A ping from my phone has me sighing as I open my eyes and look at the screen.
How you feeling, Babygirl? You still sleeping or back at work and forgot to let me know?
Oops, I forgot to text him earlier. I roll to my side and slowly type my message, as it takes a lot out of me right now to even do that.
Still sick. Called in again.
Oh no. I’ll be over in just a little bit.
Please don’t.
Three dots. A pause. More dots. Another pause. He doesn’t know what to say, so I do it for him.
I have good and bad moments. I’m hoping I just need more time. If I’m contagious, I really don’t want youto catch it. Then we’ll just be sharing it back and forth between us, and that will be no fun for anyone.
Might be a little bit of fun.
I laugh at his humor.
Seriously, this sucks. Puking is the second thing on my list that I hate most in the world. I don’t want to go through this again once I get over it.
What’s the first?
I knew he would ask, and a smile forms as I type my response.
Being away from you. Lol. It’s cabbage.
Don’t joke like that. Well, I get the cabbage shit, that stuff sucks. But I’m starting to put being away fromyouas something I hate most in the world. It’s already moved up to the number three spot.
What are the other two?
Not getting to be between your thighs.
Karter!
Hehe. Thought you’d like that.
And the other?
Cabbage.
I send him an eye-roll emoji and then tell him I’m going to sleep for a bit. He lets me go easily, knowing that the sooner I get better, the sooner we can spend time together.
I roll to my other side and look out the window. It’s a cloudy day, but I can see the trees swaying from the breeze and a few birds flying by. Not sure how long I stay like that, but soon Nana is back with a bag of stuff she sets on my bed.
I push up to a sitting position and surprisingly feel a little better as I open the bag and pull out what she got.
Ginger ale, crackers, Pedialyte—and a pregnancy test.
I look at her as I hold the last item like it’s a grenade about to go off.
“Wha…?” My brain isn’t firing like usual. Nothing happens. I just blink at the box and then at Nana.
“Your mama came home feeling the same way you do once. She was seeing someone too. Not someone serious or anything. Took us a while to try one of these, so I figured we’dstartwith this and rule it out first before moving on to figure out what else it could be.”
I shake my head. “But I’m… but we….”
She sits on the corner of my mattress and puts her hand over mine, pushing the box to the bed as she uses her other hand to lift my head to look at her and not the other thing.
