Chapter 9
CHAPTER 9
B eatrix
It’s been a week since Ren came to pick up Truman, and I’ve had the blues ever since. I really miss him.
Truman. I miss Truman, not Ren.
Sure, seeing Ren standing on my porch did make my heart flutter a tiny bit, but it was more out of awkwardness about our hookup in his bedroom than an urge to do it again. Mostly.
He did look awfully good, freshly-showered after practice, with his hair slicked back. Tight gray shirt that left no ripple of his abs to the imagination. Low-slung jeans with a rip in the thigh that urged me to ask how he got it.
But I didn’t.
I didn’t do any of the things that briefly flitted through my mind because he’s still the guy who broke my heart. I hate that a part of me still likes him a little bit. So I just let him leave with his dog, and I haven’t seen or spoken to him since. Probably won’t.
Standing in my kitchen, I glance at all the personal touches that make my home feel like a haven—the collection of chicken-shaped pitchers from designers I love, the mismatched collection of coffee mugs on an open shelf, my pantry staples in mason jars on another shelf, the jug of fresh flowers on the window sill. Even when I’m working myself to the bone, I manage to cut some blooms from the garden here at Buttercup Hill.
I glance through the doorway to the fluffy area rug in my living room. It looks bare without Truman’s furry shape snoozing there in the morning sunlight. Would it be crazy to invite him back?
As if on cue, my phone pings with a text.
Ren: Hey. Is it against the rules of “one and done” to say hi?
I almost laugh at the karma of it all. And his incessant need to flirt. That hasn’t changed. He was always a gruff asshole on the ice, but with me, all flirting, all the time.
Me: Nope. Hi
Ren: Truman misses you. His ears are droopy
Me: Aren’t they always droopy?
Ren: You caught me. Yup, they are
Me: It’s okay. I miss him too
Ren: Wanna see him?
I need to think before answering because the real question is whether I want to see Ren. I hate that a part of me wants to see him again, but another part reminds me that what happened ten years ago is ancient history.
Me: Sure. When?
Ren: Next Wednesday night?
Me: (thumbs-up emoji)
I’m pretty sure he’s doing the same thing, using Truman as an excuse to see me, and I’m not sure I mind. I’m an adult. I have a full life. I’m in control. He can come over with his dog next week and it will be fine.
I work hard to convince myself of this as I make coffee. I normally don’t brew a pot when I’m home because I can grab a cup easily enough at Sweet Butter café, conveniently located between my house and my office at Buttercup Hill. But this morning, I’m exhausted, so Julie is coming here for our morning meeting. It’s only a stone’s throw from my office on the other end of the vineyard property, but meeting here means I can stay in sweatpants and take things a bit slower, which I need today.
I feel nauseated, probably from the stress of my contractor pushing back the installation dates of the new flooring in all the guest rooms. It’s not just PJ’s wedding at stake here. Each day that we delay means thousands of dollars in missed revenue, so the pressure is on. We’re booked up for the first six months after we reopen, but if we delay even by one weekend, we’ll need to apologize to guests whose reservations we’ve canceled. We need to offer them free dinners at Butter and Rosemary or a free night at the inn if we push back their reservations.
Ka-ching, ka-ching. Dollars racing down the drain. It makes me even more nauseous thinking about it. So much so that… oh crap . A wave of nausea hits me so hard that I drop my cup on the counter and run for the bathroom. I make it in time to lose the entire contents of my stomach, all of it coffee. I feel slightly better, but not great. Weird.
Julie knocks at my door, ready with spreadsheets from Jax that detail exactly how much he thinks we can charge for each room type at the inn. A second sheet details how much we need to net each month for the inn to be a profit center for Buttercup Hill. “He told me to tell you the inn can’t be a loss leader, so don’t even think it,” she says, holding out a cup of coffee from Sweet Butter.
