Chapter 23 Daisy
DAISY
Three months since I walked out on my marriage, and here's what I've learned: rebuilding is slower than burning down. Being with Adam makes me happy. And happy is a thing I don't trust yet.
Happy is what I felt when Cole used to bring me flowers.
Happy is what I felt the first year of my marriage, before I realized I was alone in it.
Happy is what comes before the crash, the disappointment, the inevitable moment when reality reminds you that nothing good ever lasts.
I'm downstairs helping Nell with the morning shipment when the room decides to tilt sideways.
"Whoa." I grab the edge of the counter to steady myself, but my vision keeps swimming, and suddenly Nell's hands are on my arms, guiding me onto the stool behind the register.
"Girl, are you okay?" Her voice is sharp with concern. "You went completely pale. Like, whiter than the poetry section."
"I'm fine." I press my hand to my forehead. Cool skin, no fever. "Just stood up too fast."
"You've been standing here for twenty minutes."
"Then I… I don't know. Maybe I need to eat something."
Nell's eyes narrow in that way she has when she's about to say something I don't want to hear. She's been my best friend for five years now; I know all her tells, and this one means trouble.
"Daisy." She says my name slowly, carefully, like she's approaching a spooked animal. "How have you been feeling lately? Other than this?"
I shrug. "Tired. Off coffee, which is weird because usually I can't function without it. My stomach's been kind of—" I wave my hand vaguely. "But that's probably just stress. The trial stuff. Everything with Adam."
"Uh-huh." Nell pulls up her own stool and sits across from me, close enough that our knees almost touch. "And when was your last period?"
I open my mouth to answer. Nothing comes out.
I try to think back (count the weeks, remember the last time I bought tampons, picture my calendar with the little red dot I use to track) and I can't. The last time was... before the storm. Before Adam found me in the basement. Before… Oh God.
"Daisy?" Nell's voice sounds far away. "How long?"
"I don't—" My hands are shaking. "It's been over a month. Maybe… five weeks? Six? I don't know, I wasn't paying attention, there was so much happening—"
We stare at each other.
"STAY RIGHT HERE," Nell says, and then she's gone, out the door and down the street, and I'm sitting on this stool trying to remember how to breathe.
It can't be. It was one night: one night in that basement, during the storm, when everything felt suspended and I let myself stop thinking and just feel.
We didn't plan it. We didn't even talk about it afterward, not really.
I assumed it was just, a moment. A slip.
Something to file away and examine later.
I didn't assume it was the start of anything.
Nell is back in what feels like seconds but is probably closer to ten minutes, slightly out of breath, a pharmacy bag clutched in her hand. "Three different brands," she says, dumping the contents onto the counter. "We're being thorough."
"Nell—"
"Don't argue with me." She's already opening the first box. "Bathroom. Now."
The next fifteen minutes are the longest of my life.
I follow the instructions (pee on the stick, wait three minutes, repeat with the next one, and the next) and then Nell and I stand side by side in the tiny employee bathroom, staring at three strips of plastic like they contain the answer to every question I've ever had.
The first one shows two lines. Positive.
The second one has a plus sign. Positive.
The third one literally says PREGNANT in digital letters, because apparently technology has advanced to the point of removing all ambiguity.
"Oh my God," I whisper.
"Oh my God," Nell echoes.
And then I'm crying (huge, gasping sobs that rack my whole body) and Nell is holding me, her arms tight around my shoulders, murmuring things that might be comfort or might just be sounds, and I can't stop shaking.
"What am I going to do?" I choke out. "Nell, what the fuck am I going to do?"
"Hey." She pulls back just enough to look at my face. "You don't have to decide anything right now. This is just information. You have options. You have time."
"I'm still married to him. Sort of. I don't even know what we are—"
"You'll figure it out."
"How?" I laugh, and it sounds hysterical even to my own ears. "How am I supposed to figure out a baby when I can't even figure out my own life?"
Before Nell can answer, the bell over the front door chimes. We both freeze.
"Daisy?" Adam's voice calls from the main room. "Nell said you weren't feeling well, so I brought ice cream. The good kind, with the—"
He appears in the bathroom doorway, a grocery bag in one hand, and stops dead. I'm crying in Nell's arms, the tests in my pocket, and his face tightens with concern. The bag drops from his hand.
Ice cream containers scatter across the floor, but he's already moving, crossing the small space, and then Nell is extracting herself ("I'll just…
give you two a minute—") and Adam is there, pulling me against his chest, his arms wrapping around me like he can hold me together if he just squeezes hard enough.
"Daisy." His voice is rough. "What's going on? Are you sick? Did something happen?"
I try to say it. I try three times, and each time the words get stuck in my throat, tangled up with fear and hope and all the things I'm not ready to name.
"Take your time," Adam murmurs against my hair. "Deep breaths. Whatever it is, I'll help you with it. I promise."
I take all three tests out of my pocket. Nell insisted I keep them as "evidence." I hold them up so he can see.
He goes very, very still.
His eyes move from the tests to my face and back again, like he's trying to reconcile two pieces of information that don't quite fit together. I can see him doing the math, counting backward, arriving at the same conclusion I did.
"Fuck, Daisy."
It comes out hushed and half-broken.
And then he's hugging me again, even tighter this time, and I feel something wet against my temple and realize he's crying too. Adam Smith, CEO of a Fortune 500 company, crying in a bookstore bathroom over three plastic sticks.
"It's from the storm," I say, even though he already knows. "The basement. I didn't… I wasn't expecting—"
"I know." He pulls back, cups my face in his hands, looks at me with an intensity that steals my breath. "Listen to me. I'm happy. I'm so fucking happy I don't even have words for it. You're going to be a wonderful mother. The best. Our kid is going to be so goddamn lucky—"
"Adam—"
"But if you don't want to have it." He swallows hard. "If this isn't what you want, if the timing is wrong, if you're not ready, I'll support that too. Whatever you decide. I mean it."
I stare at him. In all the scenarios I imagined (and I've imagined many, in the fifteen minutes between peeing on sticks and now) I didn't picture this, or him giving me the choice.
I expected pressure, or panic, or the kind of calculated decision-making that defined our marriage for five years. I didn't expect him to put me first.
"I want it," I whisper. "I want to have this baby."
His whole face transforms. Hope, relief, joy. They crash over his features like waves, and his smile is so bright it almost hurts to look at.
"And I want to have it with you," I add, because he needs to hear it.
"I know we're still figuring things out.
I know the divorce is technically still pending and we haven't talked about what we actually are to each other.
But I don't want to do this alone. I want—" I take a shaky breath. "I want us to try. For real this time."
"There's nothing I want more in this fucking life than that." He kisses my forehead, my cheeks, the corner of my mouth. "Nothing, Daisy. I swear to God."
"Trying with you and having this baby are two choices," I say. "If we can't make the marriage work, you still have to be a father."
"I will be. Living together or apart, I'm responsible for our child. You don't have to stay married to get that promise."
I let the words settle before I lean back into him. The date, the counter shift, the answers he finally gave me: those are why I want to try. The baby gets to be wanted without being asked to fix us.
We hold onto each other for a long time.
Eventually, my crying subsides into the occasional hiccup, and Adam's death grip relaxes, gentler now. We're sitting on the bathroom floor now (how did that happen?) with pregnancy tests and melting ice cream beside us, and it should be absurd but it feels perfect.
"Okay," I say finally, wiping my face with the back of my hand. "Okay. We're doing this."
Adam nods, his expression settling into determination. "We're doing this."
A beat of silence.
Then he clears his throat. "I do have a shit ton of questions, though."