I raised my eyebrow. “Let’s go back to what you just said. Jennifer is not pregnant. Are you sure?”
“Well, I’m taking her word for it but she went to the doctor on over the weekend to get a blood test. It came back today as negative. She took two more pregnancy tests. They were all the same. I guess she got a false positive the other day.”
It was sick to admit it but there was a wonderfully giddy feeling rising up inside of me. It made me feel ashamed. I watched him carefully. He seemed fine, but maybe I just wanted him to be fine. I certainly did not expect him to feel like I did.
“Are you OK with it?” I asked.
“Yeah. I’m fine with it.”
“And is Jenn OK?”
He frowned. “I think so. Yeah, I think so. We’re good.”
“So…” what does it mean now, I thought. But I didn’t dare ask it.
“So…” he mused.
He took a sip of his coffee. I took a sip of my tea. There was nothing left to say about it. I sat back in my chair. We both watched each other for a few beats. The quiet sounds of the diner filled my ears. This weekend had taken our relationship further than I ever thought it would go. The strip club. Finding out Jenn was pregnant. A night of ecstasy (for me, anyway). The mental institute. Jenn not being pregnant in the end. And yet I was just scratching the surface. We had come so far and, for me, it just wasn’t enough.
I pulled back my jacket sleeve, inspecting the bandages. They looked fine, though I knew we’d both have to go to the doctor as soon as we got back into the country.
I eyed the anchor silly band on my wrist, happy that the roses hadn’t cut it off and smiled. I looked up at him, hoping he hadn’t caught me staring at the band with a sappy and mushy expression on my face. He was resting his chin on his hand and staring out the window. He quickly glanced at me out of the corner of his eye and smiled warmly in return. He saw. And it was OK.
*
We were sitting inside the ferry as it motored its way back to Vancouver, the mainland and the way home. Dex was chewing Nicorette, more properly than normal, still deciding to honor his decision to quit smoking. We both stared out the salt–stained window at the sea. The morning was clear, the sun’s streams of light were twinkling brightly on the calm water. Not a hint of red in the sky.
THE END
Keep reading for an exclusive peek at Book Four in the Experiment in Terror Series,
Lying Season…
LYING SEASON
I woke up with an extremely uneasy feeling and for a few seconds I couldn’t remember where I was. I wasn’t at home. The room was too dark and windowless.
I slowly sat up and tried to get my eyes to adjust. There were a bunch of blinking lights in the corner coming from Dex’s computer and other gadgets.
It was the second night in the last week that I was dreaming about the past. I don’t know why. Normally if I dreamed about weird things, they had something to do with the spirits we were about to encounter. I had begun to rely on my dreams as being prophetic, or maybe a quick glimpse into the mind of a dead person (as lovely as that sounds). But I was dreaming about high school and things that I had pushed out of my mind with the help of medication, doctors and therapy sessions. I didn’t like how they were suddenly coming up now. I hope they didn’t mean anything. They couldn’t. It was all the drug use, that’s all it ever was.
Not that I could remember all that much about the dreams. I knew my friend Tara had been in it, maybe Dr. Freedman, my old shrink. Nothing scary had happened. Yet there was something so disturbingly realistic about the whole thing that my heart was pounding away and I was sweating profusely. I felt the sheets. They were damp. Jenn would probably burn them by the time I left.
Earlier that evening, Dex had cooked Jenn and I dinner (his cooking skills were still surprising) and I had a bit too much wine with it. Just to calm the nerves. Actually, we all had imbibed a tad much, which made the conversation easier. Probably helped that we all ate in the living room, watching TV, and didn’t have to stare at each other. I had avoided looking at either of them, the conversation I had with Dex still fresh in my head. We were putting it all past us.
Now my head was spinning from the dream and I was thirsty from the night sweats and the wine. I didn’t want to get up for a glass of water, the black room was a bit creepy, and it was always weird being in someone else’s place in the middle of the night, but if I didn’t, I’d never go back to sleep. I carefully eased myself out of the single bed, unsure if I was going to walk into anything in the blackness. I made it to the door, opened it quietly, and poked my head out into the apartment. Their bedroom door was closed. The bathroom wasn’t. Fat Rabbit probably slept with them. I hope he messed up their sex life.
I tiptoed to the kitchen, my socks silent on the floor, careful not to wake them or the dog, and plucked a glass from a high cupboard and filled it up at the kitchen tap. The garish, yellow streetlights from outside came in through the balcony doors, filtered by a gauzy curtain that moved slowly, teased by a draft. Even though the apartment was small and beautiful, there was something so…strange about it. Strange and off-putting.
I finished my drink and filled the cup up again, mulling it over. There was no reason for me to be creeped out and yet I was. I listened hard; I could hear the comforting sound of someone’s light snoring in the bedroom, the occasional subdued rumble of a car outside, the tick of a clock on the wall. Everything was normal for a middle of the night Monday but that inkling of the unknown was undeniable. The hairs on my arms were rising with each second I stood there.
I gulped down the rest of the water and quietly placed the empty cup in the sink. If I hung around any longer I would just freak myself out.
I started to walk back to the room, wondering if perhaps I needed to go to the washroom, but something made me pause as I passed through the middle of the apartment.
It was that feeling.
That nauseating, lung-seizing feeling that someone, or something, was standing behind me. I could feel it, feel this solid presence at my back, watching me.
I wasn’t alone.
And I couldn’t move even if I wanted to. I felt frozen, my legs locked to the hardwood floors.
Then…