I wave it away. “Thanks, but I had coffee here. And it didn’t go so well. I guess I’m really nervous about pulling this off.” I point to the pages in her hands. The inn has always been a minor part of our business, the bulk of it being selling wine. But we’ve had some setbacks recently. First, our dad pulled a half a billion dollars from the company coffers and gave it to Graham, our half brother we never knew about until a few months ago. Then we lost some key employees to that same half brother’s winery, so we’re scrambling to find good people. Plus, we need some of his grapes to fill our international orders, so we’re forced to go into business with him if we want to stay afloat.
There’s no way to ask our dad if that was his intention all along because his Alzheimer’s has advanced in recent months, and he gets so confused when we visit him that his nurse has limited the time we spend so he can focus on his health. It’s hard to watch his decline.
I didn’t see him often when I was a kid because he was often working, and our care was dispensed to a parade of nannies, but as I got older, my dad weighed in on my life decisions—he was especially supportive of me staying in college and establishing a career, rather than following a “hockey boyfriend.” It’s strange how life progresses. Crazy that my hockey boyfriend is here now.
I wish I could talk to my dad about the stresses at work and let him be a sounding board, but it seems to set him back when we talk with him about the winery. He just pounds a fist and wags a finger as though we know what we’re supposed to do. But we don’t. We’re all just treading water in jobs most of us never intended to have. Doing the best we can. Trying to keep our finances in line. All of this puts more pressure on the inn when it reopens. It needs to happen sooner rather than later, and everything is behind schedule. Not by days but by weeks. It’s falling on me to pick up the pace and shave days off the schedule, so we don’t lose even more money.
No wonder I’m stressed enough to puke.
“You don’t look so good,” Julie says, walking to my sink and wetting a paper towel. She hands it to me, and I look at her blankly.
“What’s this for?”
“You’re pale and you’re sweating. Wipe your face.”
It’s not until she says it that I realize my skin is clammy. And I feel another wave of nausea hit me, so I race again to the bathroom.
When I emerge a couple minutes later, I feel pretty good, but only because I’m convinced now that there’s nothing left in my stomach. And when I looked at my face in the mirror, the color has returned. “Better. Okay, where were we? The numbers from Jax?”
Julie shakes her head. “Hang on. What just happened? Do you have food poisoning?”
I shrug. “I dunno. Maybe. It hit me hard this morning, but I skipped dinner, so I don’t know what could’ve poisoned me. It’s probably just stress.”
“That, or morning sickness. Any chance your little romp with hockey boy got you knocked up?”
“Please don’t make me regret telling you things. And no, there’s no chance. We used protection.”
I refuse to indulge her ridiculous idea. It’s not what I need or want in my life, so I will just will it away.
She laughs. “So said the last person who got pregnant using protection.” She takes out her phone and scrolls. “Did you get your period? It should have been in the last couple days, today at the latest.”
Another smaller wave of nausea hits me, but this one is supersized, fueled by the idea that Julie could possibly be correct. I sit in one of the yellow swivel chairs around my kitchen table. It feels better to be off my feet, but the smell of the coffee Julie brought isn’t making me feel so good. “Would you put that in the fridge? I’ll drink it later.”
Julie takes the cup away and then gets in my face. “Not on your period?”
“No, and how do you know my cycle?” It’s so not the most important question when the real issue is how the heck could this have happened?
She tilts her head as though it’s obvious. “Because I’m a kick-ass assistant, and I can do my job better when I know what’s up with you.” She smiles. “Plus, our cycles sort of synchronized when I started spending fourteen hours in a day with you.”
“You do not work fourteen hours in a day.” Again, unimportant.
“Don’t change the subject. Are you preggers?”
My head spins, my gut churns. I want to tell her she’s crazy, but…is she? “We had sex one time! And we used a condom!”
“Okay, good for you. That’s how half the girls I knew got pregnant in high school.”
“I’m not pregnant,” I insist, mainly because I really don’t want to be pregnant. It’s the very last thing I have time for, not to mention I don’t want any entanglements with Ren. Plus, it really doesn’t seem possible. Right?
