One day past Shannon’s expected cycle

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I slept with my hand on my belly all night, curled up around it like I’m cradling a priceless item. A fragile robin’s egg. A rare jewel.

Declan’s balls.

My eyes open, the sound of male slumber beside me so much a backdrop to my life that I don’t notice it most mornings. His warm body is next to me, curled on his right side, shoulder peeking out from under the covers. Declan needs a haircut, his hair longer than usual. Without an assistant to run his life, he’s forgetting those little details. A good wife would help him out. A good wife would schedule a haircut for him. A good wife would step in and take over.

Screw that.

Also, I like his hair this way. Wavy and rakish, it makes him feel a little less controlled. More dynamic and dangerous, like I’m sleeping with someone familiar yet new.

A fullness in my lower torso brings me back to the reality that today is the day. We’re here. Yesterday, my period was due and it didn’t arrive. Day one of Babywatch begins. I should jump up and take the pregnancy test and get it out of the way. My bladder is screaming for relief. I should march into the bathroom and confidently face my future. I should make one single, simple move toward resolution. Information is power.

Instead, I stare at the ceiling, inventorying my body for answers.

Why? Why do I do this when the answer is a few steps away?

I don’t know.

Heaviness fills my limbs. My uterus feels like a polished, warm rock inside me. Declan makes a low, breathy sound, then turns over, wrapping one arm around my waist in sleep. The light pressure of his forearm against my bladder makes me wince, but I don’t move.

We’re at the very edge of an abyss. The minute I know I’m pregnant, life changes.

The reality is what it is.

It’s the knowing that terrifies me.

Eyes opening slowly, Dec looks at me, a sleepy, satisfied smile making his face a world of its own. “Morning,” he says, coming in for a quick kiss. “Did you test yet?”

“No.” Tears come, small and bright.

“What’s wrong? Did your period start?” A soothing hand begins to rub my elbow, as if he already knows the answer to a question I’m trying to hold back.

“No.”

He brightens more, long lashes closing over the tops of his cheeks as he kisses my shoulder. Our baby could have those beautiful green eyes.

Our baby.

“I’m just being emotional,” I say with a laugh, wiping the not-quite-tears from the corners of my eyes.

“Maybe that’s a sign.”

“Breast tenderness is a sign, too, Dec.”

He takes that as an invitation, filling his hand with my loose breast under my pajama top. “Hmmm, let me see.”

“How would you know if my breasts are tender?”

“It will take a great deal of careful, detailed study, Shannon, but I’m dedicated.”

I laugh, then wince. “My bladder is killing me.”

“Go, then. Go do the test.” He slaps my ass playfully.

“I’m scared.”

“Scared of the test? It’s just pee.”

“Scared of the answer.”

“You changed your mind?”

“No, no.” I sigh. “It’s just hitting me now. How big this is. We’re Declan and Shannon right now.” I turn on my side and face him, arm tucked under my head. “If I’m pregnant, we’ll never be just us.”

“Isn’t that the point of having kids?”

“It’s one of them. I want a family. I want to raise a child with you. I want all of that. At the same time, I’m afraid we’ll change.”

“Of course we’ll change.”

“Maybe you’ve made life too good for me,” I tell him, grasping at the right words to describe the feelings inside me. “I think this is your fault.”

“For giving you too good a life?”

“For loving me so well. I can’t imagine it being even better.”

If I thought his smile was radiant before, he practically glows now, tenderness filling those hard features, showing me the man I have the privilege of knowing intimately every day of my life. This is the Declan no one else sees. This is the raw, real person who may have just fathered a child growing inside my body at this very moment.

“I love you, Shannon. If this is all we ever have, it will be more than enough.” His hand flutters over my belly. “And if there is more, I’ll cherish more as much as I cherish you.”

I cry. Of course I cry. Wouldn’t you?

“Stop!” I gasp. “I’m going to pee the bed.”

“So much for sharing my feelings with you,” he says, joking. Our kiss is sweet and hot, fueled by truth.

But a larger truth is weighing heavily on me.

My bladder.

I climb out of bed and gingerly walk into the bathroom. The pregnancy test kit is on the counter. Dec leaves the bedroom, gloriously naked, his butt muscles a work of art as I watch him disappear down the hallway. We have a routine. He makes coffee. I shower first. Except today, it’s all different.

