Total pages in book: 142
Estimated words: 138526 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 554(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138526 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 554(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
“Why are you all looking at me like that?” Nobody answers. “Is there something on my face?”
“No,” Ezra, who is fine now, kisses my cheek and wipes away a droplet of chocolate from the corner of my lips. Then he shoots the others a look and they busy themselves with what they were doing before their weird halt. “Nothing.”
Izabella and Erika start whispering amongst themselves, occasionally glancing my way.
Meanwhile I scoop more peanut butter into a bowl and mush it with banana before eating it from a spoon. So good.
I’ve been doing this a lot lately. It’s not something I have typically enjoyed before but now it’s the best thing in the world.
When I reach for my remaining wine in the other room, Izabella swoops in and takes it from me. “That wine is probably stale now. You don’t want stale wine.”
“I only poured it like twenty minutes ago.”
“I agree,” Erika puts in, smiling like a crazy woman. “It’s probably stale.”
“What are you, the wine police?” I eat more banana and peanut butter and then point at them with my spoon. “Why do you keep looking at each other like that?”
“Like what?” Izabella asks but ducks out of the room without waiting for my answer.
“Why are they acting so weird?” I whisper at Ezra who is looking at his sister with a similar excited expression.
“I’m going to the store,” Erika announces, standing suddenly.
“It’s Christmas, good luck finding a place.” Steven says this but jumps to his feet when she widens her eyes at him. “Guess I’m coming with you.”
“Maybe they’ve had stale wine,” I mutter, watching them go, whispering to themselves along the way.
Meanwhile Mario just beams at me, smiling broader than is normal.
I decide to just roll with it, looking at my new ring while eating my peanut butter and sipping a lemon tea that Izabella just made for me. It goes down nicer than the wine.
We chat, getting back to normal for a while when Erika finally returns after being gone nearly an hour.
She’s empty-handed so now I’m super confused as to why she needed to find a store. Maybe she didn’t find one.
“We should talk,” Ezra whispers, removing my peanut butter treat from my hands.
I follow him into the hall and accept his soothing kiss. “Changed your mind already?”
“Not a chance.”
“What’s wrong? You look on edge.”
He chuckles nervously and rubs my arms with his hands. “When was your last period?”
What? Now I’m really confused. “I don’t get periods, you know this. The depo shot stops them.”
“Okay,” he mutters and nods for a while, just bobbing his head like a doggy on a dashboard. “When was your last depo shot?”
“Well… it would have been three mo—” I slap a hand to my mouth. “Oh my God… I FORGOT! I never forget.” He peels my hand away from my lips. “It would have been before I left for Seattle. I didn’t even think about it.” My hand goes to my stomach. “Could I be pregnant? But I was told it can take years to conceive after getting the shot.”
He steers me towards the bathroom. “Want to find out?”
“How?”
“Erika got a pregnancy test.”
I blink rapidly, still walking towards the bathroom. “How did she…? What the hell is going on? Is this some kind of cruel prank?”
He turns me back to face him. “Okay, definitely not a prank. Definitely the best day of my life about to become even better if you’re carrying my baby. The reason everybody has been acting so weird is because in my family, every woman who has conceived a child and either been a Conti or married to a Conti, always craves peanut butter. Always.”
“Seriously?”
He nods, eyes twinkling with humor. “Elizabeth did. Erika did with her two unfortunate pregnancies.” Both ended in miscarriage before Ezra and I got together. So sad. We don’t talk about it. “My mom did. My nonna did. My bisnonna did. It didn’t exist before her but every single aunt I’ve ever had all claimed to crave peanut butter.”
“Dude, that’s like really weird. I’m creeped out.”
He chuckles knowingly. “Yep.”
“So… there’s a test in there waiting for me?”
“There is.”
“And if I am?”
“Then you are.”
“And if I’m not?”
“Then one day we try.”
“This is too much for one day,” I whimper, opening the bathroom door and staring at the three boxes on the vanity.
He unwraps them and takes out the sticks. Then, without shame, one by one I pee on them under a staggered stream, making him turn around first.
I wipe them down, clip the lids back on and wash my hands.
He guides me out of the bathroom, telling me to let them cook a little first.
I’m anxious, I start clicking, something I rarely do these days. He kisses my temple and we all just sit in silence as though waiting for somebody to die, not for somebody to be actualized.