Chapter One #2
My stomach lurched, a full-on flip that left me breathless.
Nancy caught the vibe and started barking like the apartment was under siege.
I scrambled out of the tub, nearly faceplanting on the tile, and muttered, “This cannot be happening.” My hand dove into the trash, fishing out the test as if it were radioactive. One word glared back at me.
Pregnant.
I whispered it to myself again, hoping the sound might make it go away. “This can’t be right.”
“Well,” Doyle said, way too calm for the moment, “take another one.”
I yanked the second test from the box under the sink and slammed him on speaker.
“I do not want to listen to another urine stream, Tally,” Doyle groaned.
“Too bad!” I shot back, voice high, bouncing on the balls of my feet. Nancy yapped like a tiny tornado, her crusty paws slipping as she tried to climb the porcelain tub.
I set the timer and collapsed onto the closed toilet, rocking slightly, clutching my phone in one hand and the stick in the other, performing some sort of bizarre fertility ritual gone wrong. When the timer buzzed, I flipped the test over—and my stomach did another somersault. Positive. Again.
I shrieked, high-pitched and unhinged, a sound so jarring it made Nancy pause mid-yap before she skidded across the floor, bodega snacks flying, plastic bags scattering, the bathmat crumpling under her chaos.
Then she hurled herself into my lap, eyes narrowed, delivering the canine equivalent of Get it together, woman.
My phone slipped off the sink and thudded into the bathroom trash.
“Hello? Tally River?” Doyle’s voice echoed up, tinny and distorted from the bottom of the bin. “Are you okay?”
I clutched Nancy to my chest and leaned over the trash can, shouting down into it. “No, Doyle! Nancy isn’t going to be an only child for much longer!”
A long, exasperated sigh drifted up through the speaker. Then silence.
I knew he’d hung up. He needed a minute to breathe, to recover, to Google whether adult sibling swaps were legal in Georgia.
I don’t know how long I stayed slumped on the bathroom floor—long enough to scroll through my phone and confirm that, yes, I had called and texted the fake number Nick gave me at least six times.
Certainly long enough to search Instagram for every variation of “Nick + bartender + Brooklyn” my sleep-deprived brain could dream up.
No hits. Just a dozen Brooklyn Nicks who were definitely not my Nick, and a handful of unanswered texts I wished I could unsend.
The apartment was still spinning when a knock thundered against the front door.
Nancy yipped.
“Maybe it’s Nick,” I whispered to myself. “Maybe he brought bagels and an apology for ghosting me, and we’ll co-parent this baby over brunch.”
I tried to shove down the memory of how I’d sat at his bar for months, telling him my life story over dirty martinis.
How he remembered I liked extra pickles.
How he managed to look completely smitten when I ugly-cried during karaoke—even when it wasn’t my turn.
How I’d convinced myself that remembering someone’s drink order was basically the same as love.
And how I managed to, stupidly, mistake convenience for interest when he finally asked me to come back to his place.
So he could nail that order too.
I laughed it off, but under all the sarcasm lived a quieter thought—one I let take up space in my heart—that I could bring him home to my momma one day, and she’d see I’d finally gotten it right.
That I’d finally found someone who shared my hunger for the world, for chasing dreams. Someone who loved me for me.
I opened the door to find Jordan, my brother-in-law and Doyle’s husband, wearing a face that said he deeply regretted answering his phone that morning.
Behind him came a throat-clearing sound.
Dig, my best friend and emergency contact, stood in the dim cavern of the stairwell holding a grease-splattered bag of bagels.
He stepped into view as if he’d been lurking in the shadows for hours, waiting for the perfect moment to make his dramatic entrance.
“A little birdie told me you needed a new life plan,” Dig said, stepping over a pile of laundry as if it was totally normal to find leggings draped over a toaster on the floor.
His gaze swept over me with the reverence usually reserved for saints and pop stars who died young.
I looked like I’d been hit by a city bus and emotionally backed over again, but he still somehow managed to beam at me like the sun shone directly out of my ass.
Jordan dropped a tray of coffees and a paper bag on the counter with surgical precision, desperate not to touch any of the surfaces. “Eat. I thought this was just a hangover gone wrong. I see now that it was wildly optimistic of me to assume.”
He scanned the apartment, keeping his face carefully neutral. The place was clean-ish, though heavily cluttered. Organized chaos. I needed to see all my things to know they existed. How the hell was I supposed to find anything if it was hidden in a drawer?
“Doyle called me,” Jordan finally said, sighing.
“I was in town for a sommelier conference, and apparently the closest adult with a working credit card and the means to get you through this crisis. He told me to check on you. I told him I don’t do surprise interventions without caffeine, so I stopped for coffee. And then he insisted I call Dig.”
Dig gave a little wave. “I dropped everything. And I mean everything. I was in the middle of a potential date-slash-revenge flirtation with this guy I met in the line at L’Industrie last night. He had a boat, Tally.”
I shoved a massive bite of an everything bagel into my mouth, salt and seeds raining onto the floor, cream cheese spilling down my fingers. I might’ve been on the verge of tossing my cookies, but nothing came between me and a proper New York City bagel.
