Chapter 31
TWO PINK LINES
JOEY
WILL I EVER By CREEZY
Two pink lines.
I stare at the pregnancy test, waiting for my brain to catch up to what my eyes are already reading.
I’ve suspected for a couple of weeks. That low hum in the back of my mind I kept turning down every time it got too loud. The nausea I blamed on not enough sleep. The way the smell of the barn hit differently in the mornings. The date I kept not looking at on my phone.
I lower myself onto the edge of the bathtub and sit with it.
Okay.
I can do this.
I need to say it out loud first to someone who isn’t my parents, and isn’t Jesse.
Maggie.
She won’t have the answers, but she’ll be there, and sometimes that’s the only thing that matters.
I step into my bedroom and close the door behind me. I pull my phone from my pocket and find her name. The call connects on the third ring.
“Joey?”
Maggie’s voice comes through frantic, pitched higher than normal. My sister has many tones—dramatic, theatrical, but this one carries an edge I rarely hear from her. Real fear.
“I think I’m in trouble.”
My own crisis, the test still warm in my palm, the confession trapped in my throat, evaporates. Because this is what we do. This is what I do. Maggie needs me, and everything else fades to background noise.
“What kind of trouble?”
“The worst kind.” A door slams in the background, followed by the muffled sound of footsteps pacing. “The life-ruining, career-destroying, Felix-is-going-to-hate-me kind of trouble.”
I grip the pregnancy test tighter. “Maggie, slow down. Tell me what happened.”
“I think I’m pregnant.”
I sink onto the edge of my bed, my own positive test clutched in my fist while my sister’s terror fills the room through the speaker.
“My period is late. Like, really late. And I’ve been nauseous every morning for the past week, which I kept telling myself was road food and tour exhaustion, but,”—she sucks in a sharp breath—“what if it’s not?”
The irony is so sharp it draws blood. Here I am, holding actual proof of my own pregnancy, while Maggie spirals over a suspicion she hasn’t even confirmed.
“Have you taken a test?”
“No.” The word comes out small, terrified. “I can’t bring myself to do it. If I don’t take the test, it’s not real yet. I can still pretend the nausea is bad Mexican food and the late period is stress.”
“Maggie.” I keep my voice steady, because someone has to be. “You need to take a test. You need to find out for certain.”
“I don’t want to find out for certain.” Papers rustle on her end, a glass clattering to the floor.
“You don’t understand, Joey. Felix is on the verge of huge things.
This tour has been incredible, the crowds keep getting bigger, there’s talk of a headlining slot next year, maybe even opening for a major act. ”
She pauses, and when she speaks again her voice cracks down the middle. “How can I tell him I ruined his future?”
“You wouldn’t be ruining anything.” The reassurance scrapes against my throat, advice I’m too cowardly to follow myself. “If you’re pregnant, it’s not your fault alone. Felix was there too.”
“You don’t understand what it’s like out here.
” Maggie’s pacing grows more frantic, her footsteps drumming through the phone.
“I’ve watched him pour everything into this band.
Every late night, every shitty venue, every time the crowd was six people and a bartender who hated them.
He’s worked so hard, Joey. And I’m supposed to show up and say ‘surprise, your whole life is about to change’? ”
My fingers tighten around the test. The plastic edge digs into my palm.
“Maggie, I—”
“What if he hates me?”
“He won’t hate you.”
“You don’t understand him the way I do.” The defensiveness in her voice makes me wince. “Felix has this five-year plan, this whole vision for what his life is supposed to become. A baby doesn’t fit anywhere in those plans. A baby changes everything.”
Everything. The word reverberates through my skull, settles into my bones. A baby changes everything—schedules and priorities and relationships and futures. A baby is permanent in a way nothing else is.
“Have you told Felix anything?” I force myself to ask instead.
“Are you insane?” Maggie’s laugh borders on hysterical. “He doesn’t even suspect. I’ve been avoiding him, making excuses about editing footage and needing alone time. If he finds out I might be pregnant before I’ve had time to process it myself—”
“You still need to tell him.” I stare at the ceiling of my bedroom, counting the tiny cracks in the plaster I’ve memorized since childhood. “If there’s even a possibility, he deserves to be part of the conversation.”
“Get a test,” I say softly. “Find out for certain. You might be panicking over nothing.”
A shaky breath rattles through the phone. “God, what would I do without you? You always know the right thing to say.”
Except I don’t have the right answer. Not this time.
“Promise me you’ll get a test,” I press. “Promise me you’ll talk to him before you spiral any further.”
“Okay.” Maggie’s voice wavers. “Joey?”
“Yeah?”
“I love you.” The words come out raw, stripped of Maggie’s usual bravado. “I don’t say it enough, but I do. You’re the only person who actually listens to me without making me feel stupid. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Tears slide down my cheeks. “I love you too, Maggs. Call me after you take the test, okay?”
“I will.” A pause. “Thank you for being there. For always being there.”
The call ends. I sit motionless on my bed, staring at the phone in one hand and the pregnancy test in the other.
I curl my fingers around the test and sit with it a little longer.
The house is quiet. Down the hall, Dad’s old vinyl plays low through the living room speakers, something warm and acoustic I’ve heard a thousand times without ever learning the name. Mom’s wind chimes stir on the porch. The ordinary sounds of a life I’ve never questioned, steady and whole and mine.
My parents built this from nothing. A barn full of broken horses and a kitchen that always smells like coffee, and a porch swing that creaks in the same spot it’s creaked since I was five. They gave me and Maggie a life so solid I never once wondered if the ground beneath me would hold.
I press my palm flat against my stomach. Nothing has changed beneath my skin. No bump, no movement, no proof other than two pink lines on a plastic stick. But my hand stays there, and a warmth spreads beneath my fingers that has nothing to do with body heat.
I do the math. The truck. The rain hammering the roof while we laughed and held on to each other and the windows fogged around us. Jesse’s mouth against my throat and his voice wrecked and tender in my ear. This tiny thing started there, in a moment so full of him I couldn’t breathe.
I should be terrified. I am terrified. But underneath the fear, quiet and stubborn and impossible to argue with, something else has already taken root.
I want you. The thought arrives whole, not something I’ve decided but something I’ve discovered, like finding a heartbeat in a place I didn’t think to check.
I don’t whisper it. I don’t need to. My hand presses firmer against my stomach, and the knowing settles into my bones the way the best truths do—without asking permission.
Permanent.