Today, everything is different.

I examine the pregnancy test box. Answers, it’s called. What a boring name. Sure, it’s true, but the neutrality of it is a little offensive. Some of the other names for these products are silly. This one is brutal in its honesty.

Answers. I’m seeking answers, all right.

Dec comes back, wrapping his arms around me from behind, his body hard and warm through the thin jersey cotton of my pajamas. “Ready?” he whispers in my ear.

“No. But...”

I start to pull down my pants and sit on the toilet, but pause mid-movement and look at Dec. “Do you mind?” My arched eyebrows and pointed look at the door are meant to convey the message Get out.

“Why? I’ve seen you pee before.”

“You’ve never watched me pee before.” I frown. “Or have you? Is this one of those ‘getting to know you’ moments that comes after years of being together? Do you have some secret pee-watching fetish I don’t know about, Declan?”

He doesn’t even blink as he glides with that Gene Kelly grace the man holds in every cell of his body, strong fingers wrapping around the doorknob, a twinkle in his moss-green eyes as he winks at me. “Bye, Shannon. See you in three minutes.” His eyes drop to the pregnancy test in my hand as he shuts the door.

I prepare to pee alone.

Or... maybe I’m not alone.

I’ll find out in three minutes.

And then I realize he didn’t technically answer me. Hmmm.

Taking a pregnancy test is basically peeing on a stick. It’s not rocket science. You don’t need a degree in chemistry. You pull down your pants, sit on the toilet, and aim your stream at a little felt absorbent strip that performs some biochemical magic and in the end determines the course of the rest of your life.

Not bad for an $11 box you can buy at any convenience store when picking up lottery tickets and a forty of beer in a brown paper bag.

My hands shake as I tear open the box and find the instructions. They unfold like an old road map. Which is strangely appropriate. The test points you in the direction of your future, so... Maybe Rand McNally should come out with a line of pregnancy tests.

In the end, the test itself is easy. I open the thin foil package, take out the long, slim device and point it down. The tip looks like a permanent marker without ink.

Spreading my legs, I firmly hold the end of the pee stick and promptly urinate all over my hand, the edge of the bowl, the inside of my knee and, judging from the arc, part of New Hampshire.

First morning urine is precious cargo. My Kegel muscles kick in and I halt midstream, panicking, my wet thighs making me slip slightly forward on the toilet seat, and–

I drop the test into the toilet.

“DAMN!” I scream. My vaginal wall muscles are clamped down like the Hoover Dam holding back an unexpected early thaw, and I involuntarily shake the urine off my hand, flinging droplets all over the rest of me. I jump up, turn around, and try to retrieve the ruined test.

Just then, a whuff of cold air assaults my bare ass. Declan has apparently opened the bathroom door.

“What’s wrong? I heard you scream. Are you...” His voice trails off as I look at him, hand in the toilet, naked ass on display, single-handedly proving that taking a pregnancy test is, in fact, rocket science after all.

“We have got to stop meeting like this,” he says softly, closing the door before bursting into laughter.

Now I know why they sell pregnancy tests in packages of two.

The dripping magic wand of fail goes straight in the trash. If I were in a Harry Potter book, my patronus would be a dodo bird.

“Conceptiarmus!” I call out, brandishing the second test like a I’m casting a spell. Hey, if a magic spell ups my chances, I’ll mutter damn near anything, including those strange mantras Mom says you can speak to your chakras to get your soul cycle to synchronize with past lives so you can draw whatever affirmations the universe is supposed to send you when the moon is in the House of Mercury. Or whatever.

I wash my hands. I open the new test. I position the stick. I aim. I hit the target.

I wait.

Time changes depending on how it is used. While we think of time as a fixed commodity, the seconds and minutes and hours all evenly spaced, perfectly calibrated, that is all a lie. We believe in a complete falsehood. Reality has taught me that time is flexible and fungible, stretching out with agonal slowness during moments of great haste, compressing in times of pure ecstasy.

The pause as alchemy performs its ritual inside that little stick is unfathomable. I hold time in my hands. All the millennia humankind has ever known are distilled down to the future moment when I can look at the test and know.

