“Just let me chug this and dry my hair, and I’ll be good to go.”
“I’ll warm the car up. Meet me down there.”
“Will do. Five minutes.”
He left Laurel be with her coffee, and the second the door shut her head filled up with way too many questions. Was she actually queasy, or was that her imagination? Or was she just queasy with uncertainty? Either way, the coffee wouldn’t help. Neither would spending her shift trying to decide whether or not to pick up a pregnancy test.
“It’s really unlikely,” she told the coffeemaker.
You’ve said that three times, the red light seemed to reply. She switched it off.
“Like, really unlikely,” she said, making it four. And she’d keep on saying that until she believed it.
4
Sunday wasn’t much of a day of rest. Flynn dropped Laurel off at her work, back just in time to drive his sister and niece to church. By early afternoon he had Heather’s car entrusted to a neighborhood garage, and after a grocery run, he headed off for his near-daily workout.
The gym was the same venue where he fought each weekend, a shady little concrete-and-cinder-block outfit in the basement of a shitty bar. On Sundays it was usually just him and the younger guys, everybody else doing the family thing.
The family thing. Sprawled on a weight bench, he stared up at the ceiling, at the bald fluorescent bulbs staring right back. Though neither of them had spoken of the question of a pregnancy test since Laurel had disappeared for her shower, he hadn’t quit thinking about it for a second.
Flynn’s mental baseline was a sort of anxious thrumming, not unlike the buzzing of the light above him—an ever-present hum that never let up, aside from when he was fighting or fucking. It was the reason he didn’t drink coffee, which only made him more of a punchy motherfucker than he already was. Alcohol turned him into a mopey dick, and he wasn’t about to go back to smoking a pack a day after kicking the habit once. He supposed a marijuana scrip wouldn’t be so hard to snag, but that stinky-ass shit was for hippies and burnouts. That eliminated the most popular chemical crutches. Physical release was all he had left, and so here he was every day he wasn’t in the ring, punishing his body until his brain could finally shut the fuck up.
The pregnancy question… It didn’t scare him, not the way it might another man. It was out of his hands. Whatever might ultimately come was Laurel’s decision. It was the simple not knowing that was gnawing at him.
It’d change everything. No fucking doubt. His life was predictable in ways he found both reassuring and monotonous, and a baby would throw it all into chaos. That wasn’t to say he couldn’t handle it, but it would be a far more welcome challenge a few years down the road.
Laurel, though. She had potential. He might make decent money working construction, but it was nothing like what she could pull in if she managed to land an engineering job. A career. That was what she needed to be worried about, right now. Plus there was her mental health. She’d gone through a long blue patch over the holidays, and at his urging got prescribed an antidepressant she could take on an as-needed basis. It seemed to be helping a lot. Would she have to give that up, if she took on a pregnancy?
He dropped the weights he’d been using onto the rack with twin clangs, swore under his breath. He needed to chill the fuck out. He eyed the handful of guys on the benches and at the heavy bags, sizing them up. All kids or newbies, nobody fit to spar with. Not the way he needed to fight right now. He went through the rest of his routine, seeking solace and not finding any. Jesus, uncertainty was the motherfucking worst.
Desperate for distraction, he went back to the grocery store, bought the ingredients for the only thing he knew how to cook that tasted any good—casserole. He cooked noodles and slices of sausage and mixed them up with marinara sauce and covered it with mozzarella and foil and stuck it in the oven just in time to leave to pick up Laurel. If she hadn’t bought a test or gotten her period, they’d make a stop at Rite Aid.
He was just shrugging into his jacket when a familiar sound stilled him—a knock and the scrabble of a key in the lock.
Laurel appeared, smiling, snowflakes melting in her hair. Then that smile drooped, her eyes taking in his coat and hat. “Were you about to come get me?”
“Yeah.”
“I left you a message, like, four hours ago. My coworker lives around the corner—she gave me a lift.”
“Oh.”
“You really need to check your phone.”
“I don’t think I can even get text messages.”
She smirked. “You can, you just refuse to learn how. And I left you a voicemail, anyhow. I know you.”
“Oops.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m here now. Saved you the trip.” She shed her coat and hung it up, then stepped close, rising on tiptoes to pull the cap from his head.
He kissed her temple. “How was work?”