Ryan had sent her a few texts as well. “I’m not just going to disappear,” he told her, and even though she didn’t respond, she didn’t block his number, either. If she had, he might simply show up at her apartment again, and she wasn’t sure how she’d handle that. After what had happened with Natalie, Brooke was less inclined than ever to take Ryan up on his offer of help. Other than her baby, she wasn’t going to let anyone close to her, ever again. Still, she thought about Natalie every time she delivered a beautiful dessert to one of her tables at work, but she decided it would be easier at this point if she pretended that she never had a sister at all.
Today, once she parked and entered the restaurant through the back door, Brooke punched in, then went to the bathroom to check her appearance and scrub her hands. She had purchased several work-appropriate outfits at a local thrift store, making sure all of her skirts had elastic waistbands and her tops were loose and comfortable. She wore her curls up in a twist with a few black tendrils down around her face and bought several pairs of supportive shoes so her back wouldn’t hurt so much at the end of her shift. According to the obstetrician at the clinic, her pregnancy was progressing well, but she still hadn’t found out the sex of the baby.
Now that she was twenty-three weeks, the biggest struggle she faced was how to hide her pregnancy under empire-waist tops. Nick hadn’t mentioned it, so Brooke decided to wait until closer to her due date to discuss the short maternity leave she would need to take. Until then, she would focus on being indispensable and saving up as much money as she possibly could. She’d been right about the flow of tips—on her weekend shifts, she was making up to five hundred dollars a night. Over the holidays, the restaurant had been so busy, Brooke couldn’t believe the amount of money she was bringing home. For the first time in her life, Brooke felt truly competent, grateful to be compensated so generously for the work she was doing. She decided she’d stay in her tiny apartment until the final weeks before the baby came, but she had begun looking on Craigslist for rental houses.
Now, Brooke made her way into the dining room to join the rest of the staff at a table so the chef could describe and let them taste the specials they would be serving that evening. A little while later, she took her first table of the night, a six-top that immediately ordered several cocktails, then asked to speak to the sommelier for assistance with picking out wines to accompany their meal. After putting in the order for their appetizers, Brooke found herself wondering if Natalie had already gone to meet their mother in Mt. Vernon; she imagined the two of them sitting together, clucking about how unfortunate it was that Brooke was too dysfunctional to forgive them both. The thought of this made her feel a little bit dizzy. In fact, she had to grab the edge of the counter by the pass to the kitchen to keep from stumbling.
“You okay?” another server, named Frank, asked. He was a bit older than Brooke, had been working at Sea to Shore for over ten years, and was responsible for training new employees like her.
“Yeah,” she said, trying to shake off the feeling. She wondered if she hadn’t eaten enough that day. She grabbed a roll from the warmer under the counter and took a bite. “Just hungry, I think,” she said to Frank, who nodded, lifted his diners’ plates from the window, and carried them out to the floor.
Brooke washed down the roll with a glass of water just as the hostess approached her and said that she had seated two more tables in her section. “Going to be a busy night,” the younger woman added. “Two hundred reservations on the books.”
“Wow,” Brooke said, still waiting for the food she’d eaten to make her feel better. As she made her way out to her section, she walked as straight as she could. She couldn’t get sick now, she thought. She needed to show Nick that he could count on her, no matter what.
She smiled at her new customers as best she could as she welcomed them and took their cocktail orders. Weaving her way through the tables back to the servers’ station, she quickly punched in their drinks and then grabbed her first table’s drink orders from the bar and set them on a large tray. She hiked it up on her right shoulder and carried a tray jack in her left hand, carefully balancing both. Beads of sweat popped out on her forehead, but with her hands full, she couldn’t wipe them away.
She was halfway across the restaurant, back toward the six-top, when a sharp spike of pain shot through her abdomen and down her leg, causing her knees to buckle. She fell hard onto the wood floor, and the tray she carried went flying. Luckily, there were no customers seated nearby.
“Oh, god,” she grunted as her muscles continued to spasm. A second later, she felt a rush of something liquid between her legs. Was her water breaking? Brooke thought in a panic. Was the baby coming early? She curled fetal on the floor, bringing her knees up to her chest, waiting for the pain to pass.
“Brooke!” she heard Nick say. “Are you all right? What happened?”
She shook her head, too scared to speak. The pain was excruciating, shooting through her belly into her hips. She was terrified to move, for fear of making things worse.
“Did you trip?” he asked, and again she shook her head, then spoke, her voice wound tight.
“I’m pregnant,” she gasped. “Something is wrong.”