Know.

Know my future.

Our future.

Declan’s soft knock on the door tells me he’s been timing this test. “Shannon?”

“Hmmm?”

“Is it... does the test... can I come in?” His gentle inquiry and respect for my privacy make my heart drop and swell at the same time, his hesitance transmitting the importance of this moment. We’re making a baby. Another human being.

One we’ll be wholly responsible for.

“Of course,” I say, standing, my eyes averted from the stick I’ve left on the counter. His dark, messy hair catches my eye first as he walks into the bathroom in underwear, hands on his hips, looking around the room.

He freezes when he sees the test.

“Did you look yet?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because it just hit the right amount of time.”

“Oh.”

To my surprise, he doesn’t lunge.

“You can be the one to look, if you want,” I whisper, offering him so much more than that.

“I think we should both look.”

“I’m probably not pregnant,” I warn. “The chances are really slim. They say a woman my age has a twenty-percent chance of conceiving every month she has unprotected sex.”

“One in five odds are solid,” he replies.

“This isn’t a stock we’re talking about, Dec. It’s a baby.”

“I know. And if we’re not pregnant, we just keep trying.” He gives me a wolfish look. “The process is its own reward, after all.”

I can’t laugh. Can’t even smile. My stomach is in knots and that damn plastic stick is calling out to me. Yes, it says. No, it taunts.

You can’t be a little bit pregnant. I am or I’m not.

Tears well in my eyes. Declan’s watching me, so he sees it the instant I feel them, and his warmth envelops me. Bare, hot skin brushes against my shoulders as he becomes my shield.

“It’s okay, sweetie. Let’s do it. Let’s find out.”

I nod. I can’t do more, though.

Dec takes the lead and reaches for the test, his arm long and muscled, the valleys and curves of tendon and bone aligned with muscle a gracious sight to behold. Dark hair, curled at the ends, covers his strong limb. Time changes whenever I look at him in motion.

A collection with his fingers. A twist of the wrist. My eyes adjust and seek out the words, this test dummy-proof, designed for people who can’t tell if there is one line or two.

The words NOT PREGNANT scream at me.

NOT.

I’m not.

“Oh,” he says, the soft brush of warm breath against the crown of my head more painful than a blow. He follows the word with a soundless kiss, his grip on me tightening.

I go hollow.

Which is fitting, because I am. Hollow, that is. Empty. Unpregnant.

Still just Shannon.

The lump rises in my throat until it blocks out all air, the sun, the moon, the planets, the stars. I close my eyes and stand there, an island that leans against a continent. Declan’s body is the only solid part of the universe.

“We’ll try again,” he murmurs against my ear, the sound fragile, a dandelion seed riding on the edge of a bubble. I break then, tears pouring, the feeling mostly disappointment but tinged with relief.

Relief that makes me feel guilty. Undeserving.

Bad.

“It’s another month to have wild sex,” he continues, his words coming a little faster, my silence unmooring him. “We can try some of those fantasies we talked about a few months ago, when we drank all that South American liquor from that client who–”

I cut him off with a kiss. I’m breathing hard through my nose, tears curled on my lip like expectations dashed, and his lips are closed with surprise, but I melt into him, needing whatever he can give. The empty feeling cannot stand.

We have to make more than that right now.

Without a word, he understands, picking me up in his arms and taking me back to bed. I breathe against him, a tempest inside, knowing that the negative pregnancy test isn’t the end of the world. We learn that there are shades of every color in the world when it comes to compassion. What I need from Declan isn’t ongoing soothing or a steady ear to listen to venting or mourning.

I need him. I need to act and do and be and move and fill. The void inside me is small. This was the first try. I’m okay. Or at least, I will be.

He’s on top of me, our handful of clothes easy to discard. Preliminaries aren’t needed as his eyes meet mine, achingly compassionate and equally pained. Is he empty too, in his own way? Maybe the echo of my hollow core reaches his heart and shakes it, just enough to make it touch me.

By the time he slides inside me, our mouths slanted against each other, my fingertips digging into his shoulders, the thrust of sex in rhythm with our breath, I don’t think about schedules and ovulation, temperatures and timelines, due dates and pee sticks.

I let him love me.

And then I’m not empty anymore.