Page 95 of Never Forever

“Ladies?” Matt said from the fork in the trail. “We need to get going. Got to keep to the schedule.”

That ugly green uniform looked better out here. Surrounded by the scrubby grasses and the sand and the lilac bushes. The sky behind him. He looked like he was a part of this island. As much a part of it as my family.

Maybe, like Annie, he was even more Piedmont Island than I was, and I was the intruder.

Now it was time for me to reclaim my place here.

“Let’s go, Cecelia,” Gran said. “The world is waiting for us.”

22

Matt

It had been fifteen days since the sex we’d had in my old bedroom.

I was done waiting.

Done not sleeping. Done imagining. Done avoiding my Dad because I didn’t know what to say to him when I wanted to just spill all of it so he could pour me a glass of whiskey and tell me everything would be okay.

Other than that day picking up her mom and Gran, I hadn’t seen Carrie. It was like we both knew to go back to our respective corners until it was time to find out if this was happening or not.

I’d gone two towns over to get four different brands of pregnancy tests.

Now I was standing in front of her suite again. A plastic bag of pregnancy tests in my hands and my heart in my shoes.

I knocked.

The door opened and she stepped back to let me inside. She wore a long-sleeved white shirt and the ice cream cone pajama pants she’d had on when I came here two weeks ago.

She wore no makeup, and I thought she looked a little pale. Her hair was in a wild bun on the top of her head. Carrie Piedmont was always beautiful. Soaking wet. Mad as a hen. Getting her heart broken. Wearing a winter coat in august. Always gorgeous.

But tonight she looked gorgeous and...frantic. A little, dare I say, unhinged.

“Hey, you okay?” I asked her.

“You brought pregnancy tests?” She asked, ignoring my question, and pointing to the bag in my hand.

I nodded.

“Good,” she said and held out her hands for the bag. “I’ve taken some already but I need more data.”

“You’ve taken some already?” I asked and she nodded.

“And?” I asked, my skin pulling tight along my scalp. “What did they say?”

She shook her head. “Inconclusive.”

“Inconclusive, how?”

She rolled her eyes and walked back to her bedroom, waving at me to follow her.

“Look,” she said. I poked my head into the ensuite bathroom and saw literally stacks of pregnancy tests on the bathroom vanity. At least ten that I could count. Some in the sink, a few on top of the toilet. One on a shelf, that stood apart from the rest.

How much could one person pee?

“Carrie, what the heck?”

It was obvious what was going on. A mental breakdown. All that hair on her head had finally made her crack.