I stare at the box. It’s a pregnancy test kit.
“Oh,” I say softly.
My mind races. When was my last period? I can’t remember.
Am I a week late? Two?
I've been so deep inside the album, inside the writing, inside this new life we've been building that I haven't been paying attention to my own body. I've been so busy being happy.
“Oh shit,” I whisper.
Two minutes later, we’re both in the bathroom. Waiting.
Two minutes has never lasted longer in my entire life.
I sit on the edge of the bathtub and Walker sits beside me and neither of us looks at the test. We look at each other instead. His green eyes steady on mine.
And then we’re staring at two pink lines on the test kit.
I look up at him with huge eyes. “There’s a baby inside me.”
Walker’s arms come around my waist. His gaze is searching my face, but I can tell he’s trying really hard not to smile. “There’s a baby inside you. My baby.”
“Our baby,” I remind him. So bossy.
The smile breaks through. “Our baby.”
I start crying and laughing at the same time and then he’s holding me tight, kissing me everywhere. I can’t believe there’s a person inside me. Half Walker. Half me. A whole new soul.
I think about the summer. The fireworks. The music and lyrics. His hands on me. We made something beautiful that night together. And now we’ve made something else.
Someone else.
I can barely comprehend the weight of it.
The magic of it.
“Hey.” Walker touches my face. “You okay?”
“I'm so okay,” I say. “I'm the most okay I've ever been in my life. I don’t know how you managed to defeat the pill, though.”
“Super swimmers,” he says, eyes twinkling with joy and not a little male arrogance.
More like I probably wasn’t taking it at exactly the same time of day, but I let him have his moment.
His arms come around me and he holds on and I feel him laugh into my hair. He kisses me, then pulls back again to look at the test one more time like he needs to confirm it's still true.
“When do we tell Jonah?” I ask.
“Soon.”
I bite my lip. “What about the wedding?”
We’d been planning to get married in the spring. But, doing the math in my head, I’m either going to be extremely pregnant or literally giving birth.
“I guess we have to postpone,” I say.
He looks at me like I’m crazy. “Absolutely not.”