“Great. Let’s get you a test kit to be sure, and then we can move on to other reasons you’re currently green.”
“I’m not green.”
“Agree to disagree. Come on, let’s go.” Julie picks up her purse and keys and points toward my front door. I feel like a child being told to put my toys away and go on a field trip to a cemetery.
“Now? I have a lot to get done today. Surely this ridiculous errand can wait. If I am pregnant, there’s nothing I can do about it between now and the time it takes to figure out how to get the inn opened sooner. ”
She stops and stares at me. “Seriously? Don’t you want to know?”
“Not particularly. Like I said, knowing isn’t gonna help me get the inn open.”
She walks to my front door and opens it, calling back to me as she returns to her car. “Bring the pile of stuff from Jax. We can go over it in the car. Let’s get you some answers.”
“Is it ready?” I ask from under a pillow I’ve placed over my face. We’re back at my house, exactly twenty-seven minutes after we left here to buy the test.
“It’s been thirteen seconds, so…no.”
My stomach folds on itself with anxiety. I hiccup as my body decides whether to cry or laugh hysterically. “There’s no way. I can’t be pregnant.”
I sneak a look at Julie, who sits resolutely with her lips pressed together. I pull the pillow away and examine the oatmeal-colored boucle, looking at it from all sides. “This is really well made. Maybe we should add couches with this fabric at the foot of the beds in the suites.”
Julie rolls her eyes. “I’m starting to worry that your brain is short-circuiting. Are we talking about fabric now?”
“It’s better than me bugging you every thirteen seconds about how much time has elapsed, isn’t it?” I wait another two seconds before asking, “Is it ready yet?”
Julie sits next to me on the couch and shows me her phone, which has a timer running a countdown. “No. I promise I’m not holding out on you. Do you really think I’d let you sit here and stew if it was ready?”
“I don’t know anything about anything anymore,” I mope, standing up and going to my kitchen to see if I can find one single thing that appeals to me in my refrigerator. “Oh my God, everything either smells like blue cheese or it actually is blue cheese. How is that possible?”
I’m in the process of making gagging noises and throwing out half the contents of my refrigerator when Julie taps me on the shoulder. “Okay, time’s up. Let’s go look.”
She follows me into the bathroom, where the little pink stick sits on the counter. It looks so innocent from a distance, just a disposable piece of plastic with the power to tell me if my life is about to change. Forever.
“Okay, here we go.” I pick it up, prepared to examine it in case the result isn’t clear, but there’s nothing obscure about the pink plus sign that stares back at me in the little window. No room for misinterpretation.
Oh my god!
My stomach clenches again, and I fling open the toilet lid and heave, but my stomach is empty. I sit back down, a layer of sweat on my brow. I feel overwhelmed with fear, panic, sorrow. A well of tears builds behind my eyes.
Julie watches me and I nod, putting my head in my hands and slumping over because it’s easier to breathe that way. She comes over and peeks at the stick over my shoulder.
“One time!” I yell. “With a condom. How is this even possible?” I whisper.
Julie says nothing, so I tilt my head at her and glare.
“Oh,” she says, snapping to attention. “I figured it was a rhetorical question. You see, when a man and a woman have fond feelings for each other, they rub their bodies together, and…”
“Oh my God! Are you really reciting the text of some children’s book about how people make babies?”
“You seemed unclear on the concept.”
“I’m clear. I’m very, very clear.”
Julie nods and chews on her lip. “Okay, then.”
I stand up from the toilet and toss the test into the trash. I’m tempted to take a second test because maybe this one is wrong, but I decide that for the good of my working relationship with Julie, I shouldn’t let her in on the depth of my crazy. Bracing my hands against the sink, I fight off an urge to throw up that has nothing to do with pregnancy-related nausea.
