Lib Novel Page 24
“It was cute. He’s cute. Matt’s incredible.”
Feeling stronger, Pia stood to brush her teeth. Mattwasincredible, unique among all the men she knew. He was incomparably kind, attentive, and intelligent. Successful and sophisticated. He was a man who knew his mind and the world. If what she’d started to suspect became fact, she definitely could have chosen a worse partner.
If he even wanted to be a partner. He hadn’t texted, after all.
She started to feel light-headed again.
Ami popped up from the floor. “I’m going to run to the store for a pregnancy test. Don’t go anywhere.”
As if she could. Until she knew without a doubt what was happening to her, Pia was, in every way, simply stuck.
She waited and paced. Paced and waited. Gnawed on her nails. Refused to look at the Cheez-Its box.
Finally, Ami returned. She shoved the plastic bag at Pia with an encouraging smile. “Whatever the result, we’ve got this.”
Pia nodded. She was an employed adult surrounded by family. Sure, she was single and a world away from the man who helped get her in this predicament, but her situation could be so much worse.
That knowledge didn’t keep her hands from shaking as she peed on the stick, then joined Ami in her bedroom to wait some more. She capped the pregnancy test, afraid to look.
A knock sounded on her door, and Pia’s heart dropped to her toes.
“Are you in there,iha?”
Her dad, with impeccable timing, as usual.
“We’re watching a movie,tito. Girls-only PMS pity party,” Ami announced. “Pia’s crying already and it’s only the opening credits.”
Her dad made a strangled noise. “You know I don’t want to hear about that girl stuff, Amihan!”
Pia chuckled despite her fears. Her cousin had just solved multiple problems for them both. Her dad would not bother them again, and she now had an excuse for puffy crying eyes.
Her smile faded as Ami nudged her knee.
“I can’t,” Pia whispered, clutching the test in her fist. Her entire life could change right now.Right effing now.Her friends were all graduating from college soon, getting ready to go on adventures and start adulting. Pia thought she’d felt lost before? A baby would inject so much uncertainty into her life.
Love, too, of course. She’d always loved her baby cousins, always volunteered to babysit. But her family would expect a big, Catholic wedding before she had a baby. For a wedding, she needed a boyfriend. One who lived on the same continent, preferably. There was an order to life, at least in her family. She’d already skipped out on college, which had been hard for her parents to accept.
A baby out of wedlock would be harder. Possibly insurmountable. Pia couldn’t stand the thought of her parents’ disappointment.
“I’m on birth control,” she said aloud, as if that fact could influence the outcome. “It’ll be fine. Has to be.”
Ami pried the stick out of her fingers. “It is fine, no matter what.”
Pia watched as her cousin uncapped the test. A smile flickered across her face and Pia’s world stopped. Full on stopped and tilted sideways. Like a drop on a roller coaster, her heart leapt into her throat.
“Tell me,” she whispered.
“Positive, mama. You and Frenchy made me atiya.”
Pia started nodding and couldn’t stop. Tears flowed. At least she knew. There was relief in knowing. And now that she knew she had just become a mother, her brain jumped into hyperdrive. She needed to move out. Find a doctor. Shop.
Call Matt.
Telling him would be even harder than telling her parents. Their bold moment—herbold moment—on his terrace had changed both of their lives.
Life lesson: The hot guy with the ability to enter any building in Paris after hours probably also has super sperm.
The suave businessman likely didn’t know how to throw a baseball or do the Chicken Dance or pump his own gas, but that’s what she and her brothers were for. Matt would make a fantastic father. If he wanted.