“It’s, like, ten in the morning,” I mumbled around the carbs. “Where did you even find someone with a boat—ya know what, never mind.”
Jordan cringed at my less-than-ladylike attack on breakfast. “Anyway, we all thought this was another episode of Tally TV. A hangover, perhaps. Or some weird social experiment. Or you missing us since your brother and I haven’t really seen you since you got back from Australia. But definitely not… whatever this is.”
If I had my camera right then, I could’ve framed the shot: Dig holding the bagels like an offering to the gods, Jordan looking as if he’d been sent into a war zone without a helmet, me mid-bagel bite, damp hair sticking to my sweaty forehead like a wave had trampled me.
Not exactly Pinterest-worthy, but still—chaotic, ridiculous, possibly even a little beautiful. It was life, in its most raw form.
Dig set his bagel down and crossed the room slowly, eyes narrowing in mock suspicion. Then, without warning, he reached out and laid a single, dramatic hand across my stomach.
“Is it true?” he whispered, eyes wide and fake-serious.
I smacked his hand away with a yelp. He gasped and retaliated with a slap to my arm, which I met with an open-palmed swipe to his shoulder. Within seconds, we were tangled in a full-on slap fight in the middle of the kitchen, Nancy barking at our feet like a referee on speed.
“For the love of God, people, stop it,” Jordan snapped, stepping between us. “You’re grown adults. Allegedly.”
I collapsed onto the couch, breathless and laughing and still somewhat nauseous. Dig flopped down beside me, completely unfazed.
“God, I missed you,” Dig said, brushing a crumb off my shoulder like I was a Renaissance painting and not someone who’d spent her morning yakking into a bag.
“Even though I saw you two days ago, my life is truly not complete until I am by your side, watching you make the next poor decision in what will likely be a string of even more poor decisions.”
Then he slid closer to the spot beside me, gently placed a hand on my knee, and in his most solemn, theater-kid tone said, “It would be my absolute honor to help escort you to Savannah.”
I stared at him and blinked, tilting my head. Had I had a stroke on top of everything else that had gone wrong this morning?
“I’m sorry—what?”
Dig nodded, sincere and wildly unhelpful. “We’ll pack up what matters most, hop in a rental, and head south. You’ll start fresh. Like a glamorous pioneer. But with A/C and better eyebrows.”
“No,” I blurted, flinging my arms toward the disaster around me. “No, no, no. I can’t just go to Savannah! My life is here!”
Jordan made a quiet noise in the back of his throat. Not a laugh. Not a cough. A noise nestled somewhere between pity and a sigh of spiritual defeat.
“Your brother’s worried,” he said, setting his coffee down. “He thinks being somewhere calmer might help you figure out your next move. Somewhere with… family.”
Dig gasped. “Wow. Just gonna erase me like that?”
“I’m not moving to Savannah,” I snapped. “That’s where Doyle ran off to when he ditched me and our plans to travel the world together. To marry you!” I pointed at Jordan and furrowed my brow. “You stole him.”
Jordan didn’t flinch. “He offered himself freely.”
“I can’t abandon my life—”
His eyes swept the apartment—the futon Dig refused to fold the last time he stayed the night, the prints taped to walls because I couldn’t afford frames, the camera gear scattered like evidence of a crime scene. He didn’t need to say more. But he sure as hell did.
“What life, hun?”
Ouch.
“You don’t have to say it like that,” I muttered.
“You’re currently working at a thrift store, and your dreams of becoming the next Annie Leibovitz crashed into reality three unpaid gigs ago. Also, need I remind you, you’re likely six weeks pregnant with a guy who ghosted you after giving you a fake number.”
I crossed my arms. “Why do you hate me?”
“I don’t hate you,” Jordan said, sitting beside me with a sigh.
“I just don’t understand you. But I love you anyway.
And Doyle and I wouldn’t be able to live with ourselves if we didn’t try to help.
Come to Savannah. Stay with us for a little bit while you figure out your next move. It’s not a trap.”
It’s not a trap. Meaning, they hadn’t yet, and wouldn’t be telling my mother at this moment in time. Meaning that I was safe from the wrath I knew was eventually hurtling my way. But at least this bought me some time to try and figure it all out.
The panic in my chest didn’t vanish, but it started to shift and morph into something else entirely—something resembling surrender.
“What would I even do in Savannah?”
Dig grinned. “I don’t know. Start over. Take pictures of Spanish moss and strangers in love. You’re always chasing that next moment anyway—might as well do it somewhere the backdrop doesn’t smell like hot garbage.”
I opened my mouth to argue. To list all the reasons this was my home, my life, my choice. But the words stuck in my throat like a day-old bagel. Because he wasn’t wrong. I had nothing here except a dog, a hangover, and a positive pregnancy test from a man who gave me the wrong goddamn number.
“Fine,” I muttered.
Dig threw his legs over mine. “I’ll be able to stay for the first few days. That gives us enough time to get you settled and then ruin your new life.”
Nancy whimpered.
And just like that, it was settled. One night with the wrong guy, one catastrophic voicemail, and I was trading my big-city burnout for Southern comfort.
God help Savannah.