“I’m supposed to see him in a few days. What do I tell him?” Before she can answer, I shake my head. “No, I can’t think about that now. I think I need to push through. I need to go to the meeting and convince my siblings that there’s no reason to worry about the inn opening on time. And later, I’ll think about this. Just not right now.” I’m talking at double speed, but Julie nods along as though she’s following. “Yeah. I need to stay busy, stay distracted, because if I don’t, I’ll start thinking about Ren and a baby and my life, and I’ll just freak the hell ouuuuut.” My voice goes up an octave at the end.
Julie steps forward and hugs me. It doesn’t matter that she works for me and I’m often driven and prickly and we’ve never hugged before. She’s the best person in the world, and she knows what I need right now. I cling to her like a lifeline for more than a minute, until I feel my pulse slow and can breathe again.
Julie motions for me to follow her, so I do. We end up back in the kitchen, where she pours a glass of water and hands it to me. I take a small sip, then a larger one because suddenly, ingesting giant amounts of water is the order of the day. I’m parched like the Sahara Desert, and I have no idea why.
Julie goes into my pantry and comes out with a bag of Ruffles potato chips, ripping them open and sniffing the contents. “I used to crave these when I was pregnant. Good memories. Give ‘em a try. See if they appeal.”
I’m about to tell her that all food on the planet apparently smells like blue cheese, but then she brings the chip back toward my nose and I get a large, heady whiff of fried potato goodness. My hand digs through the bag and comes out with a shockingly large handful. I pop one, then two into my mouth and chew.
“Yessss. These hit the spot. How did you know? ”
She shrugs. “Salt and fat are a pregnant lady aphrodisiac.”
“And how…how is all of this happening at once? Yesterday, I was fine. Today, I’m scarfing potato chips and puking up my coffee? It makes no sense.”
“The miracle of life does stuff to your body,” she sings.
“Yeah, okay,” I say, ripping the chips from her hand and stomping out of my kitchen. “Remember that thing I said about not talking about pregnancy or dealing with it at all today? That starts right now. Where are we on meetings with the landscapers?”
Julie consults her folder and hands me a paper. “Here’s their bid.”
I take it in, seeing numbers that will make Jax crap his pants because they’re twice our budget, and for the first time all day, I feel a wave of calm wash over me. “Okay. This bid sucks. This company has a lot of explaining to do, and I need to twist these numbers inside out and sideways by the end of the day and finish sixteen more tasks,” I say. “That, I can handle. Can you swing over to Meadow Hill while I’m at the meeting and take some photos of their landscaping? I want to do something similar but different enough that it doesn’t look like we’re copying it. And for less money.”
Piece of cake , I tell myself. It’s all going to be okay.
“It’s all going to be okay,” I chirp brightly as every face in the room turns toward me. “I’m getting new bids on the landscaping and pushing the contractor to find a new floor guy if this one can’t get the job done. And we’ll change the dishes at Butter and Rosemary, as planned, and work up some new menus. I’ve got it handled.” I’d say more, but I’m out of breath. I’m also doing everything in my power to stay focused on what I need to communicate in this meeting, so my mind doesn’t wander anywhere else. I cannot think about pregnancy right now. Can. Not.
“Okay, if you really think you can handle all that,” Archer says, raising a skeptical eyebrow.
“Why wouldn’t I? I’m a great multitasker. Just put it on my list and I’ll get it done.” I try to dial down my voice, which sounds just shy of hysteria. More slowly and quietly, I explain, “I really feel comfortable with what’s on my plate.” Smoothing a plaid fabric runner on the table with both hands, I focus on my hands and avoid looking at anyone.
There’s an uncomfortable silence in the room, and when I glance up, I see Jax looking at a pad of numbers and PJ staring at me with creases in her forehead. I offer her a wan smile and urge myself not to throw up again.
“I’m still waiting on the claims department at the insurance company to come by, but if all goes according to plan, we should have money for the new floors and the other damage,” Jax says.
“Great,” I tell him, closing the notebook in front of me to indicate that I have nothing else to report.
I just need to get through this meeting. Then, I can deal with the rest of my day. And the rest of my life.