuck in one last kiss—last one, I swear—before she pulled back with an embarrassed smile.
That was, maybe, the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her.
“So,” he said, his arms dropping from around her.
She stepped back. She needed some space, away from how good he smelled.
There wouldn’t be a reason to be engulfed in his hug any longer, no reason to have sex in stolen places.
“Why don’t we move Smokey to my house,” Wells said.
Allison cocked her head. “I told you shared custody of a cat—”
“Allison, the litter,” Wells said softly. It was chastising, but kind.
Right. Crap, she’d forgotten about the danger to pregnant women.
Because she was freaking pregnant.
“You know about that?” She smiled, surprised.
“Chapter three in What to Do While She’s Expecting,” Wells said proudly. “I can get her stuff tonight.”
Right. Because they didn’t need to see each other anymore.
“I guess we’re, um”—she gave him a thumbs-up—“all done here. I mean, I’ll go to the doctor and verify.”
“I’ll come with you,” Wells said quickly.
“You don’t have to.” She waved him away.
“Allison, I said I’d be at every appointment. It’s in the contract.”
She smiled, looking at her hands, thinking about how different it already was with him from how it would have been with Keith. She’d had to beg him to pick her up from the dentist one time after she’d been under anesthesia. He’d done it but made her feel bad about it.
“And I fully intend on taking you up on that.” She smiled gratefully. “But this one will be quick. Just peeing in a cup, and they won’t be able to tell me anything yet. It’s still pretty early.”
“I am an excellent purse-holder,” he said, picking up her purse from the studio floor and handing it to her with a hopeful look in his eyes.
It would make him happy.
And maybe me happy too.
She nodded. “Okay.”
Wells beamed. “Okay.”
He opened the door down to Bloom for her, and she reminded herself that they were colleagues from now on.
Co-parents—not in a relationship—no matter how good he smelled, and no matter how tingly her heart felt.
* * *
WELLS
Week 4: Your baby is the size of a strawberry seed
Wells held the enormous ten-pound bucket of Allison’s purse with shaking hands the next day in the office of the Lopez, Lopez, Lopez, and Smurgl medical practice.
The test confirmed that they were indeed pregnant, and about four weeks along. They’d scheduled their first ultrasound for a month later since Allison was considered a higher-risk pregnancy.
After the appointment, a pang of loss hit Wells as he got into his car.
Alone.
He carefully watched Allison click her seatbelt and start her car from the spot next to him. She lifted her fingers in a wave goodbye, that lopsided smile on her face, before she backed out.
He mirrored her, lifting his fingers even as his brows pinched together with longing that he couldn’t wipe from his face.
Something felt…final about it.
Like their official goodbye to the baby-creation phase.
They were just co-parents from now on.
He didn’t like it.
Over the next two weeks, the diner’s business picked up, and Bloom got busy with spring events. Somehow, despite tripping across each other constantly before this whole ordeal, he didn’t see her.
He should feel thrilled, right? Ecstatic?
He had everything he’d ever wanted.
The diner’s business was almost back to normal. He was making the family he’d always wanted, saw his mom and Pop almost every day, relaxed in a large, beautiful home without working hundred-hour weeks sorting through clients’ divorces.
Life was perfect.
He just hadn’t anticipated missing her.
He’d limited himself to texting Allison every few days, making sure everything was okay. Was she having morning sickness? No. Did she feel okay? Yes. She’d answered in perfunctory, informative sentences.
They made him grind his teeth.
He sent photo after photo of Smokey/Harry. That was the one safe topic between them where she was more human. More of the Allison he missed.
He’d sometimes peek out his front window to see if she was home, planning to swing by her front door with a question as an excuse to see her. But more often than not, her cottage was dark, since she was busy working too hard at Bloom.
Once, she’d swung into the diner to pick up lunch, but they’d only exchanged pleasantries—fucking pleasantries—and she’d swanned back out with a salad, not even looking back once.
He’d added extra walnuts and double grilled chicken to her salad to make sure she was getting enough protein.
He’d hoped she noticed.